La Prairie Cellular Treatment Liquid Soft Glow from Winter Wonders for Holiday 2011

The unique product in La Prairie's new Winter Wonders Collection for Holiday 2011 is Cellular Treatment Liquid Soft Glow ($60), and it's even a great value. While we are accustomed to seeing lipsticks, lip glosses, and eye shadows in makeup collections, how often do we see a new product like Liquid Soft Glow?

This air-light, silky formula is a creamy liquid that enhances the natural skin tone with a brightened luminosity. It's designed to create radiant accents to contour and highlight any area of the face - or the whole face. Said to be flattering on all skin tones (although I think those with very oily skin might want to try it first), Liquid Soft Glow is an invisible light diffuser that creates a “soft-focus” effect to blur the look of lines, wrinkles, and other imperfections. Formulated with La Prairie’s legendary Cellular Complex, this innovative product helps skin feel and look flawless, with a firmer, more lifted appearance, and a radiance befitting a special occasion.

You can apply Liquid Soft Glow directly to the skin or blend it with any foundation (a bit like Giorgio Armani Beauty's Fluid Sheer in that respect) to give your skin brightened luminosity. You can also apply it only to the areas of your skin you wish to enhance.

The product was clearly designed to give a glow without color. You can see in my swatch photo that it comes out of the convenient pump as a light, soft pink. Blended on a large swath of my arm below, it leaves only a radiant glow - a glow that reflects light and makes its presence known with hydration and radiance. Since a shell pink comes out of the pump, it's clear to me that it has a pink, pearlized base. Beyond that? When blended, I don't see color on my skin at all - just smooth, radiant skin. The pink is so amazingly subtle and sheer that it should be compatible with most skin tones.

I love products like Liquid Soft Glow. I can wear them under or over my foundation or mixed with it. When mixed, they enliven foundation, making your skin glow with good health. When used under foundation, their effect is less pronounced. When applied over foundation, they serve to subtly highlight the skin.

La Prairie's exclusive Cellular Complex, an ingredient in Liquid Soft Glow, helps stimulate the skin's natural regeneration process - moisturizing and energizing with nutrients that encourage optimal functioning. I'm not sure how it does that or what's in it, given its "secret formula." I do know that La Prairie boasts legions of happy customers, with a majority of them rating the products at the top of their skin-care treatment lists. From the ingredient list on Liquid Soft Glow, I can report that it includes hydrators and botanicals. To my mind, the skin-care properties are just an extra-added benefit to a very pretty radiance booster.

You can find the entire Winter Wonders Collection at La Prairie's Web site and La Prairie counters now. I purchased mine at Neiman Marcus. Because it's limited, go have a look quickly if you're interested.

Photo at top courtesy of La Prairie; other photo by Best Things in Beauty