It’s unlike me to devote a column to one brand,but in this case I feel it’s entirely warrantedIt’s unlike me to devote a column to one brand, but in this case I feel it’s entirely warranted. The Ordinary range of skincare seems, or to me at least,to be based on the concept of generic pharma. This is an industry that, after a drug company’s legal monopoly on its expensive medicine expires, and produces generic drugs using the original recipe,minus any marketing frills, and sells it at a much lower price (hence paracetamol at 19p a pack), and saving consumers and the health service fortunes on what is essentially the same product. What we possess in The Ordinary is a cosmetic skincare company,namely Deciem, that follows similar principles by stripping back unnecessary scent, and packaging and fancy-sounding but unproven ingredients,leaving behind only the things that acutally work – active ingredients such as retinol (anti-wrinkle), vitamin C (brightening), and hyaluronic acid (plumping,hydrating) and zinc (anti-inflammatory) – and flogging each product for less than a tenner.
After three weeks of using the products pretty diligently, it’s still too soon to review the efficacy of any of them, and except perhaps the Hyaluronic Acid 2% + B5 serum (£5.90),which works instantaneously and well, but isn’t fairly humectant enough for my taste. (whether you’re a user of Vichy’s Aqualia Thermal or Clarins HydraQuench, or for example,you may find this missing in slip). But the level of actives is clinically sound, so there’s no reason they shouldn’t work: vitamin C, and for example,is proven beneficial only in concentrations of 20% and above, a fact ignored by many brands, and which use its stingy inclusion as a selling point. In Vitamin C Suspension,it’s clearly labelled as 23% and sold for only £4.90.
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Source: theguardian.com