Tried & Tested: Premium hand cream

2009/11/16

SYIDA LIZTA AMIRUL IHSAN

SYIDA LIZTA AMIRUL IHSAN has found a hand cream which works wonders. The downside? Its price. QUESTION: Who needs a RM349 hand cream?

While the price is higher than your average counter brand facial moisturiser, there are people who are willing to pay that amount for a hand cream when the rest are perfectly happy with pharmacy brands.

Why, you ask? Well, have you seen wrinkles on fingers and how ugly they can make your hands look? I always believe that hands and knees are dead giveaways of a woman’s age, or at least how well she looks after her skin — aside from her face.

With that demand in the market, hand creams fill up the shelves with a dizzying array of ingredients, from shea butter to hyaluronic acid, with an equally big range of prices.

And Dr Sebagh’s aptly named High Maintenance Hand Made Cream is an example of a premium product offered by a high-end cosmeceutical brand.

Fingers and knees often reflect a woman’s age.

It comes in a plain white box, typical of cosmeceuticals packaging because the brand’s positioning is that the products speak for themselves so that they don’t need beautiful boxes.

It has hyaluronic acid (often found in anti-ageing skincare), green coffee extract, essential vitamin C and fatty acids. All these ingredients are said to give the hands a protective coating from the air-conditioning and polluted air, for example.

I am sceptical about super-expensive products, but this one is actually very good because upon application, I could see that the wrinkles on my fingers were visibly reduced. It smells like Johnson’s baby lotion, not some artificially scented cream, so that’s a plus. It’s thick and a little squirt goes a long way.

I use this sparingly because it’s expensive. And I like to use this at night for two reasons: I don’t wash my hands after bed and they feel so soft the next morning. It feels a tad wasteful using it during the day when you have to wash your hands before you eat and after you go to the washroom.

I suppose at the end of the day, if you have the money to burn, this could work. It could protect you from dirty and dry air, to some extent.

But the crux of good skin remains the same and will always be — keep your skin hydrated and healthy. If you don’t drink enough water, smoke or just won’t give up on five cups of coffee a day, then good skin will remain elusive and unattainable.

Dr Sebagh High Maintenance Hand Made Cream. - Pictures courtesy of ESPLANADE AVENUE.