Originating in the 1970’s, La Prairie is a European skin care brand owned by the German conglomerate Beiersdorf. The brand is known for its use of luxurious ingredients, such as platinum, gold, white caviar, and caviar.
Before splurging on these high end skin care products, it’s important to determine whether or not these ingredients actually benefit the skin. And that’s exactly what we’ll discuss below in our La Prairie review.
We’ll cover the formulation details, including the key ingredients in La Prairie skin care products and the research that supports (or doesn’t support) their use in skin care.
We’ll also share some La Prairie reviews so that you can get an idea of what customers really think of these products.
OUR TOP SKINCARE PICKS
| Rank | Brand | Link | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Carrot & Stick | Review | |||||
| 2 | Formulyst | Review | |||||
| 3 | Skinceuticals | Review | |||||
| - | La Prairie |
Is La Prairie Skincare Worth The Cost?
La Prairie products are expensive, for example, the SKIN CAVIAR LUXE CREAM is $555.
La Prairie products aren’t worth the money, because there are other skincare brands that offer similar products that are less expensive.
One brand is Carrot & Stick, a clean skincare brand that balances the gentle nurturing of plants with the powerful results of innovative science.
What Are The 5 Most Popular La Prairie Skin Care Products?
La Prairie offers everything that you would need to create a complete skin care routine, including cleansers, toners, moisturizers, serums, and more. Here’s a breakdown of the 5 most popular La Prairie skin care products.
La Prairie Skin Caviar Liquid Lift
The formulation of La Prairie Skin Caviar Liquid Lift is actually pretty disappointing, primarily because denatured alcohol is the fourth highest concentration ingredient. We can see why the brand included this ingredient, but we typically don’t recommend alcohol-based products. Here’s why:
On one hand, alcohol functions as a penetration enhancer by disturbing the skin barrier so that key ingredients can penetrate deeper into the skin. It also helps to remove excess oil and temporarily tighten skin while giving products a weightless feel and quick-drying finish.
On the other hand, alcohol-based products can cause excessive skin dryness. Over time, this can cause the sebaceous glands to compensate by producing even more oil, leading to clogged pores and acne.
Furthermore, alcohol disrupts the lipids that make up the stratum corneum (the outermost layer of skin), according to a publication in the journal BBA Biomembranes.
There are some beneficial ingredients in La Prairie Skin Caviar Liquid Lift, such as caviar, sodium hyaluronate, ginseng, oat, and other soothing botanical extracts. But ultimately, we don’t believe the benefits of these ingredients outweigh the risks associated with alcohol-based products.
Plus, this serum is packed with synthetic fragrance ingredients.
Bottom Line: La Prairie Skin Caviar Liquid Lift uses alcohol to provide an instant tightening effect, however, since alcohol is known to break down the skin barrier, we cannot recommend this product.
Alternatives: Carrot & Stick The Repair Serum. It contains 7 plant-based peptides to help promote smoother looking skin.
La Prairie Skin Caviar Luxe Eye Cream
La Prairie Skin Caviar Luxe Eye Cream contains high concentrations of emollients like petrolatum, hydrogenated vegetable oil, and acetylated lanolin. These ingredients help to lock in moisture and keep the delicate skin around the eyes soft.
This formula contains many of the same key ingredients as La Prairie Skin Caviar Liquid Lift, such as caviar, sodium hyaluronate, ginseng, oat, and other soothing botanical extracts.
Plus, there’s peptides to help stimulate collagen synthesis, leading to firmer, more youthful-looking skin.
And like most eye creams, the La Prairie Eye Cream includes caffeine. As a natural stimulant, caffeine causes vasoconstriction (constriction of the blood vessels) when applied to the skin, which helps to reduce eye puffiness and dark circles.
Unfortunately, this La Prairie eye cream is packed with fragrance ingredients, which is especially problematic since the skin around the eyes is so delicate.
Bottom Line: La Prairie Skin Caviar Luxe Eye Cream combines caviar with peptides, caffeine, and soothing botanicals to reduce signs of aging around the eye, but we’re concerned about the fragrance ingredients in this formula.
La Prairie Skin Caviar Luxe Cream
The formulation of Skin Caviar Luxe Cream contains high concentrations of silicones and emollients, such as dimethicone, shea butter, and sweet almond oil. These ingredients give this cream its luxurious texture while also helping to soften and smooth the skin and lock in moisture.
Similar to the other products in the La Prairie Skin Caviar collection, the key ingredients include caviar, sodium hyaluronate, ginseng, oat, and other soothing botanical extracts.
