Product Review: Herbalism

I just tried this product about four seconds ago and simply HAD to share my thoughts. ;-)

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You know how when you go into Lush and buy a whole heap of stuff they sometimes give you free samples? This was one of my free samples from my last excursion. The girl at the counter (at good ol' Lush QVB) asked me what my skin type was, I replied, and she handed me this cleanser. I've been intending to give it a test drive for a while now but was suddenly inspired to get off my arse and try it after a morning spent trawling the Lush website when I should have been househunting.

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Aside: Do you know how therapeutic just looking at the Lush website can be? Even if you don't buy anything, just looking at all the pretty things and earmarking some for purchase next time you get up to visit your ol' friend E. is very awesome. I'm trying to find a new place and it's not going so well at present, which is a bit depressing. But looking at all the lovely Lush products has cheered me up immensely. Even vicariously, Lush stuff is fabulous.

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First thing's first: the smell. This is NOT your typical cosmetic smell. It is in no way floral or fruity. It takes a while to become acclimatised to it. You're supposed to take a small amount of the Herbalism cleanser, mix it into a paste and then apply. Adding water and mixing releases the smell, and boy, is it pungent. It is certainly not unpleasant - as the name of the cleanser might suggest, it is a herbal smell. It has rosemary in it and you can definitely tell. It smells sort of like a garden after rain, green and earthy, but stronger, because, you know, it's on your face, right near your nose.

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At first, I thought I'd got the ratio of cleanser to water wrong - I thought I'd added too much water. But I think it got it just about right... I could probably use a little less water, but on the whole, it was good. But looking myself in the mirror, looking sort of like a ghoul with this green watery stuff on my face, I thought that maybe this one (or, at least, this application, because at this point I thought I'd messed it up) was a bust. Add to that the overwhelming herbal smell....

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But experiments are experiments, and so I washed it off, just like you're supposed to do. (Though, I mean, what else was I going to do? Leave it on?) To discover...

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...fabulous skin.

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I can't stop touching it. It feels all supple and smooth and... you know, good. This cleanser has rice bran and ground almonds in it for exfoliation purposes, and they work, as I discovered when I took it off. And the best news? I only used about a third of the sample pot I got at Lush QVB, so I can use it again! I expect that this is the type of cleanser that works even better with cumulative use (though the sales assistant who gave it to me said not to use it everyday... cumulative in the sense of once or twice a week, I expect) and so I'll definitely be purchasing some next time I find myself in a Lush... or, if I get desperate, ordering it off the website!

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A word of warning, though. The smell is overwhelming at first, and though I liked it, it is probably not the smell for everyone. So, if you prefer your cleansers floral or fruity or more gently scented, I'd go with something else. But if you want to try something a bit unusual that produces results pretty much instantly (seriously, this trial run was about ten, fifteen minutes ago) then give Herbalism a go!

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- J.