Tata Harper Purifying Cleanser

 

Tata Harper has been on a kick with releasing new products! When the Purifying Cleanser was announced, I immediately added it to my list of products to purchase. Her line already had two cleansers: Refreshing and Regenerating. I found both to be too waxy which led to build up in my pores that I never had with a cleanser before so when the Purifying Cleanser came out – I had high hopes for a slam dunk.

The Purifying Cleanser is targeted for those of us who have acne prone and oilier skin. I’ve seen on Periscope that Melissa, the owner of Citrine Beauty who describes her skin as on the drier side, only uses this cleanser as a once a week power clean.

I played with a tester in store at Neiman Marcus and immediately recalled the classic Tata Harper aroma that I love, although the herbal fragrance has a decided stronger citrus aroma here. I noticed that upon wetting, the cream-gel textured cleanser emulsified and washed off, which gave me high hopes that this would finally be the Tata Harper cleanser that would work for me so I immediately bought a bottle home.

Here’s all the information gleaned from the product description:

What it is:
A hydrating cleanser that combats the daily wear and tear of environmental exposure and pollution by effectively clearing pores of excess oil, dead skin, and buildup.

What it is formulated to do:
A powerfully purifying cocktail of sugars, broccoli extract, and fruit enzymes thoroughly cleanses the skin and refines the appearance of pores. While maintaining the skin’s moisture balance, an invigorating blend of essential oils helps flush away impurities for a deeply refreshed look and feel. This soap-free cleanser has a cooling effect on the skin and helps to combat the appearance of oiliness. When emulsified with cool water, foaming sugars create a micro foam that further detoxifies the skin.

The formulation is powered by 10 high-performance ingredients, including purple clay, which supports natural cell renewal and protects against absorption of impurities; sugar based surfactants, which provide topical cleansing without stripping the skin of hydration; broccoli extract and bioflavanoids, which provide a long-lasting cleansing effect and decrease visible shine on the skin’s surface; and essential oils from clove, fennel, and ginger, which help flush away surface impurities.

Ingredients
Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride, Helianthus annuus (Sunflower) Seed Oil, Capric/Caprylic/Triglycerides, Water, Glycerine, Propanediol, Glyceryl undecylenate, Aroma, Sucrose Stearate, Decyl Glucoside, Oryza sativa (Rice) Extract, Glyceryl Caprylate, Lactobacillus/Punica granatum Fruit Ferment Extract, Papain, Curcuma Zedoaria Root Oil, Magnesium Aluminum Silicate, Sucrose Palmitate, Zingiber Officinale Root Oil, Salix alba (Willow) Bark Extract, Eugenia Caryophyllus Flower Oil, Sucrose Laurate, Abies PectinateLeaf Oil, Foeniculum Vulgare Oil, Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Extracts, Kaolin, Bioflavanoids, Leuconostoc ferment filtrate, Montmorillonite, Mica, Brassica Oleracea Italica (Broccoli) Extract, Superoxide Dismutase, Soybean Peroxidase, Citral, Citronellol, Eugenol, Geraniol, Linalool, Limonene.

The keyword to note here is that despite being called the purifying cleanser, Tata Harper would still like it to be noted that this is a hydrating cleanser. There does appear to be quite a bit of an oil dominated base here that I didn’t fully realize until I read the ingredients list closely when I got home.

What all this means is that the cleanser kind of worked like a gel-to-oil cleanser for me. I was let down because I imagined a gel cleanser like Ren or Grown Alchemist (see Cleansing Game Changers), or the green gel cleansing champion Yuli Halcyon. It dispenses as a rather pleasant and rich gel which can be applied to dry or wet skin. Once it’s moved around, it breaks down into almost an oil texture. Now this doesn’t mean it’s a bad cleanser, but rather I just don’t see the point of adding this to two already very similar cleansers in the line, not to mention a nourishing oil cleanser released at the same time that is a straight forward oil cleanser.

I read that Caroline Hiron’s compared this to Sunday Riley’s Ceramic Slip which makes me think either we got completely different products or there’s a reformulation in one of the two products because the truth is that Sunday Riley’s Ceramic Slip was a strong, foaming cleanser that dried out my skin if I used it more than 3 times consecutively while Tata Harper’s Purifying Cleanser is what I have reluctantly relegated to a 1st cleanse. They’re both dispensed as gels that you can massage but the breakdown and reaction with water is completely different.

I think this is a decent product in the sense that it feels luxurious and pleasurable however I just don’t feel Tata Harper has truly provided a standalone cleanser separate from the Refreshing Cleanser and that the moniker of “purifying” is a misnomer for this product. In fact, after washing with this I never felt that my skin was clean so I reserve it for when its really dry and I don’t have a lot of makeup if I want to use it alone or most of the time I’ll use it as the first part of double cleansing.

For those with oily or acne prone skin I might recommend this in place of an oil or balm for the first cleanse but not as a solo cleanser. The price is $58 for 4.1 oz which is not too bad but you do need quite a bit of product for each use since the gel disperses into an oil. If used daily, I imagine a bottle lasting me between 30 and 50 days so in that sense, it may not be as economic. If you use the Refreshing Cleanser and just want it to be slightly better at washing (it’s also about $20 cheaper than the Refreshing Cleanser for the same amount) or if you like oil/balm cleansers but want them to actually rinse off cleanly – this might actually work out well for you.

Purchase from:
Neiman Marcus
Sephora

*Strangely this product is not available at time of writing from Tata Harper’s website.