However, this is another La Prairie product that’s packed with fragrance ingredients, such as linalool, citronellol, geraniol, limonene, eugenol, and more. These fragrance ingredients have the potential to cause skin irritation and even damage to the skin barrier.
Bottom Line: A silky smooth face cream with caviar, sodium hyaluronate, and soothing botanicals, but keep in mind that this product contains fragrance.
ALTERNATIVES: Carrot & Stick The Moisturizer. It’s overflowing with potent plant proteins, vitamins, peptides and amino-collagen.
La Prairie Pure Gold Radiance Eye Cream
This La Prairie eye cream has a rich yet silky texture due to the combination of occlusives like petrolatum and shea butter with silicones like dimethicone and emollients like hydrogenated polyisobutene.
You can thank mica and titanium dioxide for the instant dose of radiance created by this eye cream. Mica and titanium dioxide are minerals that add a shimmering effect and reflect light from the face, creating the illusion of a smoother, softer, and more radiant skin tone
Other beneficial ingredients include skin-soothing ginseng root extract, caffeine, and antioxidant vitamin E. And you can probably guess that gold makes an appearance in this eye cream formula.
While gold certainly gives this eye cream a sense of luxury (and also a hefty price tag), most skin care experts agree that the risks associated with applying gold to the skin outweigh any potential benefits. We’ll explain more about this in the Key Ingredients section below.
Bottom Line: This La Prairie eye cream instantly softens skin with emollients and silicones, while mica and titanium dioxide reflect light to disguise dark circles, but the inclusion of gold may be doing more harm than good.
ALTERNATIVES: If you are concerned about aging around the eyes , one product we recommend is Carrot & Stick The Eye Cream.
La Prairie Platinum Rare Haute-Rejuvenation Cream
At $1,525 USD for just 1.7 oz, Platinum Rare Haute-Rejuvenation Cream is one of the brand’s most expensive products. The steep cost is due to the inclusion of colloidal platinum in this cream.
The purported benefits of applying platinum to the skin include reducing inflammation and defending against free radicals due to the metal’s antioxidant activity.
However, we want to point out that there are literally dozens of other antioxidants that can be found in skin care products that will defend your skin against free radical damage — without the ridiculous price tag.
The rest of this formula is pretty basic, with humectants like butylene glycol and glycerin, emollients like squalane and caprylic/capric triglyceride, and soothing extracts like ginseng and peony.
Bottom Line: While platinum may help defend against free radicals, we think there’s better — and more affordable — skin care products on the market than this La Prairie Cream.
What Are The Key Ingredients in La Prairie Skin Care Products?
Unfortunately, La Prairie does not disclose the ingredients that are used in their product formulations on their website. Thus, in order to evaluate the ingredients used in La Prairie skin care products, we had to research third party websites.
The most popular line by this brand is La Prairie Skin Caviar, and just as the name implies, all of these products contain caviar as the key ingredient.
Caviar certainly makes these products seem luxurious, but does this ingredient actually benefit the skin?
It turns out caviar extract can offer quite a few benefits to the skin. That’s because the eggs are very rich in nutrients, like vitamins and amino acids.
Caviar extract has been shown in studies to enhance the production of collagen in fibroblast cells, as well as boost the production of ceramides. Collagen is a protein that helps to keep skin strong and firm, while ceramides are waxy lipids that help skin retain moisture and give it a nice, healthy glow.
The other La Prairie collections feature high-end ingredients like gold and platinum. But once again we have to ask the question: do these ingredients actually offer benefits to the skin?
Unfortunately, gold isn’t a precious ingredient for your skin. It can cause a variety of problems, such as allergic reactions, rash, and skin irritation.
Also, there’s no published research demonstrating topical application of gold has benefit, especially in terms of anti-aging.
Similarly, there’s no research demonstrating that platinum has anti-aging effects or any benefit for skin whatsoever — its use in cosmetics is pure marketing.
We also want to remind you that nearly all La Prairie skin care products contain synthetic fragrance ingredients. The use of synthetic fragrance ingredients can be a problem because the brand can use a proprietary blend of chemicals to create the fragrance. On average, this consists of 30 to 50 chemicals (but it can have as much as 200 components).
Want to know the worst part? The brand does not have to disclose which chemicals they use on the label. They are allowed to list this blend as “Fragrance (Parfum)” on the ingredient list.
