#30 CLARINS (UK) LTD.

Just a couple of weeks off of our adventures with Veuve Clicquot, another Frenchie joins the list of royal warrant holders: Clarins Ltd has held a Royal Warrant from Her Majesty the Queen since 2007 as “Manufacturers of Skin Care and Cosmetics.”

This past week my friend Jeannette and I made our way through the tangle of cosmetics counters at the State Street Macy’s in Chicago to visit the Clarins counter. We were in search of Clarins hand and nail treatment cream because I’d read that it is so popular with the Queen she sometimes sends her ladies-in-waiting out for emergency supplies of it. Under the Clarins banner, we were greeted by an insanely knowledgeable woman who was happy to talk about the company.

 Jeannette and I heard the usual sales spiel you might hear at a cosmetics/skin care counter in a department store: Our product is better than all the rest; these are the awards we’ve won recently; this product here is our bestseller—other women are buying it in droves and you should too; some of this stuff might seem expensive to you now, but in the future you’ll be glad you’ve been using it. She surprised us by adding that selling expensive cosmetics isn’t important to Clarins and that we could buy those anywhere—even at a drug store. If we're on a budget, we should focus on skin care and not cosmetics. We also liked that Clarins is plant-based and not tested on animals.

Next she gave us a miniscule sample of Clarins double serum, which (at $85 for a bottle) is expensive but excellent. Jeannette and I both bought $30 tubes of the hand and nail treatment cream.

 

 

The Clarins representative was a fountain of information about skincare, but I stopped her dead in her tracks when I mentioned that Clarins has a royal warrant from the Queen, which is essentially a royal seal of approval, and that I write a blog about such products.

She sort of took me in for a second before responding haltingly: “I didn’t know that. The royal family is, you know, definitely way up here (she held her hand above her head) when it comes to endorsements and recommendations and so on, but what we measure our products by are things like magazines.” She paused to show us a binder on the counter that contained several laminated articles from fashion magazines about Clarins’ double serum. “This is where we look for approval. Places like Allure and Elle and Vogue.”

Translation: Queen Elizabeth’s recommendation isn’t selling our products, honey.

Point taken, but the Queen is still purchasing Clarins in bulk. In addition to the hand and nail cream, every guest who stays at Buckingham Palace has Clarins toiletries and skin care products placed in their rooms.

Of course, not every guest to the palace is an invited one. In what was deemed a hugely embarrassing breach of palace security, 31-year-old Michael Fagan broke into the Queen’s bedroom at Buckingham Palace in July 1982. The Queen was asleep when a barefoot Fagan (he later admitted he’d lost his shoes on the roof after shimmying up a palace wall) opened the curtains to her bed to peak in at her. The startled Monarch talked calmly with Fagan for a full 10 minutes while she waited for her security to discover his presence. Finally, it was a footman who rescued her. Fagan was later admitted to a mental institution.

While the verdict on Fagan was pretty clear, I’m not sure I’ve reached my own about Clarins hand and nail cream. It’s so expensive that I’m rationing it and probably not using enough of it…but I don’t notice it doing much for my hands. Over time it promises to eliminate age spots, but I don’t have any now. It’s also supposed to be good for my cuticles but, as I type this, I spot a hangnail on my pinkie.

Where to Buy: Visit the store finder on Clarins’ website.

Of note: while Fagan probably never got any complimentary bath products from the palace, he claims he did get his shoes back. You can read the full version of a somewhat incredible interview he gave last year here.