OUR TOP SKINCARE PICKS
| Rank | Brand | Link | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Carrot & Stick | Review | |||||
| 2 | Formulyst | Review | |||||
| 3 | Skinceuticals | Review | |||||
| - | City Beauty |
City Beauty was launched in 2002 by Victoria Renee after years of searching for a product to improve her thin lips. She wasn’t able to find a product that worked for her, so she set out to make her own. The result was City Lips, a lip gloss that instantly plumps the lips while also providing long term benefits.
One product turned into an entire range of beauty products, from mascara to serums to eye creams and more. City Beauty products primarily target skin aging concerns — such as fine lines, wrinkles, and discoloration — but the collection includes products for all skin types and ages. City Lips remains one of the brand’s most popular products.
Our City Beauty review will give you all the details on the brand’s best selling products. We’ll discuss the key ingredients in City Beauty products, including how they work and whether or not there’s any research to back up these ingredients. We’ll also share some City Beauty reviews so that you can get a better idea of what customers really think of these products.
What Are The Top 10 Best City Beauty Products?
City Beauty offers a range of products that include lip care, eye care, body care, and facial products. Here’s a breakdown of the top 10 best selling City Beauty products.
City Lips
City Lips is not your average lip gloss. Upon application, you’ll notice a slight tingling followed by a subtle plumping effect after a few minutes. Notice that we used the word ‘subtle’. Sure, this is a plumping lip gloss, but don’t expect to have lips like Kylie Jenner after using it.
What’s great about City Lips is that it not only improves the look of your lips while you’re wearing it, but the formula also contains ingredients that provide long term benefits, such as hyaluronic acid and oligopeptides. City Lips is available in high-shine clear and 13 different shades — ranging from a sheer pink to a deep red — so there’s no doubt you’ll be able to find a color that’s perfect for you.
City Lips Matte
If you aren’t into high-shine lip gloss, then City Lips Matte is for you. This innovative matte formula offers the same lip-rejuvenating benefits of classic City Lips, in a velvet-smooth matte finish. You’ll find the same key ingredients in this formula — hyaluronic acid, oligopeptides, and jojoba oil — that help to improve the hydration of your lips while smoothing out lines and wrinkles. However, City Lips Matte is only available in 3 colors: blush rose, pink taupe, and rosy mauve.
City Beauty Sculpting Cream
After City Lips, this brand’s next best selling product is the City Beauty Sculpting Cream. This lightweight, silky cream is said to help skin look firmer, tighter, and more lifted by nourishing it with essential building blocks that give skin a taut, springy feel. So what exactly are those “essential building blocks”? In this case, the brand is referring to the peptides in this formula. Peptides are the building blocks of proteins, and proteins — like collagen and elastin — are important components of your skin that keep it firm and youthful.
ALTERNATIVES: Carrot & Stick The Moisturizer. It’s overflowing with potent plant proteins, vitamins, peptides and amino-collagen.
City Beauty Illuminating Dark Spot Corrector
If you’re struggling with hyperpigmentation, you’ve probably tried your fair share of dark spot correctors. So is the City Beauty Illuminating Dark Spot Corrector really any different than the others on the market? Yes and no. After evaluating the formula, we noticed that this serum contains some pretty standard ingredients that you’ll find in many dark spot correctors, such as alpha arbutin and resveratrol.
The major problem with the City Beauty Illuminating Dark Spot Corrector is that it contains a high concentration of denatured alcohol — it’s the fourth highest concentration ingredient! While denatured alcohol gives products a weightless feel and provides a temporary tightening effect, this ingredient is not doing your skin any good. Research shows that topical application of alcohol-based products can lead to skin dryness, irritation, and even disruption of the skin barrier. For this reason, we can’t recommend the City Beauty Dark Spot Corrector. But don’t worry, we’ve rounded up a list of the best dark spot correctors that we do recommend.
City Beauty Intensive Night Serum
A night serum is a crucial step in any anti-aging skincare routine, and this City Beauty night serum could be a good addition to your routine if you have dry, thinning skin and you want to improve the look of lines and wrinkles. The formula contains a high concentration of goji berry extract and peptides that help skin look firmer and more elastic. You’ll also find epidermal growth factor in this night serum, which has been shown to support the renewal of collagen, elastin, and hyaluronic acid. The result? Smoother, younger-looking skin.
ALTERNATIVES: Carrot & Stick The Repair Serum. It contains 7 peptides for smoother, firmer looking skin.
