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 issues, 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. Here’s a look at what City Beauty is all about, what products it sells.
What Is 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 skincare 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 that the line of skincare products is designed to help skin look its best. But the products are meant to do more than just make skin, lashes and lips look better temporarily. The product are also designed to help improve the skin, and are formulated to target skin concerns including fine lines, wrinkles, dark spots and skin texture.
What Does City Beauty Sell?
City Beauty sells lip and lash products as well as a comprehensive line of skincare products including serums and maks. Here’s a breakdown.
City Beauty Makeup
City Lips
The brand’s runaway hit makeup product helps make lips look fuller, smoother and glossier. The lip gloss is offered in 19 shades, including a clear option. Shimmer and opaque versions are also available.
City Lips Matte
This version of City Lips delivers a non-drying matte finish in 10 different shades.
City Lash
Designed for anyone who wants thicker looking lashes, this lash treatment is formulated to help minimize lash loss, as well as protect against breakage. The formula is also meant to help support the natural lash growing process.
City Beauty Skincare
City Beauty Illuminating Dark Spot Corrector
The Dark Spot Corrector serum can be applied to the face and hands to help fade dark spots. It can also be used on acne scars, redness and discoloration.
City Beauty Intensive Night Serum
Powered by extracts of goji fruit and ginseng, this evening serum helps soften the look of fine line and wrinkles, and helps skin look firmer.
City Beauty Multi-Action Sculpting Cream
The Multi-Action Sculpting Cream is packed with skin-soothers including caviar extract, hydrolyzed silk, aloe, oat kernel extract and green tea extract. The cream is meant to nourish skin will helping to make it look firmer.
City Beauty Line Smoothing HydroMask
One of the company’s best-selling products, this sheet mask is soaked with an anti-aging serum to help soften the look of fine lines and wrinkles.
City Beauty InvisiCrepe Body Balm
This rich body cream is designed to ward off the signs of crepey skin while also delivering a dose of hydration. The formula is powered by triglycerides and barley extract, and only needs to be applied once a day.
City Beauty Youth Rejuvenating Cleanser
Makeup, sweat and dirt are whisked away and skin gets a gentle exfoliation with the Youth Rejuvenating Cleanser. The formula is gentle enough to cleanse without over stripping and over drying the skin.
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.
Is City Beauty Cruelty Free?
City Beauty says its products are cruelty free.
What Ingredients Are in City Beauty Products?
City Beauty says its products are created with “skin-rejuvenating and collagen-supporting actives” including hyaluronic acid, a naturally occurring substance which can hold up to 1,000 times its weight in water; the antioxidant vitamin C which helps to brighten skin; oligopeptides (peptides that are thought to help restore skin), and resveratrol, a phenol found in the skin of blueberries and grapes.
Some of the more exotic ingredients include ginseng extract, caviar extract and hydrolyzed silk while the Under Eye Recovery Cream contains eye soothing (and depuffing ingredients) such as caffeine along with skin nourishing oats, glycerin, olive oil and coconut oil. The Line Blurring Wrinkle Filler contains ingredients that help “fill in” lines such as dimethicone, a silicone, along with diamond powder, rosehip seed oil and blue lotus flower extract.
Where Can I Buy City Beauty Products?
City Beauty is sold directly to consumers from its website.
Do City Beauty Products Work?
When it comes to finding the right products for your skin type and lifestyle, a little trial and error is always necessary. What works for one person may do nothing for you, so it’s always helpful to look at customer reviews. And no product ever gets 100% positive feedback – most products get a mix of opinions and reviews.
Since City Beauty is only sold on its website, most of the customer reviews available are only on its own website but some of its products have received write ups in the press, especially City Lips. Hola! magazine include 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.”
Customer reviews are more scarce but some City Beauty products have been reviewed on Makeup Alley. The City Lips Collagen Lip Plumping Treatment gets 3.7 out of 5 stars from 97 reviews, and 58% of users said they would repurchase it. Reviewer ShakeItDontBreakIt wrote, “Here’s the thing – in my opinion of course – what makes this so excellent is that it moisturizes the lips so phenomenally that it’s actually changed my life.” MagicLoop2009 gave it five stars, writing “The wonder of it all, is that it lives up to [it’s]expectations!”
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.
