Browsing the beauty section of Boots in Brighton recently I stopped for a chat with the lady behind the Clarins counter. As you may have read I’m on the endless hunt for the ultimate eye cream to counter my ultimate eye bags, and I’d read that Clarins’ Super Restorative Total Eye Concentrate showed reasonable results (more on that next month). I also wanted to try their Extra-Firming Eye Lift Perfecting Serum.

Looking through the array of artfully displayed creams and potions I was surprised to see how many products pertained to women my age. When I consider Clarins I think of older (and richer!) women, not someone approaching forty. After all, forty’s fairly young these days…right?!

So, I got to thinking…when does ‘young’ stop and ‘older’ start? And does this mean – finances aside – that I’ve finally graduated from L’Oreal to Clarins? There was only one way to find out.

After a lengthy discussion with the impressively well-versed Clarins representative (who was younger than me), I left the store armed with a mountain of samples. Oh – and I may have bought some of the Total Eye Concentrate too (what can I say, not only did it come with a bag of posh freebies, but also a percentage of my sale was donated to charity – win-win in my book, if not for my bank account!).

The first item I tested was the Dry Skin Extra-Firming Night Rejuvenating Cream. My, how gorgeous it smelled: fresh but not cloying. It was subtly seductive. I was hooked. Maybe early intervention with a 40+ cream would keep my skin as wrinkle-free as a 35 year-old for many moons to come?

It felt rich, like a night cream is supposed to. As I applied it I suspected it was perhaps a little too thick for for my combination skin, which is still prone to the odd spot at a certain time of the month (oh, the humiliation of adult acne, and the indignity of period pains at my age!).

I managed to milk the 5ml Dry Skin Extra-Firming Night Rejuvenating Cream sample for over a week, which is a positive sign: it may not be the cheapest on the market, but at least it goes a long way! Unfortunately though, I was right: it was too rich for my skin, which after a couple of nights started rebelling with the occasional teeny-tiny whitehead – barely visible, but still, definitely there.

And so it continued, as though my skin was stifled and unable to breathe through the night cream equivalent of thick theatre pan stick. That said, the areas of skin which didn’t succumb to potential spot sites did look like they’d been bathed in asses’ milk à la Cleopatra. I’m not convinced by the ‘Extra-Firming’ claim, but will concede that even central heating and a crummy cold couldn’t prevent me from looking peachy between my own physical version of join the dots.

If I were an older, wealthier woman I would definitely buy this cream (the smell, the richness!). However since I’m neither, I would recommend it for the over-fifties or those with dry skin and deep pockets only. Dry Skin Extra-Firming Night Rejuvenating Cream: does what is says on the tin – almost.

Clarins Dry Skin Extra-Firming Night Rejuvenating Cream is available from Boots for £53