Chanel Hydra Beauty Sérum – review

Oh, how I had so wanted to like this stuff.  Recommended to me by the lovely MontyC, who swears by it, and who has deeply dehydrated skin, I thought it’d work just nicely on my January-February dessicated face.  No such luck.  I should’ve got a sample first.  I always get a sample first.  Oh well, there are worse things...

So what is it – well, it’s a lightweight gel-cream fluid-based serum, designed specifically for dehydrated skin (note: this is not the same thing as dry skin!) and claims to increase skin hydration (it made mine worse), even-out skin tone (ok, I’ll give it this), make the skin more plumped-up and soft (categorically not), and add luminosity to dull skin (nope, nope, nope).

Scent-wise, this does have a reasonably strong (albeit calming) scent and (more importantly) it fades reasonably quickly; by the time you have your moisturiser on, it’s a distant memory only.  That much is nice.

If anything, after four weeks of using this, my skin was dryer than ever.  It wasn’t softer, it wasn’t more luminous.  It was smoother – definitely – and slightly more evened-out, this much is definitely true.  It was more “relaxed” feeling.  It just wasn’t plumped-up with moisture, and it was dry, and it was flaky.

And on to the ingredients, something I always check out before buying, and stupidly didn’t this time around.  Alcohol.  High up on the ingredients list.  Second item as far as my memory goes.  Well, of course this wasn’t going to do anything but dehydrate my skin further then.  Silicones.  Parabens.  Silica.  And a bunch of good stuff too, seed oils, plant root extracts, fine.  But no need for the other stuff :-(

This isn’t a cheap serum, I think it was around the €95 mark for a 50ml bottle (there are two sizes, this is the larger of the two).   It just didn’t work for me.  So I’ve (re)learned a valuable lesson.  Try before you buy.  Even with the recommendation of someone who knows what she’s at, and really knows her Chanel, this didn’t work at all for me.  Even knowing her skin type (dehydrated) and current condition (dry) and figuring, if it works for her, it will definitely work for me (as I’m “only” combination, with a side order of dry and dehydrated at the moment), it didn’t.  She loves it (I believe it’s one of her Desert Island items).  I couldn’t pretend it was any good.  Perhaps it’d work fine in the summer, but definitely not right now.

It really does just go to show that a hero product for one person is a complete waste of money for another… The old adage remains true: read the blogs.  Research the product.  Talk to the SAs.  But try before you buy, try before you buy, try before you buy…

I love Chanel products, am a firm fan and am very happy to recommend quite a lot of their product range, but this one was a total bust for me.  I know what I need to do, serum-wise, but it’s scary money.  Time to dig out my Christmas voucher for BT and just have at it…