£750 for a Face Cream? What Are We Actually Paying For?

Illustrative image created for My Future Face

I love skincare.

That probably needs saying before I go any further.

I own skincare devices, I use retinol, I take collagen, and I am quite capable of getting excited about a beautifully formulated serum. I am not someone who thinks a bar of soap and a splash of cold water is all a woman needs.

But even I have my limits.

And apparently, that limit is £750 for a pot of face cream.

I recently came across a luxury face cream advertised at £750, subsequently being sold for a fraction of that price. My first reaction wasn't, I wonder what miraculous ingredients are in there ?

It was:

£750? What on earth could possibly be in it?

And that sent me down a skincare rabbit hole.

When expensive face cream starts sounding like a tasting menu

Luxury skincare has become remarkably good at making ingredients sound extraordinary.

Gold. Caviar. Truffles. Bee venom. Placenta extracts. Rare botanicals gathered from remote corners of the world.

Read some descriptions and you're halfway between a Michelin-starred restaurant and an alchemist's laboratory.

Bee venom, in particular, caught my attention. It's sometimes marketed as producing a plumping or "Botox-like" effect by creating a response in the skin.

There is research interest in bee-venom compounds and their potential dermatological uses, but that's a very different thing from saying that putting an expensive bee-venom cream on your face will reproduce the effects of an injectable treatment.

And there's another rather less glamorous consideration: bee products can cause allergic reactions in susceptible people.

Suddenly it doesn't sound quite so luxurious.

Then we come to placenta.

Yes. Placenta.

Placental extracts have appeared in some cosmetic products, often surrounded by claims about proteins, growth factors and rejuvenation.

My immediate questions were rather slightly less scientific.

Whose placenta? Human? Animal? Where has it come from? And do I actually want to rub it on my face?

There is legitimate scientific research into biological compounds found in placental tissue. But once again, evidence that a substance has interesting biological properties doesn't automatically mean that putting it into a cosmetic cream will make us look ten years younger.

The skin is rather more complicated than that.

Your skin isn't a sponge

One of the cleverest things about our skin is also rather inconvenient for the beauty industry.

Its job is partly to keep things out.

The outermost layer of the epidermis the stratum corneum — forms a protective barrier. Cosmetic ingredients don't simply soak through the skin and wander off to wherever we'd like them to work.

Some ingredients can penetrate the outer layers to varying degrees depending on their molecular properties and how a product is formulated. Others primarily work at or near the surface.

And that's not a bad thing.

A good moisturiser can reduce water loss, improve hydration, support the skin barrier and make dry skin feel smoother and more comfortable. Humectants such as glycerin can attract water; emollients can soften and smooth; occlusive ingredients can help prevent moisture escaping.

Those aren't insignificant benefits.

But they're also not magic.

Which raises an interesting question.

If a £25 moisturiser can hydrate and support my skin barrier, what exactly is the additional £725 doing?

The beef-fat problem

This reminded me of something I'd heard during a skincare discussion featuring Liz Earle: the renewed interest in tallow (rendered animal fat) as skincare.

I'm not suggesting we should all rush into the kitchen and start rubbing Sunday dinner on our faces.

But it illustrates something fascinating about skincare.

Humans have used fats and oils on their skin for centuries because oily substances can soften the skin and reduce moisture loss. Modern cosmetic chemistry has simply given us much more elegant, stable and pleasant ways of achieving that.

Petrolatum is another wonderful example.

It isn't glamorous. Nobody is going to put it into a tiny crystal pot, photograph it beside an orchid and convince me it was harvested during a full moon in Switzerland.

Yet it is an extremely effective occlusive ingredient.

Sometimes the ingredients doing the useful work aren't the ones with the best marketing department.

So why can a face cream cost £750?

Because we're not necessarily paying only for the cream.

We're paying for research and formulation, certainly. Developing stable, elegant products costs money. Good packaging costs money. Safety testing, manufacturing and quality control cost money too.

But luxury beauty also sells something less tangible.

Experience.

The heavy glass jar.

The tiny gold spatula.

The fragrance.

The beautiful box.

The department-store counter.

The celebrity ambassador.

The advertising campaign.

The feeling that we've bought something special.

And there is absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying that.

We routinely pay more for things because they give us pleasure. A designer handbag carries things just as a cheaper handbag does. A luxury hotel still provides a bed, just as budget hotel does. A £100 candle doesn't necessarily illuminate a room better than a £5 one.

Luxury has never been purely about function.

The problem comes when luxury is confused with efficacy.

An expensive cream may be beautifully formulated. It may feel gorgeous on the skin. It may contain excellent ingredients.

But its price alone doesn't tell us how effective it is.

The ingredients I would rather spend my money on

At nearly 60, I'm much less interested in whether my moisturiser contains crushed diamonds and much more interested in ingredients with a reasonable body of evidence behind them.

For ageing skin, that includes things such as retinoids, sunscreen, niacinamide, vitamin C and well-formulated moisturising ingredients, depending on your individual skin and tolerance.

And there is something rather unexciting that probably deserves to be at the top of the list.

Sunscreen.

You can spend hundreds of pounds trying to improve the appearance of ageing skin while continuing to expose it to UV radiation every day.

It's not glamorous.

But neither is brushing your teeth, and we accept that prevention matters there.

Expensive doesn't automatically mean ridiculous

I don't want this to become another all-expensive skincare is a con article, because I don't believe that either.

Formulation matters.

Texture matters.

Stability matters.

Packaging can protect sensitive ingredients.

And if you adore a £150 moisturiser, can comfortably afford it, and it makes your evening skincare routine feel wonderful, then enjoy every last drop.

Skincare is allowed to be pleasurable.

I spend money on things other people would undoubtedly consider unnecessary. Beauty devices spring immediately to mind.

But I want to know what I'm buying.

Am I paying for an ingredient with evidence behind it?

A particularly clever formulation?

A texture I love?

Or am I paying £700 for the privilege of owning the jar?

Those are very different purchases.

My new £750 rule

Perhaps that's the question we should ask whenever skincare starts making extraordinary promises:

What is this product realistically capable of doing to my skin?

Not what does the advert imply.

Not what does the celebrity ambassador appear to look like under studio lighting.

Not what does the gold packaging make me feel it should do.

What can the formulation realistically do?

Because ageing skin doesn't need punishing, fixing or transforming into the skin we had at 25.

It needs protecting, supporting and looking after.

And sometimes the most effective ingredient in the bathroom cabinet might also be one of the least exciting.

So would I spend £750 on a face cream?

No.

For £750, I'm going to need considerably more than moisturised cheeks.

I want the jar to clean the bathroom afterwards.