Here at T&C, we pride ourselves on our discerning eye for quality. With Tried & True, our editors will give you an inside look at the pieces they simply cannot live without.
There’s no getting around this: if you read what follows, you may be persuaded to buy an $800 face serum. Please know I am aware that you may have emitted a small gasp at that price tag—I certainly did. I should also state that I am a firm believer that efficient skincare products can be found at virtually every price point; I am not someone who is convinced that the more you spend, the better something will work. But then, there’s this. The new Dior Prestige Le Nectar Premier—for me, at least—is a miracle worker.
I was skeptical at first. In my years as a beauty editor, I have been confronted with more ridiculous claims about what various lotions and potions can do for skin than I can count. If all of them could replenish, restructure, plump and renew our faces as well as they promise, dermatologists and cosmetic surgeons would be out of work. We would all walk the earth with eternally perfect skin, having put in little more effort than a dab of nightly moisturizer. Dior’s claims for Prestige Le Nectar Premier? Brace yourselves. “After one month of use,” Dior’s statement reads, “the effects of the previous nine years on structural face wrinkles seem erased.” Nine years! Poof! And not only that, a single month’s use—so it says—will also take seven years off wrinkles caused by facial expressions, and four years off age-related dullness and discoloration. A lot of Benjamin Button jokes have been made in the beauty industry, but… really?
The science, in a nutshell, is sound. Dior researchers (in partnership with Sorbonne University) identified a key aging trigger, glyoxal, which is a stress factor present in skin that causes the onset of cell senescence—when aging cells lose their ability to send and receive biological messages they need to properly function, and instead begin to blunder around causing damage to other cells. If glyoxal is blocked or inactivated, collagen and elastin become more robust, and skin grows smoother and more radiant. Dior found that a molecular complex extracted from rose buds—specifically from the extra-resilient Rose de Granville, which Dior harvests in Normandy—can indeed do exactly that, stopping so-called ‘age-signals’ from being sent in the first place.
This sounds like a fairytale. Rosebuds, which can be gathered for only one hour at the exact beginning of spring to ensure their full potency, harbor the ability to not only halt aging in its tracks, but actually reverse it? I know what you’re thinking. I thought it too. Pull the other one. But here’s what I can tell you: Prestige Le Nectar Premier has changed my skin.
I do not, to be clear, look nine years younger. Though I may actually look four years more radiant. Honestly, even after using the serum for a couple of weeks, I could see a difference. My skin was more even-toned, more glowing, and seemingly able to retain hydration more efficiently (especially in the winter, I tend to have the skin of a desert-dweller, no matter how much moisturizer I apply). After two months, the improvement continues—I see less softening in the jowls, fewer lines under my eyes when I smile. Prestige Le Nectar Premier is also a pleasure to apply: it is silky, lightweight, and absorbs into skin immediately and with no residue. It feels as expensive as it should. And while some people might be put off by its fragrance—unmistakable eau de rose—I find it quite lovely, and the more I use it, comforting.
In short, I love this serum. My wallet may not. But some investment purchases are just undeniably worth it, and this is one of them.