Find Out What Makes This Pioneer in Face Wash so Popular, and Whether It's Worth the Splurge!
If there's anything I've learned about the beauty industry, it's that buzz words and power phrases abound to market products, especially in the skincare industry. More often than not I'll hear things like "age-defying,"wrinkle reducing," and "deep cleansing" when a company is trying to coax you into buying their product. That kind of stuff is all tried and (sometimes) true, but it's always refreshing to see a company take a different approach to marketing their skincare, and no one is better at doing that than Philosophy.
Philosophy is as a company in itself is very modern - their packaging is cute and simplistic, and each product comes with its own little "philosophy" that metaphorically explains what it does and the feeling you're supposed to get from using it. One of my personal favorite Philosophy items to this end is the Purity Made Simple 3-In-1 Facial Cleanser, which boasts the following little words of wisdom: "Purity is natural. We come into this world with all the right instincts. We are innocent and, therefore, perceive things as they should be, rather than how they are. Our conscience is clear, our hands clean and the world at large is truly beautiful. It is at this time we feel most blessed. to begin feeling young again, we must begin with the most basic step of all, the daily ritual of cleansing."
Now I don't know about you guys, but something in that description makes me want to like, jump into a time machine and go back to being a child again. Anyways, the description is printed right on the front of the bottle, which is adorable.
One of the things I love about Philosophy is the fact that they offer a HUGE array of sizes for their facial products, and PMS (hilarious acronym haha) is no exception; it comes in a 2 oz. for $10, 8 oz. for $22, 16 oz. for $33, 24 oz. for $42, and 32 oz. for $52, though the two biggest sizes are pretty much only found on QVC and Philosophy's website. All sizes come with a snap open cover though you can buy pumps for the 24 and 32 oz. sizes as well.
Now onto the product itself: PMS claims to be a 3-In-1 cleanser, meaning it cleanses, tones, and moisturizes all at once. The cleanser is a yellowish-white, somewhat thick consistency. As far as cleansing (and do remember I have normal non-problematic skin) it gets the job done fairly well, though there are days when I use this where my face feels a bit tight afterwards. The toning aspect of this is actually my favorite quality, because I can literally feel my skin balancing out which is amazingly refreshing and extremely hard to duplicate in other similarly priced products. The moisturizing property is a bit lacking, because if it were 100% effective I wouldn't have a feeling of tightness after using it, though to be fair it's often hard to tell if a face wash is moisturizing until after you've gotten out of the shower and that kind of thing usually relies on how dry the weather is too.
I always use PMS with my Clarisonic Mia, and alternate it with 3, yes 3, other cleansers I currently have in my rotation and usually always use it the day after exfoliating. I have purchased this on two separate occasions; once at Sephora in June in the 2oz. size which lasted me until early September, and once at Ulta in the 8oz. size in late September that has yet to run out.
Overall, after two rounds of buying PMS I wouldn't consider this cleanser an HG in my personal regimen and as such will not be repurchasing, but it definitely gets the job done, has marvelous toning ability, and would most likely be great for those with combination or super oily skin.
