The Biggest, Baddest Beauty Calendar of All Time | Holt Renfrew 2020 Review/Unboxing/Price Breakdown

Quick links:

Unboxing video

My Glou Marketplace profile (where the items will be for sale - details below)

Spreadsheet with price breakdown (scroll down)

Blurb about La Mer and whether or not it's worth it/works (scroll down)

I went to the store the day this was released because I just HAD to report back on Holt's first beauty calendar.

This is a very exciting moment because not only have Canadians not had access to the more exciting luxury beauty calendars, like the ones from Netaporter and Liberty London in years past, but Holt's KILLED IT and delivered the best beauty calendar I have ever seen.

In this calendar, we have very special items making an appearance including full-size products from Westman Atelier, Tom Ford, Gucci, Augustinus Bader, and Byredo.

We also have some VERY pricey skincare trial sizes from Amorepacific, Valmont, and Bioeffect.

And then we have the crowd-pleasers that no luxury calendar is complete without such as Jo Malone, Diptyque, and La Mer.

The calendar retails for $475CDN, which is approx $360 USD or £276.

Holt Renfrew claims that there is $1900 worth of products in here, but by my calculations, I could only get the value up to $1475.

For the entire unboxing, here is the Youtube video. I have timestamps for each item in the description box. I don't tend to repeat information across the video and this blog post, so make sure you check out for my thoughts on each of the products.

The numbers mentioned in the video are slightly different from the ones in the spreadsheet - the ones in the spreadsheet (below) are the more accurate ones. I had to make a slight adjustment after I filmed.

I am rehoming most of the products from this calendar because it is more stuff than I could ever use, and a lot of the items aren't a good fit for me. You will be able to find all the products looking for a new home on my Glou Marketplace profile. The prices are set at the actual retail value, I will be accepting the highest offer (use the offer button) on November 30. Anything that sells for above my actual cost, I will be donating the difference to charity.

For example: The Diptyque candle has a retail value of $24, but it cost me $8. If you purchase it for $24, $16 will go to charity.

Unfortunately at this time, I can only ship to the US and Canada. For Canadians, if the checkout doesn't work, shoot me an email karen AT glou.co and we will sort things out.

Spreadsheet

Here is the spreadsheet breaking down the retail value of each of the products, and how much it came to relative to the beauty calendar.

More context:

Full-size = full-size product

Mini = you can buy this product, but it's a non-standard size. Eg. It's the 15ml tester size you can purchase, but 30ml is standard.

Trial-size = you cannot purchase this size, but it is more generous than a sample

For the retail values, I used the smallest size of products available. So if the perfume comes in a 50 ml option, and 100ml option, I used the price of the 50ml to calculate the actual retail value.

For posterity, I've included screenshots from their website:

RE: La Mer

Great article from The Cut that investigates the mythology surrounding the brand: https://www.thecut.com/2017/08/10-conspiracy-theories-about-la-mer-and-is-it-worth-it.html

Basically, the founder had some chemical burns, concocted this cream with it's signature "miracle broth" (which they play music to during the fermentation process, apparently), and it transformed his skin.

Could La Mer be good for healing and repairing skin? TOTALLY. But not because of anything special in it.

You know how you've been told that a wound will heal better if you "let it breathe"? Yeah, so turns out kids who insist that their booboo will heal better with a bandaid on... are kinda right.

According to science, wet wound healing means that you will heal faster and with less scarring. So basically, don't let your scrape/whatever dry out and form a scab. Protect it from drying out with Vaseline, Polysporin, PawPaw ointment, whatever. These all have a petroleum jelly base... which La Mer has as well. So, basically, if you use an occlusive over top of your wound... you're on the road to healing faster and better.

I recently had a pretty bad scrape and used wet wound healing and can confirm, that I have healed faster, with a lot less scarring than I would have expected, and it was MUCH less painful/itchy during the healing process.