Does expensive skincare really work? What your money actually buys

Caviar, platinum, fermented algae and rare oils, explained without the brochure.

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After I graduated I wanted to reward myself. Others booked a long trip; I bought a shelf full of luxury skincare, because expensive means better, or so I thought at the time. Three months later I could see no difference at all, and for the first time I turned the jar around.

What I read there was something quite different from what was written on the front.

One person, no comparison, no measurement: my reflection proves nothing about those products. But it was the reason I finally started reading what I should have read much earlier.

This article asks three questions. What is actually inside those jars, some of which cost more than a thousand euros? Do those special ingredients do what their names promise? And where does your money go, if it is not going into the contents?

Your skin is a sea wall, not a shop window

One image, and I will stay with it.

Think of your skin as a sea wall. The outer layer, the horny layer, is made of flat, dead cells stacked like small bricks. Between them sits a greasy mortar of ceramides, cholesterol and fatty acids. That mortar is the secret. It keeps the water in, and the soap, the dirt and the irritation out.

A sea wall does not need marble. It needs clay, sand and maintenance.

There is something else in that image that carries this whole article. A sea wall is built to keep things out. That is exactly what your skin does with everything you put on it. Anything large and water-loving barely gets through. Remember that, because in a moment we are going to talk about caviar and about fragments of fish DNA.

Where the image stops working: a sea wall cannot repair itself, your skin can.

Three jars, and what is really inside them

Why these brands in particular? Because together they tell exactly the stories that luxury skincare is sold with. La Mer sells the sea. La Prairie sells the rare: caviar, platinum and gold. Augustinus Bader sells the science, a patented complex with a name like a formula. Sisley joins us later, selling the plant.

Different stories, prices from two hundred to well over a thousand euros. And ingredient lists you are perfectly free to read.

La Mer, The Moisturizing Cream. At the top sits the algae extract on which the brand’s own ferment is built. But immediately behind it come mineral oil and petrolatum, in second and third place, followed by glycerin, isohexadecane, microcrystalline wax and lanolin alcohol.¹

Those are the cheapest and best-researched fatty layers in all of cosmetics. Exactly the same substances you find in a jar costing a few euros.

Augustinus Bader, The Rich Cream. At the top: water, a plant-based emollient, sunflower oil, squalane and glycerin. And Oligopeptide-177, the peptide the entire brand story rests on? It sits almost at the very bottom. Only five ingredients come after it.²

And then the detail that stayed with me longest. Augustinus Bader states explicitly that the product is made without petrolatum, paraffin and mineral oil.² At La Mer, those exact substances sit in second and third place.¹

Two brands, the same price bracket, opposite ideas about what luxury is. They cannot both be right.

La Prairie, Skin Caviar Absolute Filler. At the top: water, an emollient, glycerin, cupuaçu butter, squalane and jojoba esters. Caviar oil sits in twentieth place and caviar extract in twenty-first, on a list of more than seventy ingredients.³

But the most interesting part is in the asterisks. Five ingredients are marked as the brand’s Exclusive Cellular Complex, protected by a patent. Look up which five, and you find: glycoproteins, ginseng root extract, horsetail extract, yeast extract and a lactobacillus ferment.³

Put simply: yeast and lactic acid bacteria, ginseng, and a field weed that grows along every railway line.

That is not an attack, because such extracts genuinely can do something. It is simply not what the word Exclusive leads you to expect. And it is the very same family of yeasts and ferments you meet at La Mer, in Korean brands, and in a jar costing fifteen euros.

Right at the bottom of that list there is something else. Fragrance, followed by six scent compounds that must be declared separately in Europe because they are known contact allergens: linalool, citronellol, geraniol, alpha-isomethyl ionone, limonene and benzyl salicylate.³ Hold on to that; we will come back to it.

Now about that order, because it is less powerful than it looks. The list is ranked by weight: whatever is at the top is present in the largest amount. But as soon as an ingredient drops below 1%, the brand may choose the order itself.⁴

And in a cream costing hundreds of euros, almost everything that sounds beautiful sits below that 1%.

Put simply: the first five lines are the cream. The rest is the brochure.

Why they ferment the algae

This was the question I found most interesting, because the answer is not a simple “nonsense”.

Fermenting means letting bacteria or yeasts loose on a raw material and then waiting. Exactly as with sauerkraut, kefir or miso. I wrote about that earlier in The Living Kitchen, and the mechanism here is the same.

