LUSH Sympathy for the Skin hand and body lotion

I find that often I am bad for remembering to moisturise properly. I buy tons of body butters and thick creams because I like the texture, only to find out that they are just too heavy for my skin, especially on my face, and take too long to sink in properly. This causes greasiness. I wanted to try something that was lighter, but would still provide me with enough moisture to combat dry patches.

I had a look on Lush's website and decided to treat myself to something slightly more expensive than I would originally have gone for, but something that I knew would have natural ingredients. After browsing, I chose a pot of Sympathy for the Skin lotion. I vaguely remember having this years ago, but didn't use it enough to build up a proper opinion. All I could remember was the texture was thinner than I tend to buy.

When it arrived, it comes in the traditional lush screw-top black jar packaging. Like all of Lush's other black pots, it's 100% recyclable, and if you take 5 of them back to Lush, they will reward you with a free fresh face mask or fresh hair mask. It's a nice little incentive and generous of lush- a pretty unique offer.

I know many people don't like jars and tubs, who may wish to decant the lotion into a bottle. I don't mind the tub, as it mainly sits on my bathroom counter or on my bedside table, but as the lotion is of a fairly runny consistency, I would probably choose to put it into another container if I was going on holiday. It's also quite a chubby 240g tub, so decanting it would sometimes be a better option, especially if you wanted to use it as your regular hand cream when out and about.

On first sniff, this cream smells like banana. Not fake banana, like the foam sweets- but real, natural, slightly under-ripe banana. It isn't my favourite scent, purely because it still has that slighly soured element when the fruit isn't quite ripe. The vanillary note helps it a little bit, offering a natural but sweet dosage of it. And layered under this you can smell sandalwood notes, which makes it a bit different to any generic vanilla lotion.

The lotion looks just like a fresh, luxury banana custard, an off-white shade, speckled with flecks of vanilla seed and banana seed. Unfortunately these seeds can work to the products disadvantage, as you can find yourself speckled with them on some occasions, which can be annoying if you have your skin on show or opt to use this as a face cream as I do.

When you rub in the lotion, the scent changes from the banana being the strongest scent, to the vanilla taking over and being at the forefront. The warmth of your skin brings out an almost white-chocolate note, and this is when I really started to appreciate the scent that bit more.

Consistency wise, it is fairly thin, and absorbs easily. It still leaves a light glisten on your skin, and you definitely feel moisturised, which I think is better than a cream absorbing too quickly and feeling like you have not even applied it in the first place. My skin felt soothed, and in a couple of days, the dry patches on my skin had almost all cleared up. My facial skin is combination/sensitive, and it didn't break me out in the slightest either. I would probably have to wait a bit before I applied makeup over this, but I still haven't trialled that out yet, as I don't tend to moisturise under my makeup.


Overall, I have enjoyed using this cream and would definitely recommend it to people who want a light face and body moisturiser, that does it's job wonderfully. If you want to have soft skin and smell like banana cream custard, give this a try!


8/10


Julia xx