Whether you're looking for a special treat for yourself, or for someone else on your holiday shopping list, L'Occitane has always been my go-to source for naturally derived, quality products. Recently, I got a chance to try out one of their new products in the Aromachologie line, a special throwback collection of hair and body care products each containing 5 essential plant oils that are specially formulated to relax, renew and rejuvenate.


The Product
The Aromachologie Revitalizing body scrub is a sugar based body scrub that you can use as a weekly or bi-weekly treatment to rid yourself of dry, flaky skin. While body scrubs are great all year round, they are especially welcome in winter time when the harsh dry air indoors and out can sap your skin of suppleness and glow.

The Guts
The primary ingredients in this scrub are:

• Glycerin - a common moisturizer.
• Sucrose - sugar grains basically. These act as the primary exfoliator.
• Sunflower seed oil - a natural emollient that helps to capture moisture in skin.
• Capric triglyceride - derived from coconut oil, this ingredient gives a slippery feel to the product and acts as another emollient.
• PEG-8 Beeswax - acts as a surfactant (basically ups the foaminess) and emollient. This ingredient could have some low contamination concerns with some nasty stuff (source), but is generally considered safe for use.
• Other ingredients of note are: lemon peel (fights blemishes, brightens), grapefruit peel oil (astringent and mood-enhancing), rosemary leaf extract (antibacterial and moisturizing) and spearmint oil (relaxing aroma and antibacterial).

Overall, this scrub is packed with natural ingredients and the essential oils contained within seem included as cleansers and for their stimulating aromas.

Effectiveness
The first thing that struck me was the scent of this scrub. It's citrusy, but also kinda minty from the spearmint and sweet. It's very heady stuff, but not overpowering like artificial fragrances can be. Personally, I loved the scent, but I could see how it might be a bit odd at first for others.

The scrub itself is suitably grainy, although a little harder to work with than my Bath & Body Works Sea Salt scrub. You do need to kinda work this scrub into your skin. This scrub is also slightly oily from, I'm guessing, the essential plant oils.

My favourite part of this scrub, other than the scent, was that despite the rough sugar grains, my skin felt very moisturized instead of dry or tight as one might expect from such a strong exfoliator. The scrub rinsed off easily and left my skin feeling soft and lightly fragranced.

Final Verdict
Buy - you could purchase this for someone else, but you'll probably end up keeping it yourself :)