What happens to an alga. Seaweed is full of enormous sugar molecules and sturdy cell walls. Micro-organisms cut those into smaller pieces. Smaller pieces dissolve better, are easier to extract from the plant, and hold water better. Along the way new substances appear: small peptides, acids, breakdown products.

What does a brand want from that? Two things at once. Something technical: an extract that blends better and holds moisture better. And something that appears nowhere on the packaging: fermentation sounds good. It suggests the work has already been done for you, that the product is alive, that your skin can take it up just like that. It borrows credibility from food, where fermentation genuinely does something.

Does it work? In a laboratory study, fermented Laminaria japonica was compared with the unfermented version, on cultured human skin cells after UV damage. The fermented version scavenged more free radicals, dampened inflammatory messengers, and held moisture better.⁵

So fermentation is not an empty word. It changes an algae extract measurably.

And here comes the sentence this whole article turns on. That was a dish of cells. Not a face. A different algae species from La Mer’s. And not a product anyone sells.

Now set that beside another study. In Australia, 903 adults were randomly divided into groups. One group used broad-spectrum sunscreen every day, another only when they felt like it. After four and a half years the daily group showed no measurable increase in skin ageing, and ageing was 24% lower than in the group who decided for themselves.⁶

Cells in a dish against 903 people over four and a half years. That is not a small difference in evidence. That is a different universe.

And yet the cream with the algae story costs hundreds of euros, and the tube that actually demonstrated something costs a few tens of euros.

There is clinical research on a La Mer serum with a fermented algae extract, and it did show real improvement in hydration and barrier recovery. But what was tested was a complete serum, not the ferment on its own. And all the authors were employees or advisers of the corporation.⁷

One more misunderstanding, gently cleared up. Fermentation does not “activate” omega-3. Omega-3 is a fatty acid, and your skin barrier is not short of algal fatty acids. What omegas do and do not do is in The omega alphabet.

Caviar: rich on your plate, puzzling on your face

Caviar really is remarkable food. A fish egg has to build an entire animal on its own, so it is full of proteins, fats and vitamins, with a high proportion of omega-3 fatty acids in the form of phospholipids. That is not marketing, that is biology.

Now watch what happens when you spread that on your face.

First: the jar does not contain caviar, it contains caviar extract. Extracting means taking out a part and discarding the rest. What made the egg remarkable as a whole is not automatically what you are left with.

Second, and this is the sea wall from the beginning: proteins and phospholipids are large, water-loving molecules. Your horny layer is literally built to keep such molecules out. What your skin absorbs from a jar is something quite different from what your gut absorbs from a spoon.

Third: the research. For La Prairie’s caviar formulations I could find no public, independent study comparing them with a good affordable cream.

That same list also contains Sodium DNA and RNA. Those are the fragments of genetic material you meet elsewhere as PDRN or polynucleotides. A systematic review found nine studies with 219 patients in total, of low to moderate quality, and nearly all of them concerned injections in a clinic.⁸ What a needle does under your skin cannot be credited to a jar on your bedside table.

And the peptides Augustinus Bader builds on? A 2026 meta-analysis brought together nineteen randomised trials with 1,341 participants. Of those participants, 1,236 took a supplement and 105 used a cream. The researchers write themselves that the wrinkle effect was carried by the oral peptides, while the topical peptides showed a small, non-significant effect.⁹

So more than 92% of the people in that evidence swallowed their peptides rather than applying them.

Expensive oil, cheap oil: is there a difference?

And then there is a fourth route, much older than the other three. Sisley was founded in 1976 by Hubert d’Ornano, son of one of the founders of Lancôme, and it is still a family business. The brand built its entire identity on what it calls phytocosmetology: plant extracts and essential oils, at a time when almost nobody in Europe was working that way.¹⁰ Augustinus Bader takes the same route, with sunflower, argan, avocado and evening primrose oil high on its list.²

The honest question is this: is an oil in a jar costing three hundred euros different from the same oil costing ten euros at the chemist?

What does not differ: the plant. Argan oil from a luxury jar and argan oil from a chemist’s bottle come from the same tree. The plant determines the fatty acid profile, not the price.

