Health & Science

Are There Actually Gemstones in This Makeup?

Testing cosmetics that claim to contain precious stones.

  • Posted: Tuesday, September 15, 2009 7:30am
  • By Laura Moser

Elizabeth Taylor was ahead of her time when she launched the White Diamonds fragrance line in 1991. Over the last year, the U.S. cosmetics market has exploded with products that contain, or claim to contain, high-priced semiprecious gemstones. Wearing bling on your face seems to be the recession equivalent of wearing it on your fingers: You can’t buy the $400 pendant, but you can still splurge on the $40 powder compact.

Nowhere is this trend so obvious as in the mineral makeup market. Prescriptives’ All Skins Mineral Makeup showcases jewels-in-the-rough on its web site, where interested consumers can learn about the line’s groundbreaking technology for R.E.C., or Radiance Emitting Crystals (boldface not mine)—“a unique complex of amethyst, rose quartz and calcite. R.E.C. helps absorb light and give skin extra radiance and luminosity.”

Laura Mercier’s mineral cheek and eye powders are allegedly enhanced with a similarly miraculous-sounding Gem Stone Complex, featuring “precious gems such as: diamond, ruby, emerald, topaz, jade, rose quartz, and moonstone.” And La Mer’s new sunscreen lotion is said to contain tourmaline and malachite that “absorb light energy, transforming it into beneficial green light to enhance anti-oxidant activity.”

Even lower-end products—a Physicians Formula bronzer (sapphire/tourmaline/citrine), a Sally Hansen hand lotion (diamond/pearl/opal), a Charles Worthington shampoo (pearl), a Borghese nail polish (aquamarine/tourmaline/citrine), and a Nivea lotion (“diamond powder”)—lay claim to semiprecious ingredients. But is it really plausible that a $7 lotion contains diamonds, in however residual a form?

THE TESTING

DoubleX decided to put two of these products to the test. We didn’t ask whether the presence of gemstones actually improves the performance of cosmetics. We just wanted to know whether these products really have the semiprecious ingredients they say they have. So we sent samples of two mineral-makeup powders—Lancôme’s Ageless Minerale with White Sapphire Complex ($40) and Christian Dior’s Diorskin Nude Natural Glow Fresh Powder Makeup ($45), both touted in a recent report in Elle—to the Asbestos Tem Laboratories in Berkeley, Calif.

The lab first looked at the samples under a polarized light microscope. But because the “cosmetic material was so finely ground,” said Mark Valentini, the director of the Analytical Sciences lab, who commissioned the tests, “it was impossible to make out clear crystalline structures” with the microscope. For more definitive results, the lab examined the samples using powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), an extremely powerful mineral analysis tool.

Sample 1: Lancôme Ageless Minerale with White Sapphire Complex

Want to look ageless? Just spread some of this sapphire powder on your face. The Lancôme innovation: skin-renewing White Sapphire Complex helps fight visible signs of aging. Skin looks brighter, revived, and feels softer for hours. In fine print, Lancôme specifies the contents of this time-defying White Sapphire Complex: aloe, Vitamin E, mica, alumina, and bismuth oxychloride.

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