Here’s one for the Guinness Book of Records: the World’s Most Expensive Soap award goes to Cors Silver Soap, at $120 for 120 grams. So when a sample size landed on our desk, we jumped at the chance to put it through its paces.
The soap is allegedly more miraculous than the Second Coming. What does it do? According to the press kit, plenty. It’s claimed to deep cleanse the skin, minimize the appearance of wrinkles, even skin tone, fade age spots, plump, tone, hydrate, replenish collagen, heal surface skin, and provide UV protection. It can even be used as a spot treatment for blemishes.
The soap is being marketed as cost-effective because it supposedly replaces the need for multiple, expensive products that target individual skin issues. In other words, think of it as the Cadillac version of Olay’s Total Effects.
What makes this product worth its weight in gold (or in this case silver)? Let’s go through the star ingredients one by one. Silver (which accounts for the cost of the soap) is a known antibacterial agent with healing properties that speed cell growth and repair. Four different kinds of collagen are supposed to stimulate collagen formation deep within the skin. Chitosan, a natural fiber, aids cellular rejuvenation, evens out skin tone, and balances oil levels. Sericin, a soluble protein made from silk, is moisture-binding and film-forming, locks in moisture and keeps UV rays out.
Obviously a soap with a $125 price tag has been thoroughly scrutinized by the beauty press, and the reviews have been mixed. SELF magazine named Cor Silver Soap as “Best Normal-Skin Cleanser” in 2007. On the other hand, skeptics say silver is more useful in healing wounds than in cleansing the skin, and regular soap does a perfectly good job.
Others say that Sericin is not an effective UV absorber, nor is Chitsan effective in evening out skin tone, ect., because both ingredients are quickly rinsed off the skin. As for the four different kinds of collagen, critics say they’re useless on the surface layer of the skin because their molecular structure is too large to penetrate the skin and reach the dermis, where they could do some good. To get around that problem, Cor is claimed to have a patented delivery system that is able to deposit the collagen and other active ingredients deep into the dermis layer.
We don’t have a degree in chemistry and our trial sample only lasted for two weeks, so we can’t say whether the active ingredients were in fact reaching the dermis layer and would produce beneficial results over time. What we can say is that when we started using the soap and stopped using all our other products (except UV protection), our skin felt very hydrated and was noticeably more luminous. When we got a pimple, we followed the instructions to work up suds, apply over affected area, and let the suds sit overnight. We didn’t wake up minus a pimple, as the instructions said we would, but it was gone in two days. That was a first.
If you want to try your luck with the 20-gram sample size, it’s available at $14 and will last two weeks. If you want to commit to the120-gram size, $125 will buy you six months to find out if the soap delivers all that it promises. Cors Silver Soap is available at www.corsilver.com and boutiques nationwide.