And that profile does matter. In a review in the American Journal of Clinical Dermatology, dermatologists summarised the evidence on plant oils. Their core point: oils with a high ratio of linoleic acid to oleic acid support skin-barrier repair better, while oils high in oleic acid may actually disrupt that barrier.¹¹

Put simply. Sunflower oil is rich in linoleic acid. Olive oil is rich in oleic acid. The fact that one is considered healthier on your plate does not mean it is better on your face. That appears on no packaging anywhere.

What can genuinely differ between an expensive and a cheap oil:

How it was pressed. That same review names cold pressing as the preferred method, because heat and chemical processing destroy valuable lipids and create irritating by-products.¹¹ That is a real quality difference. Except that “cold pressed” appears just as often on a ten-euro bottle as on a three-hundred-euro jar.

How fresh it is. Plant oils oxidise. An oxidised oil does not only smell different, it can irritate the skin instead of soothing it. An airless pump and dark glass protect against that.

And a correction belongs here straight away, to something many people assume, myself included: an airless pump is not a luxury invention. You can buy one at the chemist just as easily. Good packaging is a matter of choosing, not of paying.

And what an oil is not, in any case. The mortar between your skin cells consists of ceramides, cholesterol and free fatty acids in a particular ratio. A plant oil is not that mixture. It lays a film on top and slows water loss. That is useful, and it is exactly what petrolatum does too.

And now those six fragrance compounds I asked you to remember. Essential oils and fragrance are the ingredient group where contact allergy is most common. That is why Europe requires them to be listed separately. It does not make a plant-rich brand bad. It means that precisely there, the ingredient list is most worth reading, especially if your skin reacts easily. Price will not protect you: in a study of 174 best-selling moisturisers, products without known contact allergens were no more expensive than products with them.¹²

Tested, approved, or simply asked?

This is where the confusion starts, and where the gain is greatest.

In Europe, brands may not claim just anything. A regulation lays down six criteria, including truthfulness and evidential support.¹³ A European guidance document explains what the common words mean.¹⁴ Three of them look alike and differ enormously.

“Dermatologically tested.” This means something concrete: the product was tested on people, under the supervision of a dermatologist. A survey of users explicitly does not suffice. What it does not tell you: with how many people, for how long, against what comparison, and how large the difference was.

“Dermatologically approved.” This sounds stronger. There is a verdict in it, a stamp, an authority. And that is exactly where the problem lies: in the European guidance I found no definition of “approved”, only of “tested”. There is no approving body, no standard, no threshold anyone has to meet.

That is the reversal I had not expected myself. The word that sounds weakest, “tested”, is the only one with an agreed meaning. The word that sounds strongest, “approved”, is the more non-committal of the two.

And then the third, which almost nobody knows. That same document accepts the consumer perception test as valid support. That is a survey. People use a product and say what they think of it.

Augustinus Bader shows this neatly, in small print beneath its own results: the clinical figures come from a four-week test with thirty participants, the user results from a twelve-week perception study with 107 participants.²

So when you read that a high percentage say their skin looks years younger, that is not a measurement of skin. It is a measurement of opinions. And with a product you chose yourself, paid for yourself and applied with expectation, your opinion is not a neutral yardstick.

This is permitted, it is legitimate, and the brand does not hide it. I am only asking you to read it.

So the question is never “has it been tested?”, but: tested for what, in whom, against what comparison, and how large was the difference?

One corporation, two price tags

This was the most clarifying part of my whole search, and it appears in no brochure.

The company that sells La Mer¹⁵ has, since 31 May 2024, also been the full owner of DECIEM, the company behind The Ordinary.¹⁶ That is the brand that became known for serums costing a few euros and for simply calling ingredients by their names.

The company that sells La Prairie¹⁷ is the company behind NIVEA.

One corporation. A cream costing hundreds of euros and a cream costing a few. The same research organisation, the same purchasing power, the same formulation knowledge.

What I am not claiming here, because I cannot prove it: that those two creams come off the same production line. Shared ownership does not make formulations identical.

But one sentence from their own annual report does make something clear. In it, The Estée Lauder Companies describes how brands differentiate themselves from one another: by quality, performance, a particular lifestyle, where they are sold, and price point.¹⁸

Read that again. The price point does not appear there as a consequence of quality. It appears as an instrument. That is not a conspiracy theory of mine, that is corporate strategy, written down for shareholders.

To stay fair: not every expensive brand belongs to a corporation. Augustinus Bader is operated through an independent British company,¹⁹ and Sisley is still family-owned.¹⁰ Independence proves nothing about efficacy, but it is a difference I do not want to leave unsaid.

