I love Clarins. It's my favorite high-end skincare brand. I love their philosophy and most of their products. I swear by their Moisture-Rich Body Lotion, the HydraQuench cream-gel is awesome and that is just to name a few. I like that they have a line for younger skins. And most importantly I feel good buying from them. The sales lady where I shop is the sweetest ever! They always make me feel like they know what they are talking about and you can feel that their customers is important for them.

The HydraQuench line is designed to cater to the needs of dehydrated skin, what I love about it is the fact that they have 5 different face creams (or gel, what I mean here is that they have 5 products that you use at the last step of the skincare routine) to cater to different skin types: dry, oily, normal, combination (and that is not THAT common, I have a normal skin but very dehydrated and I feel that most of the time when a brand has a product to cater to dehydration it usually is for dry skin).

Today I'll be reviewing the serum from this line: the HydraQuench Intensive Serum Bi-Phase. I discovered it during one of my many trips to their counter. I was already familiar with the gel-cream from the line (I love it) and as I was entitled to a free gift so I chose the serum to go along with it.

It comes in a 30ml (1Fl.Oz) glass bottle that I think looks very classy with a pump. The product as the name would suggest has two phases, the first one looks translucent and the bottom one is slightly blue-ish. You shake the bottle before use and you have a slightly blueishy white cloudy kind of liquid. To me it smells green, as in green vegetables maybe like brocoli. I'm not sure. Maybe that just smells like plants. Anyway it is rather light and does not linger. As I said one you pump it on your hand it is very liquid, like a mix between asian type of lotions and water and when you spread it it is very spread-able like an asian lotion would and at first when you apply it it does feel a little oily but the oilyness goes away very quickly.

Looking at the ingredients through CosDNA, only 1 ingredient score 2 both as acne and irritant (Tocopherol - that is one form of vitamine E, an antioxidant, that can be irritant when there is a lot of it, here it is 5th to last so quite beneficial). Otherwise I can see a lot of moisturizing and emollient ingredients which is a plus. For those of you for whom it is important there is frangrance in this one. There are 2 sunscreen ingredients in it, as it does not claim any SPF I don't really understand why they are here but anyway. Otherwise nothing strikes me too much about the ingredients list (as far as I can understand it, I'm not a chemist).

My thoughts on it:

I quite like this one. It is not too heavy and does not feel greasy on my skin, I'm not really sure about that point for oily skins though. And it does the job of hydrating my skin quite well, though I think it is another one of those hydrating serum that I feel works a lot better because I use the Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair under. So it is not the best I've seen but I am quite satisfied with it. If I had to compare it with the Caudalie Vinosource serum, I prefer the Caudalie one. Mostly that is because the Caudalie one feels fresh upon application. The Clarins serum smoothes my skin, make it feel soft and a little plump but does not give that fresh "ooh water on my face" kind of feeling.

And that is about everything that I have to say about it, this serum has one job, it does it quite well and that's it.