Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of years, it is fairly likely that you will have already heard of STEAMCREAM. It has been featured in many, many magazines as an all-purpose moisturiser, suitable for anywhere from your face to your feet, but the major selling point for many has less been the cream itself but rather the dinky little limited edition tins that the cream comes in.
With 41 designs in the online shop, it is slightly pot luck which one you could manage to pick up on your average trip to the shops (providing somewhere near you stocked it), so you would have to order online if you were after a specific tin. But there are so many that it’s almost impossible that you wouldn’t find at least one to your taste. For the unadventurous (or any boys who can cope with the slightly floral scent) there are evenplain silver tins.
But enough about the packaging, what about the contents? The cream is made in small batches by hand and the ingredients are emulsified together using steam (hence the name). Apparently this means that the ingredients can sink into the skin much more easily than creams emulsified by more industrial processes as the molecules are smaller but this isn’t a claim that I could easily test at home. Does the cream sink in pretty quickly? Yes. Does it make it any better at moisturising? I honestly don’t know. I tried it on my face where I found it slightly too heavy and on my hands where I found it slightly too light. It’s lovely, it smells absolutely divine, it just wasn’t right for my skin.
The company has a very strong ethical policy. The cream is certified as being vegan and they use low levels of preservatives so that the cream will biodegrade easily. They are committed to the three R’s of green business: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle and are vehemently against animal testing.
My only problem with STEAMCREAM comes at the end of the ingredient list. They use all these wonderful, high quality ingredients and then the preservatives they use are methylparaben and propylparaben. I’ve said it before that although there is no conclusive proof that parabens are bad for you, they are oestrogenic and some research has shown that parabens have been present in breast cancer tumours. Whilst this is in no way probative, I’d rather avoid them as far as possible.
My conclusion is that it’s a nice cream but personally, I’m not entirely sure what to do with it. It just doesn’t suit my skin. But if the parabens don’t bother you, and to be honest they don’t bother most people, and it suits your skin then I would say go for it.
STEAMCREAM is available from their website plus a number of other retailers, including Boots, Feel Unique,ASOS and Victoria Health, priced £12.95.