City Beauty Line Smoothing HydroMask
This bio-cellulose sheet mask is primarily composed of humectants (butylene glycol, glycerin, trehalose, betaine, etc). The humectants in this mask act like a moisture magnet, drawing moisture into your skin to improve hydration. Humectants also provide temporary anti-aging effects because the extra hydration is extra volume, which effectively plumps out the skin and makes lines and wrinkles less noticeable. However, this effect is transient — as soon as the moisture content in skin decreases, lines and wrinkles will return to normal size.
But one ingredient in this mask that does provide long term benefits is niacinamide. According to the Journal of Clinical and Aesthetic Dermatology, niacinamide can repair the skin barrier and improve skin moisture, as well as reduce inflammation, blotchiness, hyperpigmentation, acne, and wrinkling. Niacinamide is truly a multi-tasking ingredient!
City Beauty InvisiCrepe Body Balm
With a thick (yet non-greasy) texture, this body balm could be a good option if you’re struggling with dry, crepey skin. The formula not only offers full hydration and support for your skin barrier, it also benefits your skin’s production of collagen and elastin to help smooth and plump the look of saggy, wrinkled skin. One of the key ingredients in this formula that supports the natural production of collagen is ribose. You’ll also find supporting key ingredients like niacinamide, barley extract, and probiotics in this formula.
City Beauty Youth Rejuvenating Cleanser
When choosing a daily facial cleanser, it’s important to look for one that is pH-balanced and gentle enough to cleanse without over stripping and over drying the skin. And this City Beauty cleanser is formulated to do exactly that. The surfactants in this formula help to clear away excess oil, makeup, and other impurities on the skin, while aloe vera leaf juice and sodium hyaluronate help to draw moisture back into your skin.
City Beauty Line Blurring Wrinkle Filler
If you’re going out for date night or have a big event to attend, you may be on the hunt for a product that can instantly smooth away lines and wrinkles so that your skin looks flawless for the night. The City Beauty Line Blurring Wrinkle Filler should be able to help thanks to the high concentrations of humectants and silicones. Like we mentioned above, humectants attract moisture, which subsequently “plumps” the skin. Silicones form a film on the surface of your skin, and this film helps to hide wrinkles. But keep in mind that these effects are temporary and will disappear once you wash the product off.
City Beauty UpLift Firming Serum
Another City Beauty product that is claimed to provide an almost instant effect is the UpLift Firming Serum. After applying this water-based facial serum, the brand states that you should notice fimer, smoother, and more lifted skin within 30 minutes. Like many of the City Beauty products, this serum contains plenty of ingredients that draw moisture into the skin to give it that plump look, such as glycerin, sodium hyaluronate, algae extract, and aloe vera. Plus, the inclusion of goji fruit extract helps to promote a tighter, more lifted appearance.
ALTERNATIVES: Carrot & Stick The Repair Serum. It contains 7 peptides for smoother, firmer looking skin.
What Are The Key Ingredients in City Beauty Products?
The City Beauty line is designed with skin-rejuvenating and collagen-supporting ingredients, such as:
- Sodium hyaluronate
- Oligopeptides
- Resveratrol
- Vitamin C
Let’s take a closer look at these key ingredients and how they may benefit your skin.
Sodium Hyaluronate
You’ll find sodium hyaluronate in many of the City Beauty products — including the popular City Lips and City Beauty Sculpting Cream. Sodium hyaluronate is the sodium salt form of hyaluronic acid, a glycosaminoglycan (GAG) that is able to hold more water than any other natural substance—up to 1,000 times its weight in water! This is why using products with either hyaluronic acid or sodium hyaluronate can help to improve skin hydration.
In addition to improving skin hydration, sodium hyaluronate can help to reduce signs of aging. According to the scholarly journal DermatoEndocrinology, the most dramatic histochemical change observed in aging skin is the marked disappearance of hyaluronic acid in the epidermis (the top layer of skin).
Therefore, the City Beauty products that contain sodium hyaluronate may help naturally reduce signs of aging by decreasing epidermal water loss associated with sun exposure, low humidity, and other external factors associated with skin dryness. The result is smoother, softer skin with decreased wrinkles and a more plump appearance.
Oligopeptides
Many City Beauty products contain oligopeptides as key ingredients. For example, City Lips contains palmitoyl oligopeptide, which works by stimulating collagen production in fibroblasts. More collagen equals plumper, more youthful looking lips.
