Some beauty companies are built around one key ingredient – sea kelp is integral to Crème de la Mer, while organic juice is the basis of Juice Beauty. Other companies are built around a need, where the founders either saw a gap in the market or wanted to solve a personal skin issue, such as psoriasis or rosacea, which were the driving force behind Sea Calm Skin and IT cosmetics. For City Beauty, the inspiration for the company came from the founder’s quest to find a product that would make her lips look fuller. One product turned into an entire skincare line. In this review, we’ll discuss the brand’s best selling products, key ingredients, City Beauty reviews from real customers, and more.
The Story Behind City Beauty
City Beauty was launched in 2002 by Victoria Renee. Renee was frustrated in her search to find a product for 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 plumping gloss that also hydrates the lips. The product received a wave of editorial coverage, including write ups in Refinery29, Good Housekeeping, and Total Beauty. From there, the company grew to include a lash rebuilding product as well as a full line of skin care products. City Beauty mainly focuses on anti-aging products, but the collection includes products for all skin types and ages. City Lips remains one of its most popular products.
What is The Concept Behind City Beauty?
According to City Beauty, the company’s mission is “functional beauty,” meaning all of the City Beauty products are designed to not only make you look beautiful while you wear them, but to provide deeper benefits. For example, each product is formulated to target specific concerns — whether it’s to volumize thinning lips, brighten dark spots, improve the appearance of wrinkles and fine lines, or smooth skin texture.
What Are The Best Selling City Beauty Products?
City Beauty products include lip care, eye care, body care, and facial products. Let’s take a closer look at the best selling City Beauty products.
One of the brand’s most popular products is the City Beauty Sculpting Cream, an anti-aging moisturizer designed to visibly restore skin’s elasticity by lifting, tightening, and firming the look of sagging skin. Its formula is said to nourish your skin with the vital building blocks that give young skin its taut, springy feel. A few of the key ingredients in the City Beauty Sculpting Cream include caviar extract, peptides, hydrolyzed silk, aloe, oat kernel extract and green tea extract.
City Beauty Illuminating Dark Spot Corrector
The Illuminating Dark Spot Corrector is said to minimize the look of discoloration and hyperpigmentation on the face, neck, and hands for a brighter, more even-toned complexion. The formula is also designed to instantly disguise dark spots by reflecting light away from the skin. A few of the key ingredients in the Dark Spot Corrector include alpha arbutin, resveratrol, and an amino acid compound.
City Beauty Intensive Night Serum
The City Beauty Intensive Night Serum is said to improve the look of fine lines, wrinkles, and loss of firmness by supporting cell turnover and collagen production. Its concentrated formula includes key ingredients like epidermal growth factor, goji berry, a peptide complex, and a hexapeptide blend.
City Beauty Line Smoothing HydroMask
This bio-cellulose sheet mask is designed to support skin’s elasticity and reduce the look of fine lines and wrinkles. It works by infusing the skin with a “plumping” serum made with free-radical fighting antioxidants, collagen-supporting peptides, and skin-nourishing actives.
City Beauty InvisiCrepe Body Balm
InvisiCrepe Body Balm is an anti-aging body balm by City Beauty that is designed to gradually erase the look of crepey skin anywhere on the body. This body balm is said to be more than just a moisturizer. While it offers full hydration and support for your skin barrier, it also benefits your skin’s production of youthful levels of collagen and elastin to help smooth and plump the look of saggy, wrinkled skin.
City Beauty Youth Rejuvenating Cleanser
Makeup, sweat, and dirt are whisked away and skin gets a gentle exfoliation with the Youth Rejuvenating Cleanser. This pH-balanced formula is gentle enough to cleanse without over stripping and over drying the skin, so skin feels soft and supple after each wash. The pineapple and papaya-derived enzymes gently remove dead skin cells while soothing dragon’s blood extract supports collagen production. As a result, this cleanser is said to leave the skin feel refreshed and looking significantly more radiant, smoother, and younger.
What Are The Key Ingredients in City Beauty Products?
