Clinique CC Cream in Very Light

This is Clinique's newest base product - CC cream.  Now the whole world and his civil partner has released a BB cream, we're up a letter and moving from Beauty/Blemish Balms to Correcting Creams.  CC creams are supposed to have the same skincare benefits and SPF as BB creams, but provide colour correcting, skintone evening effects rather than behaving like a foundation.

This Clinique version is sold under the Moisture Surge range - placing it with skincare as opposed to with Clinique's colour collection.  It's billed as a hydrating product, and whilst my skin doesn't feel dry after a day of wearing it, I can't really say I notice that it's particularly hydrating - in fact, it goes onto the skin much the same as Clinique's BB cream, with a pretty dry texture which needs moisturiser underneath it.  You'd expect that a CC cream would simply correct any redness, hyperpigmentation, etc instead of actually acting as an all in one base product - and yet, Clinique's CC cream evens the skintone and adds a light veil of colour.

Excuse the squinting, it was bright outside!

It does give a bright, glowy effect on the skin, though.  I suspect I could have done with a bit more moisturiser on before I applied the CC cream I'm wearing in this photo, but the overall effect is pretty natural, radiant, and perfectly matching to my winter-pale skin.  It's a light to medium finish - if your skin is a little uneven but not overly blemish-y it should give you enough coverage to look even and smooth.

At £28 a tube, it's quite an expensive base product - particularly given the light levels of coverage and the slightly dry texture which makes for a somewhat difficult application.  That said, it does even the skintone and it does add brightness - bit of a mixed bag, then!

Disclosure: PR sample