La Mer The Lip Volumizer Review

The first ingredient in La Mer's Lip Volumizer is petrolatum. It costs almost nothing, it is the most effective occlusive dermatology has ever tested, and it is the reason your lips feel sealed and soft for an hour after each swipe of this ninety-five-dollar gloss. The honest question about the Lip Volumizer is therefore not whether it works, because petrolatum works, but what the rest of the list, and the rest of the price, are doing.

The rest of the list is doing two jobs, and the first is the gloss. Triisostearyl citrate, polyglyceryl triisostearate, polybutene and octyldodecanol are the thick, cushioning, high-shine esters and polymers that give a prestige gloss its lacquered slip, and La Mer has tuned them well: the Volumizer sits on the lips as a visible glassy layer that does not string, does not migrate into lip lines and does not feel like a film of syrup an hour later. Microcrystalline wax and a styrene copolymer hold it in place, castor oil and a trio of butters, shea, cupuaçu and murumuru, cushion it from beneath, and the pearl and pigment are handled with a fineness that makes the sheer shades flatter rather than sparkle. As a piece of gloss engineering it is among the best we have worn, and it is the part of the product that justifies any premium at all: cheaper plumpers tend to be thin, sticky and prone to collecting at the corners of the mouth within an hour, while this one holds its lacquer through a coffee and comes off cleanly with a balm cleanser at night.

The second job is the volume, and here it pays to be clear about mechanism. Every plumping lip product works by irritating the lip just enough to draw blood to its surface, and the ingredient chosen determines whether that feels like a tingle or a burn. La Mer chose menthoxypropanediol and menthyl PCA, two menthol derivatives that trigger cold receptors, sit mid-list, and produce a cool, spreading sensation within seconds and a slightly fuller, pinker lip border that lasts perhaps half an hour. It is gentler than the capsaicin and cinnamon that cheap plumpers rely on, and it is more pleasant to wear, but it is the same idea and it has the same limits: the effect is modest, it is temporary, and on lips that are chapped or cracked it stings in the fissures and can slow their healing. The glassy shine, honestly, does as much for the look of fullness as the flush does, since a high-gloss surface reflects light from the centre of the lip and reads as rounder from across a room, which is a trick makeup artists have used for far longer than plumpers have existed.

What the box calls the treatment part is where the ingredient list stops describing the product and starts describing the brand. The Miracle Broth sits tenth, in an anhydrous base where water appears sixty places later, and contributes the name. Sodium hyaluronate, a humectant that needs water to hold, is fourteenth in a formula with essentially none. Palmitoyl tripeptide-1 is a collagen-signalling peptide at a position and in a vehicle that make it decorative. Tourmaline and malachite are there for the same reason gemstones are ever in cosmetics. Acetyl glucosamine, phytosphingosine, cholesterol and a vitamin C ester round out a roll call that would look at home on a serum label, and their collective effect on the lip, sealed under petrolatum and polybutene, is somewhere between negligible and nil. None of this is harmful. It is simply the difference between a gloss and a La Mer gloss, written in Latin.

The cautions are the ones that apply to any plumping gloss, plus the house's own. Flavour rather than fragrance, but the list declares linalool, limonene and benzyl benzoate, and adds eucalyptus leaf oil and a trace of alcohol denat; several shades carry carmine, a recognised cause of allergic cheilitis. Contact cheilitis from lip cosmetics is common enough that dermatology has its own literature on it, and menthol itself has been reported as a cause. For most people the Volumizer is a pleasant tingle and a pretty lip; for the minority with eczema-prone or reactive lips, or anyone mid-flare with cracked corners, it is a product to set aside until the lips are intact.

Seven years on the market and a review count in the low thousands give a settled picture: people adore the finish and the gentle tingle, find the plumping subtle, and wince at the price. Ninety-five dollars for seven millilitres is serum money for a gloss, and while the finish is genuinely a cut above, the plumping mechanism is available in tingling glosses at a tenth of the cost and the balm underneath is petrolatum. What the money buys is the lacquer-like polish, the shade curation, the frosted tube and the name on it.

So: a beautiful gloss with a kind tingle and a balm's heart, dressed in skincare it does not need. Buy it if you love the finish and the house and treat the volumizing as a pleasant side effect. Skip it if you want lasting fullness, which no gloss gives, or if your lips are the kind that crack, which this will not help. And know, as you swipe it on, that the ingredient doing the most work costs a few cents a tube.