Clinique Total Turnaround Visible Skin Renewer
From www.clinique.com:
This skin-renewing cream instantly reveals newer, brighter, livelier skin. Light exfoliating cream keeps skin at its best: softer, smoother, more even-toned, visibly less lined. Over time strengthens skin for its healthiest look.
- Skin Types: 1 – Very Dry to Dry, 2 – Dry Combination
- Concern: Dullness
My Skin Type:
Actually very oily, but surpressed with BHA exfoliator. Results in generally ranging from very dry to normal/dry skin. Generally dehydrated, very sensitive, and acne prone.
Packaging:
Pretty bluish jar. But it’s not hygienic, and it won’t help preserve the precious antioxidants inside.
Texture:
Light cream, kinda fluffy. Due to the silicone, it’s very easy to be blended. You’ll only need a little to cover your whole face. It sinks easily leaving velvety surface, so stickiness whatsoever.
My General Review:
My first ever HG product. Ever. How rare is it that a product really delivers 100% of its description and claims?
To get a grasp on how well this product works for me, we must get back to the past. When I was a high school teenager. I started to get a really bad acne when I was nearing 17. And I mean bad.
I always have a cloud of huge, angry acne on my face, esp. on forehead. I have a lot of red scarring all over. Not to mention, zits and blackheads and whiteheads. Super oily face, the type that needs a couple of blotting sheets every 2 hours.
Entered dermatologist-prescribed topical medication. It controlled the acne to some extent, but not completely. Then it makes the acne and scars flake. So, in the end I have active acne in several parts of my face, red acne scarring and grayish flakes all over. Plus, some zits and bumps too. And excessive oiliness.
Got the picture? It resembled monster skin. My own elder brother told me that. Pretty.
I seemed to have tried anything available in the drugstore. From Nivea to L’Oreal… And of course the medical approach. My derm loved to give me some exfoliating concoction. And then I got a goodie bag from Clinique at my school event, and read about their exfoliation philosophy. Out of frustration, I grabbed my mom’s Clinique TTA sample jar.
Since then, magic happened.
From the very first usage, I woke up with brighter skin. Ever since I used TTA, I don’t get new breakouts except a couple of manageable ones at that time of the month. Volcanic acne are healing. The flakes gone. Red scars are slowly fading. Oilies cut down significantly. Blackheads gone. Even crazier: it plumped up my laugh lines. Not completely erasing it, but it’s much less visible since I used TTA. And it does so at a minimum irritation level. I see no flakes after I wash my face in the morning, so it’s easy to put on makeup. My skin is not red at all, it’s looks normal.
6 months later my skin are already pretty good. A year after usage, people started to compliment me. They said that I have real good skin 
I don’t take a lot of pictures of myself, but there are a couple of close-up FOTD here. Even though I don’t have perfect skin (and I doubt I’ll ever be), you can see that right now my skin doesn’t exactly resemble the awful acne-ridden teenager descriptions above.
So really…I can’t sing enough praises for this product. It saves my life. Literally.
The only problem is, over the long run, TTA seriously dry my skin out.
I started with 2 times a day, when I was a teenager. Then after quite some time it made my skin uber tight; with no moisturizer strong enough to cure it. So I cut it down to once a day (at night). The latest recipe for me is once in two days.
At the moment I no longer use Clinique TTA. I’ve switched to Paula’s Choice because they seem to have an exfoliating product with a proper base for my skin condition at the moment. But I never have a moment of doubt; Clinique TTA is a great product.
What Else You Need To Know:
I learned more about skincare, and I found out that Clinique TTA is actually a BHA (Beta Hydroxy Acid) exfoliator. And since then, I knew that my skin is very receptive to BHA, thank God. BHA really controls my acne and oil problem effectively; so much that my skin type at a moment actually depends on how much BHA I use at that time.
Furthermore, Clinique TTA is not just a BHA product. It’s a well formulated BHA. I don’t know the precise number but it should have a pH low enough to make the BHA works effectively, yet gentle enough to be used at home. It’s also loaded with antioxidants, cell-communicating ingredients, and a bit of moisturizer. Very elegantly formulated.
The only trouble is, the jar packaging. Won’t help retain the light-and-air sensitive ingredients in there 
Application:
According to Clinique’s web, here’s the application how-to:
- Apply once a day after your 3-Step Skin Care System, avoiding eye area.
- Follow with a supplemental moisturizer if needed.
- For optimal results, use with Turnaround Instant Facial or Turnaround Radiance Peel Once-A-Week System.
But exfoliator is personal. Someone may need to use more often, some people will only need it twice a week. Me, for example, use it twice a day for starter. Then once a day (at night). Then 3 times a week.
The key is, experiment. Start with maybe once a day at night, then adjust if necessary. If your skin becomes too tight, decrease the usage. Unless, of course, your skin becomes dry but your acne still sprouting. If the condition persists, that may indicates that the exfoliator is not for you.
And don’t forget to apply sunscreen in the A.M.! Exfoliator gets rid of the dead cells, but the bad news is that it exposes your skin more to the UV. So if you skip sunscreen, more UV damage can happen to your new, beautiful skin.
Availability:
This product has long been discontinued in Asia. I know Australia and US still carry it though. I used to get this as an year end gift from by elder bro in US 
Price:
US$36 for 50ml. Sounds rather expensive but it lasts real long time. Depending on my frequency of use, a jar may lasts for more than a year.
Heck, even the small sample jar lasted me a month with twice daily usage.
Ingredients:
water\aqua, dimethicone, isododecane, butylene glycol, polysilicone-11, squalane, peg-8, ammonium acryloyldimethyltaurate/vp copolymer, triticum vulgare (wheat) germ extract, phospholipids, hordeum vulgare (barley) extract\extrait d’orge, salvia officinalis (sage) leaf, palmitoyl oligopeptide, sodium hyaluronate, acetyl glucosamine, caffeine, tocopheryl acetate, cholesterol/potassium sulfate, linoleic acid, arginine, salicylic acid, cholesterol, peg-9 dimethicone, glyceryl polymethacrylate, nylon-12, isohexadecane, silica, acrylamide/sodium acryloyldimethyltaurate copolymer, polysorbate 20, polysorbate 80, xanthan gum, phenoxyethanol, methylparaben, ethylparaben, propylparaben, butylparaben, isobutylparaben, mica, titanium dioxide
Overall Rating:
5 out of 5. Anyone battling acne or blackheads should try this!
*This review will be cross posted in www.makeupalley.com under username Crescent_Shadow.
