My skin hasn't looked this good since I can't even remember when. I've been using the purity face wash, help me treatment, and the HIAJ together and my skin looks so much clearer and radiant. I love the way the HIAJ soaks into my skin without that heavy feeling you get with some moisturizers. I don't think the smell is all the bad and it fades after awhile. I use this as a night moisturizer since there is no spf in this formula. All in all I think it works great but it's a little pricey.

oh, I'm torn. As far as actual performance, this moisturizer is perfect for me. It's lightweight but great as a night cream for me. It leaves my skin soft and bright. Soaks in quickly. This stuff is perfect except one thing, and I see it's not just me...

THIS STUFF REEKS! Some people have said it's lavender. I use many all natural products, and I like real lavender. And yes, sometimes lavender can smell slightly astringent. This is SO not lavender. This is a hot rubbery, fermenting mess. Fermenting rubber is the best way to describe it. It's atrocious. And it doesn't fade. Oh no, it doesn't just go away within a few minutes. Nooo, you'll be smelling that for hours. And good luck trying to eat. I'm a very scent sensitive person (I love scented products, but bad smells are a deal breaker) and this is just unusable for me because of the smell.
When your moisturizer makes you self conscious of kissing someone because your face stinks, you know it's bad. It's even worse when your partner can smell your face from the other side of the bed.

Wow - I am totally blown away by the negative reviews. Totally.

I've been using this off & on for many years. Sometimes I switch to something else just for the sake of trying the "next best thing," but I always return to Hope In A Jar because I love everything about it. I will never understand the number of negative comments about the scent. This is the real, natural smell of herbs, for crying out loud. Are the negative commenters not familiar with real lavender, for instance? This is not an "artificially scented" product. I could go on & on about this, but I'm going to leave it at this - from the very first time I tried this cream, the natural lavender fragrance is something that I've always loved!

It has an unusual "slip" to it, and it slides onto your skin effortlessly. I use it on my face & neck & it keeps my skin glowing & lovely. I believe it's the lactic acid that does the exfoliating for the glowiness. Anyway, I feel that my good skin is lucky DNA, but this cream is keeping it looking as good as it possibly can & I'll keep using it forever! continued >>

I got a sample of this with a Sephora order. The sample is in a tube. I smelled absolutely nothing. Maybe in a jar-when air hits the product-causes it to smell. I don't know. So the smell is not an issue for me. It does melt into the skin quickly-however having a propensity for cyst eruptions now and then and after reading the reviews regarding breakouts, I didn't want to chance it and now only use it on my forehead and neck. It doesn't sting me at all, but my skin is used to glycolic acid treatments, so stinging was not an issue either. Most times when I get samples that either don't do much or may cause a breakout, I use them on my neck or even hands so nothing is wasted. LOL

I got a delux sample of this from sephora. On the third day it started to look like it was clogging and dirtying up my pores that had previously been pristine due to my use of Dr. Dennis Gross Alpha Beta Peel Pads. I threw it out and they cleared up again.

Hint: Never, ever use this after exfoliating!!! I'd been wanting to buy this moisturizer for a very long time, when I finally did, it was a HUGE let down. This is the worst smelling moisturizer I have ever tried, it smells like they packed every chemical they could get into this jar and threw in a few corrosive metals for good measure! This product burns the skin even when I haven't been abrasive in any way. If you want to try a Philosophy moisturizer I recommend the Miracle Worker. Although this product does melt into the skin very well, it burns and I will never use it again. RETURNED!!!

I heard great things about this cream and was excited to try it when I received a few samples of it. I used it for about 2 weeks straight. In my personal experience, there are pros and cons but the cons outweight the pros.

Pros: Looks like a cream but upon application, it melts into your skin. Its very lightweight too. It gives a matte finish which is great because by the end of the day, my face can get shiny. I have combination normal skin fyi.

Cons: This is the worst smelling cream I've ever tried. It smells like chemicals and metal or rotting something. Another thing is, I think the cream has a lot of chemicals in it because it can burn around my eye area. The third thing is, this cream made me break out. I've never experienced this before with any other cream. It could be just my personal reaction to the cream.

Anyhow, I won't be buying this...

I think this would be more appropriately named "breakouts in a jar". This stuff wreaked havoc on my skin within a couple hours of using it. I normally get small pimples, usually one at a time and a couple times a month. This gave me huge almost cystic like painful pimples! It also made my face extremely oily. Thinking that maybe I had used too much product I tried it again a couple days after and it did the same thing over again. I'm not sure what it is about this product but it just did not work at all well for me. On top of that the smell was awful.
PROS: none that I can think of. oh, well, I guess it is easy to find. (Ulta, Sephora, Macys, etc carries it)
CONS: breakout city, greasy formula, heavy, smells odd, not exactly cheap.

I got a sample of this from sephora and it is an extremely nice, basic moisturizer. My only problem with this is that it comes in a jar, which to me is unhygienic and a !@##$ to deal, especially if you have acrylic nails on, it gets stuck in them, yuck! If this were a little cheaper, and in a bottle with a pump, I'd definitely buy it!

Moisturizes great - despite the thin consistency (surprising). But that smell! It's like a wet dog rubbed itself all over your face. And it *doesn't fade away*. I find myself gagging in the mid-afternoon because I can still smell it on my face from when I applied it - under my foundation and other makeup - in the early morning. Yuck.