Review: AmorePacific Time Response Intensive Body Renewal Creme

AmorePacific Time Response Intensive Body Renewal Creme isn't available as a stand-alone item—not even from the Amore Pacific website. I got it as part of a three-piece set available at Nordstrom. The kit includes a tube of the hand creme (SRP $90/3 tubes), a full-sized jar of Time Response Skin Renewal Creme (SRP $450), and a 3.4 oz pot of the Time Response Intensive Body Renewal Creme.

Because I don't know how much the body creme would sell for (but assume that it would be for more than $5.00) this kit could be viewed as a "bargain." If you're Marie Antoinette.
Anyhow. This is how Nordstrom describes the body creme:

- Time Response Intensive Body Renewal Creme (3.4 oz.): a creme with long-lasting moisturizing technology that allows the rich formula to absorb easily into skin, creating a layered nutritive barrier and working against skin moisture evaporation.

This kind of meaningless blather drives me crazy.

What does it mean?

 

Let me attempt to translate.

Long-lasting moisturizing technology translates to "includes an occlusive barrier to lock moisture into the skin." The same can be said for drugstore body lotions like Nivea, Vaseline Intensive Care, and Jergens.

Rich formula translates to "a cream with lots of emollients," meaning any cream with lots of oil in it. Which is, amazingly enough, true of almost every creme out there.

Layered nutritive barrier translates to "a combination of at least two emollients" meaning, again, basically any creme.

Working against skin moisture evaporation translates to "a creme with an occlusive barrier to lock moisture in," which again, is pretty much any creme out there.

Poppy, please explain the word salad

Whether it's a $5.00 bottle of Nivea or a $200 jar of Crème de la Mer, basically, all moisturizers have some variety of the following kinds of ingredients:

1. Water to provide the moisture
2. Humectants to attract moisture to the skin and plump it
3. Emollients to sink quickly into the skin and repair it
4. Occlusives--heavier oils and/or waxes to seal moisture into the skin

In inexpensive moisturizers, the combination might be as simple as water, glycerin, dimethicone, and petrolatum. In expensive moisturizers, the combination might be aqueous solution of green tea, hylaluronic acid, organic grape seed oil, and beeswax. Of course, the more expensive a creme is, the more of these ingredients will be included. Often there will be several emollients and humectants, and they will have skin-loving properties. Or there will be ingredients that serve several purposes. Glycolic acid, for example, helps to exfoliate the skin, but it's also a humectant.

Because of this, saying that all moisturizers use the same building blocks is like saying that Versailles and a log cabin are both houses. Yes, they are, but only a simpleton would claim that they're exactly the same. I'm in no way saying that AmorePacific's body creme isn't any better than a bottle of Jergen's lotion. I leave that kind of thing to the reviewers at Paula Begoun's site.

Personally, I enjoy the seductive packaging, glamorous advertisements, and the aura of magic that is part and parcel of high-end cosmetics. But it's also about how the stuff functions. If a product works beautifully and feels and smells sublime, great. It's a different matter when a product makes a lot of vague-sounding claims about its cornucopia of exotic ingredients, but doesn't work.

And the question is, could this creme possibly be worth the tens, if not hundreds of dollars it would cost, should I actually feel compelled to pay retail? In short,

Is using this body creme like massaging yourself with unicorn stem cells?

 

Unfortunately, no, it's not. 

I wasted a few minutes looking for the original packaging so I could read the ingredient list, but I couldn't find it. The only ingredient list I could find for this line was for the face creme. It's as long as my arm. I'll spare you.

Suffice to say that Amore Pacific cremes contain a lot of botanicals, both watery extracts and oils. Instead of basing their cremes on water, they use green tea, and instead of loading the creme with inexpensive petroleum derivatives, they use a veritable garden of plant oils and extracts. Their signature ingredient is green tea stem cells, and no, I don't know what they're supposed to do. I believe they're also fermented. Or something. Of course they are.

TL;DR

AmorePacific Time Response Intensive Body Renewal Creme is an OK body creme. It has a luxurious feel—it's very silky, and glides over the skin. A little goes a long way.

Unfortunately, it smells so strongly of green tea that I could smell it through my perfume.

Worst of all, it wasn't moisturizing enough for my dry skin. It was lovely to apply, and sunk right in, but four or five hours later, I could feel myself starting to become parched.

Apparently, I'm just a cheap broad, and do better with less elegant, but heavier cremes.