And then the question almost nobody asks: who paid for the research? In the La Mer study, all authors were employees or advisers of the corporation.⁷ In a study of a platinum mask, all but one author were connected to the manufacturer, and besides platinum the mask also contained four well-known soothing ingredients, so the effect of platinum alone cannot be separated out.²⁰

Funded research is not automatically untrue. It is stated plainly for anyone who reads on. It is simply not independent, and that means two things: the funder usually determines what is measured and against what, and nobody is obliged to publish a disappointing outcome.

The only comparison that counts

Now put it all side by side.

For caviar, platinum, gold and fermented kelp on your face: no public, independent research showing that they work better than a good affordable cream.

And against that, those 903 people, four and a half years, randomly assigned, with a measurable difference in skin ageing.⁶

One tube. Four years. For the brands in this article, there is no public research that comes anywhere close.

That is the whole story in one sentence: the best-proven product in your bathroom is almost always the cheapest one.

The rest is short, and that is precisely the point.

• Cleanse gently, when it is needed. Every time you strip the skin hard, you take mortar out of the wall.
• Choose a moisturiser on what is in it, not on what is written on it. Glycerin attracts water. Ceramides belong in that mortar naturally. Petrolatum and dimethicone slow water loss.
• If you want to add one active ingredient, retinoids are among the better-researched options. In a double-blind study, fine wrinkling improved in 50% of participants on the retinol side, against 24% on the side with only the base cream.²¹ They can irritate, they are not for everyone, and they are advised against during pregnancy.
• Sleep. Good sleepers had lower scores for skin ageing and recovered 30% better after barrier damage.²²
• Do not smoke. Among 186 pairs of identical twins, people with exactly the same DNA, the one who had smoked longer looked older.²³

And if you are standing at the counter anyway, five questions I should have asked myself back then. What is my concrete skin goal? Is there evidence for this product, or only for a single ingredient? Was there a control group? Are the concentrations and the results public? And am I buying an effect, or am I buying a feeling?

To that last question, every answer is a good one. If you want a beautiful jar because of the texture, the scent and a moment that is yours alone, please do. Just buy it as luxury, with your eyes open. Not as medicine.

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This article provides general information and is not medical advice. If you have questions about your own skin, please discuss them with your GP or a treating specialist. Persistent redness, itching, pain or flaking should be assessed, not covered with more and more cosmetics.

I never got that money back. But I did get something else: I now know that the most expensive jar in my cupboard was the least proven product I have ever bought, and that the cheapest tube is the best proven product I use today.

That is not thrift. That is the world turned upside down, and it is written plainly on the back of the bottle.

Which jar in your bathroom did you buy for the story on the front? And when did you last read the back?

Related reading

• Collagen: what does the science really say?
• E numbers: what that small code on your label really tells you
• The omega alphabet: what 3, 6, 7 and 9 actually do

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Sources

The numbers in the text refer to this list.

