the price is right; You don't have to spend a fortune to look great.

Byline: Sarah Brown

Manhattan dermatologist Lisa Airan, M.D., loves to shop. She buys her shoes at Manolo Blahnik, her bags at Hermes, and her eye cream and cleanser at . . . the drugstore. Today we're far away from Fifth Avenue, in Brooklyn, at New York City's very first Target superstore (where Chloe Sevigny shopped for a Brita water filter at the grand opening this past summer), ready to get down to business. Our mission: the very best skin care at the very lowest prices.

Airan hits the brightly lit boulevard that is the beauty section as if it were the designer floor at Barneys, her eyes flickering back and forth between shelves stocked with Nivea, Dove, and Pond's. "Hey, look-they have the same cleanser I have in my bathroom," she says, pointing cheerfully to Purpose Gentle Cleansing Wash before her gaze settles on Olay, another favorite. She sings the praises of Olay's Regenerist cream ("I love the dispenser on this-the perfect amount comes out every time"), moving on to the company's Total Effects moisturizer. "This is a good one," she says, examining the label. "It has VitaNiacin in it-vitamins B3, E, Pro-Vitamin B5, C, zinc, and magnesium. They did studies to show it really helped people with rosacea. My patients like it a lot. Did you know that fourteen million Americans have rosacea?"

As Airan fills her bright-orange Target basket-in which sits her bright-orange crocodile-skin Kelly-with L'Oreal Line Eraser Pure Retinol and a huge bottle of Curel body lotion for $6.99 ("This dries down really fast, so even if you're wearing an expensive evening dress, you can put it on five minutes before"), she makes one point very clear: "I really believe in recommending these things," she says. "I could create a regimen for any skin type from the products here, and it would be a really good one. There are a lot of great department-store brands"-Airan confesses a weakness for Kanebo, La Prairie, and Cle de Peau-"but you can also get everything you need here." As a patient who has sat in her chair and been sent home with a skin-clearing Neutrogena and Olay shopping list, I can vouch that she's telling the truth.

Airan admits that many of her designer-decked patients are surprised by their doctor's reverence for chain-store skin care. "In a lot of people's minds, price is the determining factor," she says. She remembers one patient-a fashion stylist-who really liked a company's foaming face wash but insisted on transferring it from its plastic tube to a sleek glass bottle. "That just speaks to what the value is," Airan says with a smile. "the contents."

As Airan points out, many of the best mass brands-bolstered by the billion-dollar global companies that own them-are the first to introduce cutting-edge innovations, ingredients, and technology to the market. "Neutrogena puts a lot of thought into the products they make," she says, inspecting a jar of their Visibly Firm night cream, one of the first products to contain active copper. "I think that this is a luxury product because of the research that went into it." Airan cites Olay's new Moisturinse as another example of a particularly out-of-the-box idea. "It's a conditioner for the body, so you don't have to moisturize when you get out of the shower, and I've tried it-it actually works," she says. "How much do you bet you'll see this in some of the higher-end lines soon?"

The orange basket is filling up fast. There's Aveeno hand cream ("I have really dry hands because I wash them between patients"), Almay Clear Complexion foundation ("They also make a good concealer-oil-free products are hard to find at the drugstore"), a tube of Aquaphor ("If I could buy only one product, it would probably be this: great for lips, dry spots, and even cuts"), and makeup artist and Target "design partner" Sonia Kashuk's book, Real Beauty, with photographs by Arthur Elgort. That's the fun of mass-market shopping: You can literally hit the jackpot for the price of one or two more expensive department-store staples. Not only is it fun but it makes thoughtful experimenting and ...