Yikes, what a long product name! My friend Sybille has been on the hunt for a good BB cream with a high SPF. She read a recommendation in either Marie Claire or People Style Watch magazines, and she managed to find the Japanese company Isehan’s BB cream on eBay for $16 plus $2.99 shipping all the way from Hong Kong. The product is called either Heroine Make Mineral BB Cream or Kiss Me Heroine Make Mineral BB Cream. Either way, it’s a mouthful! Isehan has a line of products including mascara, eyebrow color, eyeliner, and sunscreen-style BB Cream (SPF 55) under the Heroine Make brand name. In Japan, it’s a drugstore brand with prices usually ranging from about $6-$15.
From the nation that has brought us Hello Kitty and manga, Japan has been responsible for some of the cutest and some of the most technologically advanced beauty products. As a brand, Heroine Make falls into the cutesy category in terms of its marketing materials,
(the blond girl with the big blue eyes is their brand character) but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t deliver the goods. The product contains sodium hyaluronate and amino acids for hydration, chamomile for gentleness, and the minerals give it that lightweight feeling. The SPF 34 is provided by the mineral broad spectrum UV absorbers titanium dioxide and zinc oxide.
Sybille bought shade 01, Natural Beige. She described Heroine Make as a thicker cream than the L’Oreal BB cream that she tried previously and found too thin, “more like a primer”. Sybille applied Lierac Hydra-Chrono Extreme Balm moisturizer first (the product description that I saw said to apply after moisturizing), followed by the Heroine Make BB Cream. The ingredient list contains dimethicone, so it does have a built-in primer. She said the BB provided medium coverage that lasted for at least 10 hours. I asked Sybille to send me a photo, and here she is leaving the hair salon still wearing the Heroine Make BB Cream that she applied 8 hours earlier. She looks great!
Sybille likes the product a lot, and she said she’d recommend it. In fact, she just purchased some for her mom. Here’s what she had to say about her experience with Heroine Make Mineral BB Cream:
“I would say it is medium weight. Not as light and silky as the Loreal BB cream, but also not like a real foundation. The coverage was mid range, my skin looked smooth and red spots or freckles were definitely covered, but the cream did not settle in the wrinkles. It lasted all day and into the evening, at least 10 hours!”
In case it’s no longer available on eBay, I saw it on www.beautykat.com for $14.99 plus $2.88 shipping. So if you want to try something new and kind of exotic, consider Heroine Make Mineral BB Cream!
(FYI, beautykat.com is a great site for Asian brands including Shiseido and Shuemura as well as what it calls “natural” brands. For those of you who like SK-II, I saw some products at a deep discount, though still jaw-droppingly expensive.)
Heroine Make Mineral BB Cream Ingredients: Water, Cyclomethicone, PG, tri-ethylhexanol Noin, zinc oxide, PEG-9 Dimethicone, di-lauroyl glutamate (phytosteryl / octyldodecyl), phenyl trimethicone, cellulose, chamomile extract, Na acetylsalicylic acid, hyaluronic fruit extract Kaninabara, hydrolysis collagen degradation, trimethylsiloxy silicic acid, aluminum Jimo Tearu Regis hectorite, Al hydroxide, dimethicone, stearic acid, Na citrate, methyl methacrylate, dimethicone, BG, talc, (dimethicone / (PEG-10/15 )) crosspolymer, Methylparaben, (dimethicone / vinyl dimethicone) cross polymer, titanium oxide, iron oxide, mica
Cool! You can find the BB Cream at imomoko.com, too, and other Kiss Me products, including something they call a ‘sunkiller’, which sounds interesting for summer – like a cross b/w sunscreen and SPF primer. (I like the idea of wearing multiple layers of sun protection during summer.)
Thank you, Sidra! I’ll check out the site. This BB was a fave of my friend, Sybille, a couple of years ago, and I haven’t tried it. But I love Asian skincare and makeup so I will definitely give it a visit! Thank you for visiting and commenting 🙂