1. La Mer. (n.d.). The Moisturizing Cream: Ingredients [Product page]. Douglas. Retrieved 7 August 2026, from https://www.douglas.nl/nl/p/3000055335
2. Augustinus Bader. (n.d.). The Rich Cream [Product page]. Retrieved 7 August 2026, from https://augustinusbader.com/eu/en/the-rich-cream
3. La Prairie. (n.d.). Skin Caviar Absolute Filler: Ingredients [Product page]. Douglas. Retrieved 7 August 2026, from https://www.douglas.nl/nl/p/5009584000
4. European Commission. (2009). Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 November 2009 on cosmetic products (recast). EUR-Lex. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2009/1223/oj
5. Sun, Q., Fang, J., Wang, Z., Song, Z., Geng, J., Wang, D., Wang, C., & Li, M. (2022). Two Laminaria japonica fermentation broths alleviate oxidative stress and inflammatory response caused by UVB damage: Photoprotective and reparative effects. Marine Drugs, 20(10), Article 650. https://doi.org/10.3390/md20100650
6. Hughes, M. C. B., Williams, G. M., Baker, P., & Green, A. C. (2013). Sunscreen and prevention of skin aging: A randomized trial. Annals of Internal Medicine, 158(11), 781–790. https://doi.org/10.7326/0003-4819-158-11-201306040-00002
7. Santhanam, U., Emmetsberger, J., Nole, G., Ortiz, A., Gold, M., & Saliou, C. (2025). A topical formulation containing Macrocystis pyrifera ferment for managing barrier damage after mild-moderate skin disruption from cosmetic dermatologic procedures. The Journal of Clinical and Aesthetic Dermatology, 18(1), 40–45. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39830829/
8. Lampridou, S., Bassett, S., Cavallini, M., & Christopoulos, G. (2025). The effectiveness of polynucleotides in esthetic medicine: A systematic review. Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology, 24(2), Article e16721. https://doi.org/10.1111/jocd.16721
9. Nukaly, H. Y., Halawani, I. R., Irtaza, H. M., Alturkistani, T., Serafi, M. R., Alhawsawi, W., Bogari, H. O., Ahmed, F. A., Alhaddad, Y., Shadid, A., Alharithy, R., & Jfri, A. (2026). Oral and topical peptides for skin aging: Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Frontiers in Medicine, 13, Article 1618306. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmed.2026.1618306
10. Sisley Paris. (n.d.). The brand. Retrieved 7 August 2026, from https://www.sisley-paris.com/en-US/the-brand/
11. Vaughn, A. R., Clark, A. K., Sivamani, R. K., & Shi, V. Y. (2018). Natural oils for skin-barrier repair: Ancient compounds now backed by modern science. American Journal of Clinical Dermatology, 19(1), 103–117. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40257-017-0301-1
12. Xu, S., Kwa, M., Lohman, M. E., Evers-Meltzer, R., & Silverberg, J. I. (2017). Consumer preferences, product characteristics, and potentially allergenic ingredients in best-selling moisturizers. JAMA Dermatology, 153(11), 1099–1105. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamadermatol.2017.3046
13. European Commission. (2013). Commission Regulation (EU) No 655/2013 of 10 July 2013 laying down common criteria for the justification of claims used in relation to cosmetic products. EUR-Lex. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2013/655/oj
14. Sub-Working Group on Claims. (2017). Technical document on cosmetic claims (version of 3 July 2017). European Commission. https://ec.europa.eu/docsroom/documents/24847
15. The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. (n.d.). La Mer. Retrieved 7 August 2026, from https://www.elcompanies.com/en/our-brands/la-mer
16. The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. (2024, June 3). The Estée Lauder Companies completes acquisition of DECIEM [Press release]. https://www.elcompanies.com/en/news-and-media/newsroom/press-releases/2024/06-03-2024-114511824
17. Beiersdorf AG. (n.d.). La Prairie. Retrieved 7 August 2026, from https://www.beiersdorf.com/brands/la-prairie
18. The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. (2025). Annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2025. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1001250/000100125025000099/el-20250630.htm
19. ASC Regenity Limited. (n.d.). Company overview and persons with significant control (Company number 10523270). Companies House. Retrieved 7 August 2026, from https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/10523270
20. Du, Z., Ren, L., Liang, H., Lu, Y., Zhang, D., Li, Z., Wang, S., Zhang, K., Wu, Y., Li, D., Ye, L., & Jiang, N. (2025). A split-face randomized study on the efficacy of a platinum-liposome-based facial mask containing soothing ingredients for post-photorejuvenation skin recovery. Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology, 24(9), Article e70452. https://doi.org/10.1111/jocd.70452
21. Kikuchi, K., Suetake, T., Kumasaka, N., & Tagami, H. (2009). Improvement of photoaged facial skin in middle-aged Japanese females by topical retinol (vitamin A alcohol): A vehicle-controlled, double-blind study. Journal of Dermatological Treatment, 20(5), 276–281. https://doi.org/10.1080/09546630902973987
22. Oyetakin-White, P., Suggs, A., Koo, B., Matsui, M. S., Yarosh, D., Cooper, K. D., & Baron, E. D. (2015). Does poor sleep quality affect skin ageing? Clinical and Experimental Dermatology, 40(1), 17–22. https://doi.org/10.1111/ced.12455
23. Guyuron, B., Rowe, D. J., Weinfeld, A. B., Eshraghi, Y., Fathi, A., & Iamphongsai, S. (2009). Factors contributing to the facial aging of identical twins. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, 123(4), 1321–1331. https://doi.org/10.1097/PRS.0b013e31819c4d42

Image credit: the schematic cross-section of the epidermis and dermis comes from the National Cancer Institute, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain). Image content unchanged, converted to WebP only.

Sources on this site are cited in APA style, with a DOI wherever one exists. Why I made that choice →