I don’t like rubbishing products online; I really don’t. Especially when the product is made by one of my favourite beauty brands. Double-y especially when it’s thoughtfully gifted to me.
Today though, I’m making an exception.
I’ve written countless times on this blog of my undying devotion to UK brand Soap and Glory. Initially, I was super excited to try Soap and Glory’s Face Soap And Clarity. Knowing just how much I love Soap and Glory, my Mum put a bottle of Face Soap and Clarity in my awesome birthday care package and I couldn’t wait to give this 3-in-1 daily face wash a whirl. It claimed that by harnessing the power of the Superfruit Yuzu (a sort of Japanese lemon, from my understanding), it could not only clean and purify my skin, but “effortlessly remove make-up” AND gently exfoliate my face.
So far so good!
It came in a lovely bottle too, all blue and pink and gooey. I really love S&G’s branding and packaging. I’m not sure whether it’s the the fact that they combine neat typography with retro images or the sheer simplicity of items such as this one, but their products really speak to me aesthetically.
Photo borrowed from the official website. I love the simplistic packaging .
Excitedly, I squeezed the product into my hand. Turns out it looked far nicer in the bottle than in a big gloopy pile.
It looked as though a Smurf sneezed in my hand. Kind of gross, right?
No matter! Soap and Glory had never let me down before. I wouldn’t now…would it?
Yes. Yes it would.
I’d noticed the little pink bits in the bottle and thought maybe they’d be exploding capsules that unleashed the power of the Yuzu. It wasn’t until I washed my face that I realised that the little beads weren’t dissolving. No, it turns out that these pretty pink particles were none other than micro-beads.
What are microbeads? Basically they’re little bits of plastic that are designed to assist with the exfoliation of your skin. My friend Lena over at Lena Talks Beauty has blogged about facial scrubs that use these little beads before and the prognosis is not good. Basically, she says that these little beads are washing down our drains directly into our seas and are subsequently polluting our oceans and the creatures that live within them.
Now, I’m not usually someone who would consider themselves super conscious of environmental factors but adding tiny pieces of plastic to a face product seems a little unnecessary when there are so many other good scrubs out there that don’t contain microbeads.
Aside from the problematic pollution aspect of this product, I don’t feel as though it’s particularly suited to my skin type. I haven’t typically had problems with other Soap and Glory face products (I love Scrub Your Nose In It because it’s pea green, smells like peppermint, and makes a noticeably difference to the state of your pores with continued use) but this really seemed to dry my face out; I had an especially nasty patch of dry skin which has taken me a week to clear up. This was suboptimal.
Finally, just to add insult to injury, despite my skin feeling ‘clean’ after using it, this product did a rubbish job of taking my makeup off.
From now on, I’ll be paying particular attention to what my face products contain before throwing them on my face. Given my super sensitive skin, I’m usually pretty diligent at looking at the ingredients of what I put on my face (you can read about my favourite products here), but I was so confident in the Soap and Glory brand that I failed to have a look at what this product contained.
It just goes to show that even if you have complete faith in a brand you should always look at a new product with some form of skepticism. I’m sure that, the majority of the time, your most trusted brands will serve you well. But maybe, just maybe, one day you’ll find out that not even the best of brands have a perfect track record of quality offerings.
Analiese x
My Flatmate's Wardrobe 
Down with microbeads!