Sunday Riley is the new darling of the high-end beauty scene. Her products utilize what she describes as “green technology” which means botanicals and chemistry. This brand has been in every magazine and beauty blog! Usually when a brand is this big, I am curious to try their products because I want to figure out if they’re Press department is better than their product department.
I went to Barneys to play around with some products and came home with Sunday Riley Bionic, Good Genes, Juno, and Cashmere SPF. I tried Bionic ($225)first as that seems to be everyone’s favorite product, just ask Emily Weiss of Intothegloss.
Bionic purports to be a cutting-edge, stimulating product that covers all causes in aging. The ingredients certainly seem like a list of heavy hitters, including: peptides, retinol, EGCG, CoQ10, resveratrol, and their patented NV-5 Ageless Complex that fights cellular inflammation that causes aging.
The cream is orange and smells like orange-mango creamsicle/bubblegum. I know a lot of people love this scent but I think because I’ve been using very clean products, this scent really irritated me after a while. It is too synthetically fragrant. I also noticed that it leaves a dark yellow/orange stain when dried because a little bit of the product leaked onto my counter – so I think it is REALLY important to make sure the product is completely absorbed.
The lotion goes on very light and is easily massaged into skin. The cream just sinks into skin so that is heaven for someone like me who panics when products don’t absorb fast. This is terrific for my normal-combo-oily skin especially in the winter. I do notice however that it makes my complexion slightly oily a couple of hours out so I’m not sure if it means my skin is too stripped or if the cream is too oily – but I didn’t mind a little bit of greasiness.
After a week of use, I discovered that my skin appeared to be more radiant which the product claims to do, and I did not break out! However, I am sad to report it didn’t really do anything for fine lines, or making my skin feel nourished. I felt like I didn’t moisturize enough, but because of how oily it made my skin, I didn’t want to layer on something else since my skin is very blemish prone.
The material for this product says this will extend the lifespan of skin, but I honestly don’t know if I can believe that since my skin didn’t feel healthier (it only looked brighter).
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The ingredients list includes urea, silicones, PEG, and two types of parabens, which are very disappointing for a line that is marketed as 99% natural, using “green technology”. I think the urea and silicones were necessary to exfoliate and give the appearance of well-textured skin, but this doesn’t mean your actual skin is improved! In fact, looking through the ingredients list as a whole, I’ve found plenty of chemicals that aren’t good for skin. I love a clean skincare but I’m honestly not a crunchy-granola type, but the formulations here really aren’t that high-end or well thought out if they contain all these ‘shortcut’ ingredients that do more harm for the skin.
I really don’t like where this line is going especially because they do have relatively clean products like Juno, and the Ceramic Slip Cleanser; however I really don’t like when a company says one thing and does another so for now I will have to grade them harshly for having products that are much more marketing hype than truly effective.
Thank you for the thorough review!