Nam Vo says this $1,750 ‘liquid surgery’ serum is worth the hype
You only have to go onto Nam Vo’s Instagram for half a second to start envying what the New York City-based makeup artist calls her “dewy dumpling” glow. Luckily, she often shares the secrets to her luminous skin on her Instagram stories. Recently, she posted a picture of the MBR Liquid Surgery Serum she’s been slathering on lately, noting it’s the most expensive product she owns (it’s $1,750). She even joked that she was “accused of being a 12-year-old yesterday and a 16-year-old today.”
The pricey serum with a wild name was gifted to Vo by one of her favorite New York City-based aestheticians, Aida Bicaj. So I asked her how she discovered the product. Turns out, MBR found her first. In 2015, she met the company’s CEO and was introduced to the serum. The same year, MBR launched in the US, and Bicaj loved the products so much that her namesake spa was the first place in America to sell it.
The Liquid Surgery Serum appealed to her as it’s spiked with a proprietary complex that contains synthetic perfluorocarbons, which help carry oxygen to skin. As the serum absorbs, oxygen is said to replace the excess carbon dioxide in dermal tissue to purportedly help “produce a youthful, radiant, ageless complexion” Bicaj says.
“Generally, the oxygen content and the skin’s ability to deliver oxygen to the dermal tissue decreases gradually starting at the age of 20, and by the age of 50, it reaches only half of the original value,” she further explains. “The percentage of carbon dioxide increases proportionally. A lack of oxygen at the cellular level causes aging, increasing lines to wrinkles and the forming of age spots.”
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As much as I wanted to take Bicaj’s word for it, I was still skeptical about how a serum could possibly give your skin plastic surgery-like results without added pain or downtime. I took a closer look at its ingredients and how much it takes to actually make the product.
Ingredients
As someone who finds joy in reading the ingredient list of skincare products the way some people do about their favorite basketball player’s stats, I looked forward to checking out what makes up the Liquid Surgery Serum. The list was surprisingly short but just as mind-boggling as its price. Many of them had trademark symbols and registered signs next to them and fancy proper names, like Pentavitin, CroNoline, and Syn-Ake. The only ones I recognized were ceramide, shea butter, and hyaluronic acid.