Furthermore, a 2018 study by Women’s Voices for the Earth discovered that in over 3,000 chemicals reportedly used for fragrances, 1,242 were chemicals of concern – and that included at least 7 possible carcinogenic (cancer-causing) agents.
Fragrance ingredients also have the potential to cause skin irritation and sensitivity.
Overall, La Prairie products lack tried-and-true active ingredients like vitamin C and retinol. If you’ve tried La Prairie products and haven’t seen results, you may want to consider products that combine innovative science with tried-and-true active ingredients. One brand we recommend is Carrot & Stick.
How Much Do La Prairie Skin Care Products Cost?
La Prairie is a luxury skin care line, and the products are priced accordingly. For example, the La Prairie Platinum Rare Haute-Rejuvenation Cream costs $1,525 USD for just 1.7 oz, while the La Prairie Skin Caviar Liquid Lift costs $715 for 1.7 oz.
Where to Buy La Prairie Skin Care Products?
La Prairie Skin Care products are sold on the brand’s website, as well as high-end department store websites, such as neimanmarcus.com, bloomingdales.com, saksfifthavenue.com, and more.
Is La Prairie Cruelty Free?
La Prairie is not cruelty because La Prairie skincare products are sold in mainland China, where animal testing is required by law.
Is La Prairie Vegan?
La Prairie skin care products are not vegan since they contain animal-derived ingredients, such as caviar and beeswax.
La Prairie Reviews
Unfortunately, the brand does not display La Prairie reviews on their website, so we evaluated customer reviews from Google.
One of the brand’s most popular products — La Prairie Skin Caviar Liquid Lift — has received an average rating of 4.6 out of 5 stars after more than 400 customer reviews.
The positive reviews for the La Prairie Skin Caviar Liquid Lift mention that it provides an immediate tightening effect while also helping to reduce fine lines over time.
On The Derm Review, comments were mixed. You can read these reviews below. One review says, “
A long time user of La Prairie, I recently purchased from the laprairie.com website. I spent $625 for a pack of two products. After two weeks the one bottle ran dry. A product I have used for two years and usually takes an entire year to exhaust. I have been in touch with La Prairie by phone and by email for 3 weeks. La Prairie customer service continues to give me the “royal runaround”. It seems my case needs to be referred to “the Department”. A response was promised in 5 days. That was three weeks ago.
The product works for me. I am so profoundly disappointed that this premier brand, which charges a fortune, has absolutely no customer service. I cannot get them to tell me anything. They just say a response has not come from “the Department”, and they will let me know when they have heard. How crazy that we should pay such exorbitant prices and not be served promptly and fairly when there is a problem.
If I am thinking in error about the bottle I would only like to hear how I have misunderstood the bottle capacity. In fact, they will not respond except to say I have been referred and they are awaiting a response.
Beware. When you order from the laprairie.com website customer service is non-existent. I have not ordered La Prairie from Amazon. In other instances, Amazon has been wonderful to me as a faithful user who has ordered many times. The few times I have had a problem they have responded quickly and fairly. Not sure what would happen if I ordered La Prairie from Amazon.
I am now searching for other brands that compete with La Prairie in the anti-aging and anti-wrinkle department. They are out there and I will find them. At these prices, I want the cream to work, and also be assured the company will talk with me about any problems and work with me to find solutions. Can’t be spending this kind of cash with a Company that is shunning me and won’t talk to me.
A shame. A real shame. And a shocking surprise.’
Our Verdict
While the inclusion of caviar, gold, and platinum in La Prairie skin care products is certainly unique, we can’t recommend this brand for several reasons, primarily the hefty price tags for products that contain known skin irritants.
Pros
- Formulas contain beneficial key ingredients (caviar, ceramides, peptides, sodium hyaluronate, etc.)
- Many positive La Prairie reviews
Cons
- High cost
- La Prairie is not cruelty free
- Some formulas contain high concentrations of denatured alcohol
- Research shows that gold can cause allergic reactions and skin irritation
- There’s no research to show that platinum benefits the skin
- Nearly all formulas contain fragrance
What Are Some Alternatives to La Prairie Skin Care Products?
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.
References:
BBA Biomembranes, May 2012, pages 1410-1419
Women’s Voices for the Earth “Unpacking The Fragrance Industry” 2018
Norma Original review: Aug 29, 2023.
I used for years cellular creams . for daytime with sun protection 30 was the best, at night cellular anti aging night cream. the best too
I don’t think they made extract of skin caviar firming. any more.
I really love my old products. I can afford the new ones
thanks