After evaluating the City Beauty product formulations, we noticed that the brand uses a variety of key ingredients throughout their collection rather than just one key ingredient. With that being said, let’s look at the key ingredients that you’ll find in the best selling City Beauty products we introduced above.
One of the key ingredients in the City Beauty Sculpting Cream that helps to restore elasticity is Easyliance, a biopolymer naturally produced by microorganisms that live in certain plant roots, such as acacia and sunflower. Easyliance works by forming a contouring network on the skin’s surface, and then retracting for an immediately tighter feel. In fact, Easyliance is said to give skin a smooth, tightened finish within 5 minutes of application.
City Beauty Illuminating Dark Spot Corrector features alpha arbutin as one of the key ingredients. Alpha arbutin is a potent tyrosinase inhibitor. Tyrosinase is a key enzyme involved in the synthesis of melanin, the pigment that gives skin color and also contributes to the formation of undesirable dark spots. By inhibiting tyrosinase, alpha arbutin may be able to reduce abnormal pigmentation associated with aging and exposure to UV light.
Goji berry extract is one of the star ingredients in the City Beauty Intensive Night Serum. Goji berry extract functions as a potent antioxidant, protecting the skin from free radical damage. Additionally, the red flesh and pulp contain carotenoids, such as zeaxanthin and beta-carotene. Beta carotene has the ability to increase cell turnover and regeneration in the outer layers of the skin, giving the complexion a healthy glow.
You’ll find a high concentration of trehalose in the City Beauty Line Smoothing HydroMask. Trehalose is a naturally-occuring sugar molecule that works to moisturize the skin because it reflects the composition of Natural Moisturizing Factor (NMF) found within the skin’s epidermis. According to an article by Practical Dermatology, the NMF is composed principally of free amino acids, and various derivatives of these amino acids such as PCA, urocanic acid, and inorganic salts, sugars, as well as lactic acid and urea. All of these substances work together to keep the skin’s surface intact, supple, and hydrated. As we age, the NMF can become depleted, leading to dry, tight-feeling, flaky skin. Trehalose mimics the sugars found in NMF, effectively drawing in moisture to maintain skin hydration.
One of the key ingredients in City Beauty InvisiCrepe Body Balm that improves skin hydration is called AcquaCell, a natural complex of watermelon rind extract, lentil fruit extract, unripened apple and apple skin. Watermelon rind contains citrulline, which aids in the function of filaggrin. Filaggrin plays an integral role in maintaining skin hydration by preserving stratum corneum integrity and the production of Natural Moisturizing Factor (NMF) components. Lentil contains vitamin B5 and trisaccharides, and apple starch contains polysaccharides, sodium lactate, and sodium PCA. All of these components replenish the skin’s NMF, while also reducing the appearance of fine lines.
City Beauty Youth Rejuvenating Cleanser is infused with dragon’s blood from the Croton Lechleri tree. Dragon’s blood is a bright red resin that has been used since ancient times for its ability to heal wounds and other skin ailments. It works by forming a unique second skin-like film around the face that protects against the environment while minimizing redness.
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. 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.
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?
City Beauty says its products are cruelty free.
Where Can I Buy City Beauty Products?
City Beauty is sold directly to consumers from its website.
City Beauty Reviews
City Beauty reviews on the brand’s website are overall very positive. The product with the most reviews is the City Beauty Sculpting Cream, which has received over 200 raving 5-star reviews. These City Beauty reviews mention that this cream helps with dry skin, diminishes wrinkles, and moisturizes well.
There are even some City Beauty reviews for the Sculpting Cream from customers who noticed some impressive skin-tightening after using this product. For example, one review says, “I was skeptical when I first bought the sculpting cream, but I thought I’d try, since they had a money back guarantee. I couldn’t be more pleased! This stuff really works!! My sagging jawline was tightening up in a couple of weeks of use. I apply twice a day and the results are astonishing. I highly recommend this product to everyone.”
