L'Oreal Skin Perfection 15 Second Miracle Cleansing Oil

I have a sad story to tell. I fell in love with this cleanser only to find out it doesn't work for me. It is my favourite cleanser I've ever used, but I discovered, much to my annoyance that mineral oil might be breaking me out. 

It is a fairly new product in L'Oreal's skin care line. I believe it was released with their micellar water, which I have yet to try. I haven't seen it in our drugstores yet, but I'm sure it'd be here soon. I got mine on Hqhair, but several online shops sell it. I've been using it for month and a half, and I must admit it really grew on me.

The texture is pretty much perfect as far as my preferences go. It's a light oil that you massage on your face. When water is added it emulsifies just like the L'Occitane Almond shower oil which I rave so much about. I then take a flannel that's been soaked in warm/hot water and wipe it off. It leaves the skin so nice and supple with not a single dry patch in sight, but doesn't leave any oily residue behind and my skin feels genuinely clean. None of the cleansers I've used left my skin so lovely. I feel like I don't even need to moisturise, but of course I still do. Normally, my skin gets abnormally tight with tons of dry patches appearing in the first five minutes after cleansing, but not with this. My only little gripe is that it makes my vision cloudy, but so do other oil-based removers and I can certainly live with it. It claims to remove waterproof makeup, which is a gross overstatement as I find it doesn't do anything when it comes to removing waterproof mascara (I've tried it with three different ones, one wasn't even a good waterproof one). It does remove the rest of the makeup well, but for eye makeup I have to resort to my trusted Maybelline Spezial Waterproof one. 

The scent of this cleanser is an absolute winner for me. Most people probably won't find it that special, but to me it is one of the most gorgeous scents I've smelled. To me it smells like those last walks of the day on the beach. That warm, salty sea breeze. I know it's a bit dramatic description of a scent, but my god is it lovely.  

Packaging is nice and simple, a plastic bottle with a handy pump. It says on the back to use 2-3 drops of the products, but I find you need much more. Two pumps is not enough, so I use about 3-5.

Lets address the whole ingredients problem. Basically what this cleanser is, is scented mineral oil. That's it, just cheap mineral oil. But mind you, so is the Shu Uemura Cleansing Beauty Oil and people love that stuff (ok, there is not only mineral oil in it, but it is the first on the ingredient list). It costs about 10€, which is a lot cheaper than the Shu Uemura one, but is a bit cheeky to put such a price for some scented mineral oil. I don't have a problem with mineral oil and I don't get what the big deal is, however, I have never ever used a skin care item with it. When I started buying skincare, oh so many years ago, I first memorised the list of all  supposed "bad" ingredients (you know your regular baddies: alcohol, comedogenic ingredients, petrol based chemicals,...) and avoided them like a plague. Eventually, I grew tired of the constant checking of the ingredients once I realised that none of the so called comedogenic ingredients have any harmful effect on my skin whatsoever and the whole deal with alcohol is just oversimplification. Unfortunately, it appears that mineral oil does clog my pores. Both my new moisturiser and this have a high content of mineral oil and I noticed that individual spots just kept appearing and it took forever for them to diminish plus my skin was healing abnormally slow. I even got a few spots on my neck which has never happened. I stopped using it for a week and spots disappeared, however, I got a case of nasty dry patches again as a result of using my old cleanser and it took heaps of moisturiser for them to finally heal. I already ordered the Balance Me Cleanse and Smooth Face Balm which I talked about in my wishlist post. Apparently it is similar to the seriously overpriced Emma Hardy one, so we'll see how that goes (it should arrive tomorrow I hope). Who knows, I might even like it more than this one.

What I can say is that it's a fantastic product and not overly expensive. It breaks my heart that it's clogging my pores, but if you don't have issues with mineral oil, give it a go. I might repurchase it and use it for something else, since I find the scent so alluring. But I'll stop using it for my face, because I can't have a new volcano growing on my forehead every few days (I just woke up with two new ones. Someone hates me for sure). 

Have a great day!