Beautiful French Riviera brought to my home in a box (St.Tropez)

Member Name: jesika_jay

Product:	St.Tropez
Date:	20/08/02 (2474 review reads)
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Well yet another “summer” has arrived here in sunny England and I am as pale as a frightened ghost. Although summer comes every year- and every year I vow to use it to my skin’s advantage- come September and I still look like I’ve been hiding in the refrigerator all summer. Well living here in the lovely England, that statement is not far from the truth; if our summers got any cooler and duller and rainier, we would practically be living in one giant fridge freezer!

But then it’s just as well for me. I recently spent a whole week in the sweltering heat of southern Spain, only to spend half of it walking around in sticky factor 50 sun lotion and a thick scarf so that I did not irritate my heat rash to the point where I might be in danger of hacking the whole of my skin off just to stop the itching!

So, that’s life. You live in a country which gets next to no sun and heat, your skin becomes accustomed to it so when you go to hot places, your skin will not tolerate such intense heat and you’ll burn. Can’t get a tan at home. Can’t get a tan abroad. So what can you do if you don’t want to spend the whole year resembling something out of a horror movie through being so pale? The answer’s (relatively) simple- FAKE IT! And that brings me to the subject in hand...

St. Tropez is a fake tanning lotion which is designed to bring you that enviable deep bronze tan all the way from the Riviera of Southern France. The company caption goes something along the lines of,

"Indulge yourself with the richest looking tan in the most luxurious way. A tan this rich was only possible on the Riviera, now the Riviera comes to you in St. Tropez products."

This inviting caption did it’s job in luring me over to this attractively packaged product, which was in a box with a photo of the Riviera and a beautifully tanned woman gazing out into the ocean right in the centre.
Not one to often be sucked in by the powers of advertising, I was quite sceptical of this product, but admitted to myself that I was tempted.

Or maybe not. One look at the price tag and my mind was made up; I would not be purchasing the St. Tropez tanning kit in this lifetime. £44.99. Were they serious?! Who would pay that much for a self tanning kit when there were dozens more on the neighbouring shelf for a mere quarter of the price! So I walked away- a little cheesed off to say the least- and didn’t think about St. Tropez for a considerable length of time.

Until one day I heard an amazing review about the products and how great they were. Apparently they never left so much as a streak no matter how unevenly they were applied as this was a “one shade product” (meaning that the skin would be turned the same colour no matter what quantity was applied to the skin). This sounded pretty good, and I must admit that I was rather fed up with my various other tanning products, which were making me look like a fried chicken gone horribly wrong (as if that wasn’t wrong enough!) . I looked like a bacon rasher and had more stripes than a zebra. I was desperate. Yes, I parted with the £44.99 in the vain hope that St. Tropez could work wonders on me.

After getting home and getting over the strange sensation of having an empty wallet, I decided to put my tanning kit to the test. I went for the plunge and opted for a full body make-over. This had better be good...

Inside my beautiful Riviera box were three bottles- a moisturising exfoliant, a mixer and a tanner. I followed the simple instructions- after finding the right language- and discovered that after exfoliating, you had to mix the mixer and tanner together until you had the desired shade. So you could choose how tanned you wanted to be! This sounded exciting, but first things first- time to exfoliate.

The exfoliant was literally this bright blue stuff w
hich looked absolutely gorgeous! It looked so good that I really had to restrain myself from eating it! Mmm... I felt squeaky clean after giving the ol’ skin a good rub with this. And so soft...

Onto the next stage, the mixing. I opted for a noticeable but not blatantly-obvious-I-had-a-fake-tan sort of rich shade. I didn’t want everyone knowing my secret, did I? The creams mixed well and in no time I was ready to go! The instructions told me to evenly apply the cream to every inch of the body, which I found a bit daunting, but nevertheless went ahead with it, and 15 minutes later I was completely covered from head to toe! I must admit I was having serious doubts about this at that point because I looked so streaky and monster-like that I nearly had myself in tears! But a quick skim through the instructions again and I was reassured that I was supposed to be streaky at this point and not to worry because my tan was evenly developing underneath all the mess! Well, at least I smell great- the smell reminds me of the clear blue seas of the Med...

I was then told to wait 15 minutes. Hmm, not much I could do while I was naked and covered in mud. So I just stood. And stood. Unable to touch anything. Unable to move. Getting rather cold. La-di-da-di-da... finally after what seemed like eternity, 15 minutes were up and the mud had dried as promised. The next thing on the agenda was to rub the streaks off with a dry towel. Phew! Once the streaks were rubbed off, I felt human enough to venture downstairs. Much to my dismay, I was greeted with all kinds of obscenities regarding roast chickens, zebras and bacon rashers so I ran upstairs again to have a look in the mirror. Streaks! Arghh! Not to worry, the pamphlet told me- it would take 2 hours for my tan to develop and after that time was up, I could wash it off. So I decided to go to sleep for a bit (well what else could I do?)

About two hours later, I had a long awaited shower. The tan l
otion came off easily, to my relief, and with that I went to see my results....

Drum roll.....

Wow! What I saw was what I dreamed! Who was that tanned beauty standing infront of me? Doh! It was my boyfriend! No, but on a serious note, my tan looked great- it didn’t quite remind me of the beautiful luxurious French Riviera, but it was a natural reputable tan which looked like it had been well earned! There were no hints of orange and no streaks left! Even the problem areas such as the undersides of my arms and legs looked good. Well, I was one happy chick!

Well, I was happy until I discovered that my tan would only last a few days (I thought for £44.99 I would get a bit longer than that!) and what more, half of the ingredients had gone so I only had enough left for one more go. If my maths is correct, that’s £22.50 a time! Unfortunately I won’t be doing this on a regular basis for that reason only. Well, maybe on special occasions...

EXTRA INFORMATION THAT MAY BE USEFUL:

You don’t have to spend £44.99; that is the price for the set of three bottles, which you can buy separately if you only want one. The prices range from £9- £15 per bottle. They also come in different sizes; I had a 200ml bottle of the tanner, but you can buy a 100ml at half the price.

St. Tropez do a range of other tanning products such as tan sealer, moisturisers etc. and you’ll find them on their UK website:

www.st-tropez.co.uk

Or the world wide site where you can find a broader range of products:

www.sttropeztan.com

And the phone number for ordering is 08000 885 997

Happy tanning!

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