Guest "Duped": Nivea Visage Anti-Wrinkle Q10 Plus Repair Night Cream

The incomparable Eli treats us to our very-first Guest "Duped" Review! Not only has she found a cheaper version of Nivea's impossibly-long-named cream, she's found a cheaper and BETTER version. Read on!

Nivea’s Australian/ New Zealand television campaign for their Q10 range had my sister giggling like a 3 year old a few years ago. It involved asking a bunch of women with different nationalities what their beauty secret was (the answer was “Q10”). The last was a Frenchwoman who exclaimed, “L’ amour!” before adding, “And Q10.”

As I already have “L’ amour”, I decided to give the Nivea Q10 Night Cream a whirl over winter. My skin peeled badly last winter so I wanted something extra rich this year. I wasn’t impressed. Nivea Q10 did everything a basic moisturiser was supposed to do and kept my nose from peeling all winter but it didn’t do anything extra for my skin.

I was wondering what to buy next when a friend casually mentioned that our local Aldi had brought in their skincare line. My ears pricked up.

(Aldi is a European discount supermarket chain along the lines of Macro and Carrefour in Malaysia. Their products are generally of pretty good quality and really cheap. They are a godsend to poor ANU students on a budget and their chocolate chip cookies are amongst the best things to have happened to Canberra.)

The Aldi’s Siana day and night creams won a few UK beauty awards this year and have been flying off UK shelves ever since. I was very, very curious.

Sadly, Aldi Australia is only carrying their Lacura skincare range (Aldi has two skincare lines: Lacura and Sianna). I decided to give the Lacura Night Cream a go anyway. It was a lot cheaper than other night creams available and had both retinol and Q10.

Does anyone here still remember the old Hazeline Snow cream which used to come in a glass container? Nearly everyone’s grandmother, mother or favourite aunt used to have a jar on stand-by around their dressing table. When you poked your finger into a new jar, the cream would crinkle up like stiff whipped cream before softening around your finger. I used to find it fascinating.

Lacura’s cream texture and smell is almost exactly like Hazeline Snow. It brought back childhood memories of poking around my mother’s and aunts’ dressing tables and of cuddling up against my grandmother after her bath. I nearly bought another jar to give my grandmother for nostalgia’s sake after my first use.

Lacura Night Cream is the best skincare product I have picked up during my 3 years in Australia. It sinks in well into my skin, has refined my pores and caused my blackheads to disappear. I even tried using the cream on a recent back-acne breakout and it cleared up beautifully after a few days.

My mother has sweetly requested that I get 2 jars for her this Christmas.

Both creams come in 50 ml jars but Nivea’s Q10 Night Cream costs AUD 17.99 while Lacura’s version is AUD 7.99. I am sticking to the cheaper version, thank you.

Note: Good grief, now I want a jar of this miracle stuff!