Ohhhh St. Tropez, I want to love you, really I do. But you release products like this and I don't know where to stand in this love hate relationship.

Since a close friends mother developed skin cancer I have become a self confessed seasoned false tanner. Instant false tan however is something that's never appealed to me, why spend out and put all that effort in just to wash it off in the morning? Why ever. Recently however I was pushed into delving into this wash off world when getting ready for a night out. A few days off my tanning routine, feeling like a ghastly ghost a friend offered me a squirt of instant fake bake before a long awaited night out. Never a fan of the extreme colour attached to fake bake I wasn't tempted to buy the product myself. So to insure I would never find myself in this situation again, I decide I needed a good instant fake tan for such emergencies.

ST. Tropez as a brand is notoriously hit and miss. Some of their products will deliver you from bland to tanned in a beautiful manor and some will leave you streaky and orange. I had high hopes for their instant tanner, I'm not sure why, probably the old, 'you get what you pay for' mentality. Not a slogan to live by clearly.

The first time I tried it I exfoliated my legs and set to work with this experiment. I used a mitt to add a generous amount to one of my legs. Most fake tans main irritant is that they take ages to dry and your left to wait for this. St. Tropez instant however seems to dry as you apply it, and as you spread it around you rub off bits that have already dried. Not good. Streaks galore.

So I washed off and went it to attempt two. I did find it easy to wash away, as soon as the 'tan' came into contact with water it raced off down the drain which at the time I was glad of. Had this been rain or sweat I might not have been so happy with its easy removal so perhaps a happy medium is something St. Tropez should look into.

The second time around I literally added a dot and smoothed it in as fast as I could without scrubbing. This seemed to work better and after a good ten minutes spent on each leg I was left with a colour I was happy with and was happy to leave the house in shorts.

As the day went on my tan seemed to, for want of a better word, dry out. Patches began to emerge and the tan seemed to come off in small black beads of dried tan. As my legs were ruined anyway I ran my finger along one of them and left behind a white line and a black finger.

I have tried the product since, determined to find the secret, but I cannot find it. As I sit here reviewing I have one perfect leg and one patch worked leg.

So my search for the perfect instant tan continues, If I can find an instant tan with this colour GREAT, but it will need to last for more than a few hours to be considered a success. For now I'll have to get my 'faux glow'
from my trusted gradual self tanner.

This tan ranges from 10 - 15 pounds a pop, outrageous money for a tube that will now rot in the back of the cupboard. Almost cannot believe St. Tropez would attach their name to this product.