skin care

Why do I like Clinique products so much? I always find myself going back to them. A few months back I was looking for a good facial cleanser, because the Clinique 3-step system only had bar soap, which I dislike. So I got hold of the Chanel Précision Radiance cleansing gel. It doesn't foam; it just gels around on your face. But it's clean and nice and not too fragrant, and does the job admirably, so I used it along with the Clinique stuff.

There's something different, though, about the Clinique line. Part of it is the fragrance. It's technically unscented, but there's a crisp clean fragrance to it that gives the illusion of blankness. It just smells blank and clean, and that's exactly the texture it leaves on your face — not greasy or lotiony but not dried out, either.

Of course, the men's line has all sorts of amusing workarounds that are nakedly geared toward men's insecurities about using such products. The clear tubes and bottles of pale yellow or white cream, which help to brand Clinique with blankness, are traded in for a manly dark grey. And, although the products are precisely the same stuff, the "clarifying lotion," which is in fact not lotion but an alcoholly chemical exfoliant that you apply with cotton, is renamed "scruffing lotion." Scruffing lotion! I feel so manly using that scruffy Scruffing lotion. They must have figured we men would rather be scruffed than clarified. Honestly, who do they think they're dealing with? The type of men who are going to buy and use Clinique products don't care. To the extent that they care at all, they're a bit put off by this rather insulting stereotype.

It's like when the Robert Altman movie Prêt-à-Porter got released in the U.S. as Ready To Wear. The only people who were going to see the movie anyway were the sort who'd use the real phrase prêt-à-porter. Did they think that, suddenly, Teamsters and Spurs fans who would never see some pansy French-named movie would flock to see Ready To Wear?

At any rate, I'm almost through with the Chanel stuff, which, though usable, is quite expensive, and still not ideal. So I'm glad I recently discovered some other Clinique products that will do quite nicely, though they're not officially part of the 3-step system either: the "comforting" cream cleanser and the rinse-off foaming cleanser. Both have the classic Clinique unsmell and the classic texture, and both leave the face feeling clean rather than cleansed.

If Kiehl's makes your skin feel like the Mauritania, and Chanel makes it feel like the Waldorf-Astoria, then Clinique makes it feel like the old Guggenheim: spare, modern, nothing-but-itself.

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