Cult of the miracle cream

Several weeks ago, amid that social wasteland which is the month of August, Lane Crawford quietly let it be known that it was about to take delivery of a beauty product called Creme de la Mer. The date when this cream would be available was announced as September 1. By August 31, Lane Crawford's waiting list of women desperate to buy it stood at 510. That is still shorter than the list kept at the American department store, Neiman Marcus, which regularly runs into thousands.

There are three facts you should know about Creme de la Mer: it is globally hard to get hold of (Lane Crawford is the sole distributor here, and last Wednesday's launch in Hong Kong coincided with its arrival in Japan), it is not cheap (a 30ml jar retails at $800, a 60ml jar is $1,450) and it is said that those who start using it never return to their former skin-care regimes.

To describe the fan base as a cult, frankly, is to downplay the level of devotion. The word which trips most frequently off the well-nourished lips of Creme de la Mer users is 'miraculous'.

Such word-of-mouth success is truly impressive within the cosmetics industry, a viciously competitive arena where billions of dollars are routinely spent on marketing alone, because Creme de la Mer has never been advertised. A cynic might pause here and make the observation that this is precisely part of the cream's charm: a certain glow is surely imparted by the knowledge that one is part of a secret, exquisitely moisturised sisterhood.

But a genuine phenomenon also seems to be at work. Creme de la Mer manages to combine state-of-the-art technology with, literally, a human touch: each jar is still filled by hand (hence those waiting lists), just as it was when Max Huber perfected it in his Californian garage in 1965. Huber, who died in 1991, had the ideal answer for those who scoffed at his involvement in the beauty business: as a physicist for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa), he could say in all truth that, yes, it was rocket science.

In fact, it was in the course of his work for Nasa that he received hideous chemical burns, when an experiment involving rocket fuel blew up in his face in the early 1950s. As a result of the ravages inflicted upon his looks, he became obsessed with skin care. Twelve years and 6,000 experiments in his garage later, he was ready to sell Creme de la Mer to a few upmarket department stores. Production was limited to 5,000 jars a year; he made the deliveries from the back of his station wagon.