Some City Beauty products have received write ups in the press, especially City Lips. Hola! magazine includes City Lips in a feature looking at “Best in Beauty 2018.” That same year, Refinery29 highlighted City Beauty as a favorite of actress Elisabeth Moss. “This cruelty-free company hasn’t blown up just yet — but you can bet it will soon.” The website said that makeup artist Kayleen McAdams debuted one of the brand’s newest lip gloss shades on the Handmaid’s Tale star that year. Refinery29 said this about the lip gloss– “First of all, it works. Secondly, it has the pretty shine of a gloss, but boasts the longevity of a liquid lipstick, too.”
According to Refinery29, the brand’s most popular product, which sold out in one month after its launch, is the Line-Smoothing HydroMask. “We’re betting now that by the time next year’s Academy Awards roll around, every celeb will be prepping their skin with these.
The website Your Tango included the Multi-Action Sculpting Cream in a 2019 round up looking at 30 Best Night Creams To Reduce Aging, and the Line-Smoothing HydroMask was also included in a 2018 story in FabFitFun looking at “All the Best Beauty Products You May Have Missed in September.” The website described the mask as, “This isn’t your ordinary sheet mask. It’s a highly-active bio-cellulose mask that delivers a potent serum into the skin, which helps visibly reduce the appearance of wrinkles and pores and the effects of UV damage. Ingredients include ice plant, progeline, and hyaluronic acid — so, yes, you can trust that this mask will deliver results.”
The vlogger Anne P Makeup and More reviewed the Multi-Action Sculpting Cream in early 2019. She used the cream for a month, concentrating on her jowl area and under the neck. She said she didn’t feel that it had a tightening effect, but that people told her face “looked more toned.” When Anne compared before and after photos of herself after using the cream for a month, she said she didn’t see any difference. Her conclusion is that the cream did not help sculpt her neck and face. Anne did say the cream worked well as a moisturizer.
What Are Some Alternatives to City Beauty?
City Beauty may not be for everyone, because of the price point or perhaps the products don’t react well with your skin. There are a few other brands to consider.
Formulyst’s philosophy is long-term and effective skincare. The brand wants to help its customers achieve their best looking skin, rather than covering it up with makeup. The comprehensive line of products addresses everything from wrinkles to dark spots and dry skin.
Healthy skin is hydrated skin. If you like the feel of a lightweight moisturizer, try Formulyst Super Hyaluronic Water Moisturizer. Hyaluronic acid helps keep skin plumped, hydrated and dewy looking. This oil free formula is packed with multiple types of hyaluronic acid and it works as a moisture magnet by drawing water to the skin.
Who doesn’t want smoother looking skin? Everyone does, but it can be easy to overdo it with harsh scrubbing which can leave skin irritated or inflamed rather than glowing. Skip the grainy exfoliators and choose a gentle but effective alpha hydroxy acid (AHA) which works to dissolve dead skin cells. Formulyst Retexturing and Perfecting Serum contains plant based acids to gently slough off old skin cells, leaving behind fresher, smoother looking skin. The serum also works to tackle unevenness and blotchiness.
There’s no need to compromise when it comes to finding skincare that is effective and safe. Carrot & Stick takes a tough love approach to skincare, perfectly balancing the power of plants with cutting edge science. Not only is Carrot & Stick good for your skin, it is also good for the environment as the formulas skip harmful chemicals as well as the preservatives, emulsifiers and thickeners commonly found in skincare products.
TDR Original review: Mar 01, 2021.
Many of you are searching for city beauty sculpting cream reviews. This is the most heavily promoted product right now. Followed by the Illuminating Dark Spot Corrector and Uplift Firming Serum. Previously it was City Lips. Based on the number of position reviews, we note that most people have a positive experience with City Beauty. The company offers a money back guarantee plus solid customer support. So if you are unsatisfied with the product, it should not be a hassle to return. City Beauty products are not presently available through third party retailers. While you can find their products on Amazon, they are not an official retailers. We recommend purchasing directly through their website. However, if you’re expecting City Beauty to get rid of sagging jowls, then you are probably going to be dissatisfied. Expectations need to be realistic going into this.