Today, my Stash Debut series, which highlights my first purchases from various brands/lines, focuses on Vecua Honey.
Launched in April 2011, Vecua Honey is a sister brand of the Japanese beauty brand Vecua. While Vecua (debuted in 2003) is a high-end brand sold in department stores and has a clean and sophisticated look (see my brand profile on Vecua), Vecua Honey’s image is more youthful, fun and whimsical. Vecua Honey’s products feature honey as well as other natural ingredients.
(I guess the inspiration of the brand probably partially came from Vecua’s popular Honey series (lipcare items, released in 2008) and Honey Luster lip glosses. Honey Luster was launched in 2005 and has been renewed a few times. The current edition is Honey Luster s, which was released in 2010. The product combines color and skincare benefits.)
In Japan, Vecua Honey is available mainly in Plaza stores, and its products are considerably more affordable than Vecua’s. (As far as I know, Vecua Honey is also available in Taiwan and Singapore.)
Currently, Vecua Honey carries skincare, bodycare, haircare, makeup, fragrance and beauty accessory items. The brand has three ranges:
– Nature Honey focuses on honey as the key ingredient.
(skincare, bodycare & haircare)
– Wonder Honey features a variety of fragrance blends.
(bodycare, fragrance & accessories)
– Botanical Honey incorporates essential oils in the formulations.
(skincare, bodycare & fragrance)
I decided to try three Honey Dew Hand Creams from the Wonder Honey range: Peach Compote, White Rose and Flower Gelée (50ml, ¥800 each). (The Honey Dew Hand Creams feature two formulations, and the three I have feature both.)
Wonder Honey Honey Dew Hand Cream (Peach Compote) was released in April 2011 as part of the brand’s launch collection. It is a glycerin-based hand cream that has a gel consistency. It feels lightweight and is absorbed easily. It is not a heavy-duty hand cream and it is much more suitable for spring and summer. Fragrance-wise, this is marginally my favorite among the three. The fresh and juicy peach scent is very uplifting and is not overly sweet.
Wonder Honey Honey Dew Hand Cream (White Rose) was also from the launch collection. It has the same base formulation as that of the Peach Compote version. The rose scent has a hint of sweetness and is very soothing. (The product is tinted with a very pale pink color, while the Peach Compote version isn’t.)
Wonder Honey Honey Dew Hand Cream (Flower Gelée) was released as part of the brand’s fall/winter 2012 collection. It has a different base formulation from those of the two above. Apart from glycerin, it includes petrolatum, squalane and shea butter. It has a cream consistency and it takes slightly more time to be absorbed, but it doesn’t feel greasy. While it is still not a heavy-duty hand cream, it does feel more emollient than the other two.
According to the Vecua Honey website, it features the following fragrance notes:
Top notes: passion fruit, green apple, cassis
Middle notes: rose, lilly of the valley, marine accord, violet
Base notes: musk, woody accord, amber
It is not easy to perceive all the notes when the fragrance blend is in a cream base. For me, it has a mixed floral scent (with predominantly rose and violet) with an aquatic feel (presumably from the marine accord). The scent is fresh and pleasant, although I slightly prefer the simpler and purer scents of the two above.
Even though Garnier’s Hand Repair Intensive Restoring Hand Cream is still what I reach for when I need something more nourishing for my hands, these three Vecua Honey hand creams are more than decent everyday hand creams. They provide sufficient hydration for most of the year as well as very lovely fragrances.
Currently, six Honey Dew Hand Creams have the glycerin-based formulation and four have the glycerin-petrolatum-squalane base. When I purchased the three hand creams, all the tubes were in white and the front labels didn’t indicate the formulations. At the time, solely in terms of the look of the tubes, the only difference was that the caps of the glycerin-based ones were in a darker shade of brown (as you can see in the individual photos of them above).
However, since then, Vecua Honey has been changing the packaging. Three of the four glycerin-petrolatum-squalane-based Honey Dew Hand Creams shown on Vecua Honey’s official website in Japan are in beige tubes.
(from left to right & top to bottom:
White Rose, Green Tea Mint, Wild Strawberry Gelée,
Peach Compote, Citrus Sorbet, Fresh Cherry)
(image from www.vecua.com)
(from left to right & top to bottom:
Lavender Dream, Flower Gelée, Maple Honey, Pear Cocotte)
(image from www.vecua.com)
(On Vecua Honey’s official website in Singapore, Lavender Dream is also in a beige tube.)
If you want to be certain (in case of future repackaging or new additions), check the back labels to see the Japanese names of the products (also shown in the two images above).
– The ones with “とろとろハンドクリーム” (“とろとろ Hand Cream”) written on the back labels are the glycerin-based ones. (“とろとろ” roughly means “syrupy”.)
– The ones with “しっとりハンドクリーム” (“しっとり Hand Cream”) written on the back labels are the ones with petrolatum and squalane. (“しっとり” roughly means “moist”.)
——
If you are interested, here are some updates on relevant corporate information since my post on Vecua in 2008 (link above):
– As with Vecua, Vecua Honey is currently owned by StylingLife Holdings Inc. BCL Company.
– On January 1st, 2011, B&C Laboratories (which owned Vecua) was merged under StylingLife Holdings Inc. as an in-house company and was renamed BCL Company.
– In February/March 2011, Sony, which set up StylingLife Holdings Inc. in 2006, sold its remaining share of StylingLife (23%, since December 2006) to J. Front Retailing Co., Ltd., which currently owns various department store chains, such as Daimaru, Matsuzakaya and Parco.
– Currently, StylingLife Holdings Inc. is owned by Tokyo Broadcasting System Holdings, Inc. and J. Front Retailing Co., Ltd..
(information from StylingLife Group, StylingLife Holdings Inc. BCL Company’s websites (in Japanese and English), the iStockAnalyst article on Sony and the Wikipedia entry on StylingLife Holdings Inc. (in Japanese))
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L’Occitane Shea Honey Hand Cream
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