Vichy ProEVEN BB Creme Review and Photos

The bad news…

If the inevitable onset of wrinkles wasn’t daunting enough, now women are faced with another age imperfection to wrought off: dark spots. For many women, these dark spots are considered a more significant indicator of age than wrinkles!

The good news…

Vichy has a solution, with the introduction of the ProEVEN collection  - a collection specifically designed to target those nasty dark spots. 

And now, Vichy introduces the ProEVEN BB Cream, to help conceal unwanted spots. After just one month of using Vichy ProEVEN BB Cream, skin is transformed with a refined skin texture, a reduction of redness and unevenness and a more healthy radiant complexion.

The new ProEVEN BB Cream immediately works to:

·         Even skin tone

·         Boost radiance

·         Conceal redness, flaws and imperfections

·         Reduce the look of pores and fine lines

Vichy BB Cream gives fast, noticeable results all while concealing current imperfections, especially when used in combination with Vichy ProEVEN Daily Dark Spot Corrector.

Beauty Squared was sent a tubes of the new Vichy ProEVEN BB Cream to review. Here's what we thought of it.

Vichy ProEVEN BB Creme Swatches on NW15ish skintone L-R: Light/Medium and Medium/Dark

Jill:

I was really interested to try Vichy's new Pro Even BB as it would be one of the first BB creams I have tried to date. I don't usually wear foundation or tinted moisturizer, so the BB cream hype seemed a bit lost on me. Usually I find multipurpose products to be rather so-so, like 2-in-1 shampoos, where the product only manages to fulfill it's multitude of promises in rather mediocre way, so I was skeptical about the numerous claims BB creams made.

Catherine got the product before me and gave me the heads up on the lightness of the product, so I only tested the "medium to dark complexions" cream (I am NC 30/35). I was fairly shocked to see the cream come out of the tube, as it is very, very, very light and ashy looking. The texture is thick and a tiny bit tacky. When I smoothed it on I was sure I was going to be walking around most of the day looking rather odd, with a ghostly cast over my face. Vichy claims this product "adapts" to individual skin tones and after working the product in vigorously it did lose most of it's ashiness.

On me this product turns mostly invisible, although for my yellow toned skin it does give it a slight whitish cast, like one you would get from a sunscreen with titanium dioxide (which this product contains). The way it felt on my combination/oily skin was moist and slightly dewy, and I felt I needed to powder it down after applying.

The things I like about this product are the decent SPF factor and the inclusion of some of the same ingredients found in the Pro Even serum, which I have used and liked in the past. What I don't like about this product is the colour and the texture. I definitely have a "medium" skin tone and although this product does adapt to your skin, I don't think it does an adequate enough job of "adapting" to provide natural looking coverage  Maybe this would work better on a pink based skin tone, but it just doesn't do it for me. I would rather wear a moisturizer with all of the above mentioned treatment ingredients then use a shade appropriate tinted moisturizer or sheer foundation on top.

To summarize I don't see this being a good choice for anyone with a skin tone as dark or darker than mine, or for anyone with oily skin. It's a shame that this spin off product from the Pro Even line didn't better match my skin tone. Because of the fact I can't really wear this product I won't be able to evaluate it's skin improvement claims which are based on using it over time. My rating is then based upon my initial impressions.

Grade: C

Catherine:

I have been using Garnier's BB cream since it was released, and Vichy's is only the second type that I've tried. I received both of the shades the BB cream comes in and after swatching opted to try the lighter of the two, the Light/Medium shade. I tend to wear if not the lightest foundation in a line, then pretty close to the lightest foundation, so I was very surprised when the Light/Medium shade made me look so pale and chalky. After a little while, the paleness dissipated slightly, but I found that with the heavier the application, the less it altered its colour and texture. The coverage of this is heavier than the Garnier BB cream, but I still found I wanted to layer it in some areas rather than adding a foundation on top. I was constantly frustrated with the application as it was fair too pale for my skintone no matter how I applied it. For a BB cream that claims to fit Light/Medium skintones and for a BB cream that only comes in two shades, this was disappointing. I tried mixing some of the Medium/Dark (which isn't very dark at all) into the Light/Medium and that's when it started looking more like my skintone match.

In the below photo I'm wearing the Light/Medium on the right half of my face, leaving the left half bare. 

In terms of the consistency, it does certainly look chalky or ashy (as Jill found) and while some of this eases after wearing it a little while, you have to wear a light layer to avoid it. I found the texture less moist than the Garnier BB cream I'm used to wearing but still in need of powder to set it.

I did wear it for a week or so to get a proper gauge of how it worked on my skin. Apart from the appearance of it, it did work as I think a BB cream should. It kept my skin feeling moisturized, it acted as a primer for my makeup and gave me some coverage.

I found the Vichy BB cream more frustrating than satisfying. I managed to make it work alright for me, but I wouldn't buy it. 

Grade: D