On the City Lips sales page, the brand cites that one study performed specifically on women with thin, dry lips showed that oligopeptides decreased lip wrinkles by 29% and increased lip volume by up to 40% in just 28 days!
ALTERNATIVE: If you are concerned about aging skin and looking for professional grade products that are also clean, Carrot & Stick The Repair Serum. It contains a peptide complex to target multiple signs of aging.
Resveratrol
Resveratrol is one of the key antioxidants used in City Beauty products, such as the City Beauty Dark Spot Corrector. As an antioxidant, resveratrol helps to protect the skin against free radical damage. This is important because the harmful effects of free radicals occur as direct chemical alterations of the cellular DNA, the cell membrane, and cellular proteins, including collagen. Damaged collagen manifests as signs of premature skin aging, including wrinkles, lines, and sagging skin.
Vitamin C
Another antioxidant used in City Beauty products is vitamin C. Vitamin C not only helps to protect the skin from free radical damage, but also provides several additional benefits to the skin. For example, vitamin C stimulates the synthesis of new collagen in the skin. By increasing the amount of collagen in the skin, signs of aging will be diminished and the skin will appear more firm. Lastly, vitamin C is known to reduce the appearance of dark spots and improve uneven skin tone.
But our favorite Vitamin C serum is Carrot & Stick The Defence Serum. It contains 3 distinct types of Vitamin C that work together to help fight free radical damage. We recommend using it every morning.
How Much Do City Beauty Products Cost?
City Beauty is a luxury line and the products are priced accordingly, which is in line with department store brands. City Lips is $35, City Beauty Sculpting Cream is $67 for 1.69 fl oz, the Line Smoothing HydroMask is $60, and City Lash is $90 a tube. Under Eye Recovery Cream retails for $50 and the Line Blurring Wrinkle Filler is $79. Products are available for one time purchase or if customers sign up for auto shipments, they can receive discounts.
Where to Buy City Beauty Products?
City Beauty products are sold directly to consumers from the brand’s website (citybeauty.com).
What is The City Beauty Return Policy?
City Beauty has a 60-Day Money Back Guarantee that states, “We want you to love your purchase. That’s why every product is covered by our 60 Day Money Back Guarantee. Try it for 60 days and if you’re not completely satisfied, for any reason, send it back and we’ll refund the full amount of your purchase, minus shipping.”
Is City Beauty Cruelty Free?
Yes, City Beauty is cruelty free.
City Beauty Reviews
City Beauty reviews are mixed. On The Derm Review (below), one user commented on the fragrance: “I tried the The Multi-Action Sculpting Cream and my skin was irritated by it. I also could not handle the smell of the fragrance. I wondered if the ingredients of the fragrance were the irritant. Since they are not included in the labeling,, I contacted the co. via chat was told it is “synthetic rose powder.” Fragrance may include any number of the industry’s 3,100 stock chemicals (IFRA 2010), none of which is required to be listed on labels.”
And multiple reviews mentioned the wrinkle cream is caked, for example: “I bought your wrinkle cream that advertises to reduce wrinkles. It is very cakey. I can not wear it. It is very obvious how flakey it is, It does lighten wrinkles, but it is too cakey to wear in public. Very disappointed in product.”
Our Top Skincare Picks
| Rank | Brand | Link | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Carrot & Stick | Review | |||||
| 2 | Formulyst | Review | |||||
| 3 | Skinceuticals | Review | |||||
| - | City Beauty |
Our Verdict
Overall, City Beauty products are formulated well with a combination of innovative ingredients and tried-and-true skin care ingredients.
Pros
- Products contain evidence-based ingredients (sodium hyaluronate, vitamin C, humectants, etc)
- Many positive City Beauty reviews
Cons
- Some products contain synthetic fragrance ingredients
- Mid-range price point (e.g. City Beauty Sculpting Cream is $67 for 1.69 fl oz)
- Delicate ingredients will degrade over time in products that are packaged in jars
- Formulations have strong fragrance
What Are The Best Alternatives?
If you’re looking for skincare products to address the signs of aging, we recommend Carrot & Stick. Carrot & Stick maximizes the use of powerful ingredients and minimizes the use of superficial ones, resulting in advanced skincare solutions that help promote healthy, more youthful-looking skin. We recommend the Day & Night Routine.
Merida Original review: Dec 09, 2022.
after all the hype I’ve seen about City Beauty lip serum I decided to give it a try. it’s terrible and it doesn’t work. it’s extremely sticky when you put it on your lips and it does not plump them at all. total waste of money I’m glad they offer a full refund.