I am quite fair and like to self-tan my legs in the summer. I just feel like they need some color so they don't blind everyone when I wear shorts. I've been looking for a self tanner that I can use once a week that is long-lasting and doesn't smell too bad.
I've been trying out the St. Tropez dark bronzing mousse and spray, and I thought I would give you make thoughts on the mousse.
St. Tropez says:
What is it?
This dark formula, inspired by our best-selling mousse, is an easy-to-apply advanced formulation that contains innovative melanin technology that ensures your tan is tailored to your individual skin tone. Simply sweep on with an Applicator Mitt for a beautiful even tan.
Who is it for?
Anyone looking to get an intense, streak-free tan that dries in an instant. Whether you have pale or dark skin, our Dark Bronzing Mousse will tailor itself to your skin tone to give you a gorgeous natural-looking self tan. Whether you’re a first-time tanner or a total pro, our dark-tinted formula will ensure you know where to apply your tan for a perfect application, everytime.
Why is it different?
St Tropez Dark Self Tan range is designed to provide our darkest, most intense colour yet. Extra skin conditioners and protective ingredients provide an even, streak-free colour that evens out your skin tone and lasts for longer without patchiness. This mousse contains our Aromaguard TM fragrance technology that helps to virtually eliminate the tell tale self tan aroma by up to 70%.
The promise of longer-lasting color is what drew me to this one over the regular (any self tanner is going to make me quite tan relative to my normal, pale skin color).
First off, this goes on GREEN. Like acid lime green. I'm not sure why they made the indicator color so green, but because of this, the only time that makes sense to use this is right before bed, so long as you have sheets that you don't mind getting green. Also, St. Tropez recommends not getting wet or exercising for 4 hours after application, and leaving it on for 8 hours for the best results.
This also has a strong fragrance when applied. I'm terrible at describing scents, so I'm just going to say it smells kind of tropical or something. It is quite distinctive, and I'm guessing it is part of the "Aromaguard" technology.
It claims to dry instantly, but I feel like I stay sticky for about 30 minutes.
I can't really say how long it takes for the color to develop because I always leave it on for 8 hours before washing off the guide color, and the guide color masks the color of the tan.
You can see the color isn't too dark on me (after one application). I guess I would call it a medium tan. The mousse claims to have "
innovative melanin technology that ensures your tan is tailored to your individual skin tone" so that might be why. It does give me a beautiful, natural, not at all orange color. Unfortunately, while I do love the natural look and color, because it isn't very dark, it is pretty much either faded or gone by day 4 or so, and I was hoping for a longer-lasting color (like a full week). I think it is hard to create a long-lasting self tanner because every day your top skin cells (the ones that are affected by the tanner) are sloughing off, so just about every self tanner is going to be very faded by day 3 or 4.
This leaves no funky self tan smell on me, even when I smush my nose up against the skin.
I think this is quite a good self tanner because of the beautiful natural tan (not orange) color it gives and the complete lack of self tan smell (although it really depends on personal chemistry, so it might have a noticeable smell for others).
I do recommend using the applicator mitt that they sell (or another mitt) since it makes application much easier blending-wise. I wear a mitt on each hand, and it prevents me from getting any self tanner on the palms of my hands.
I have also been trying the dark St. Tropez spray and hope to have a review of that soon.
This costs $44 for 6.7 oz.
Do you have a favorite self tanner?
