I am no fan of self tan and my traumatic experiences with it could fill a book let alone a blog post. First, there was the spray tan that turned my body into one of those bronzette dancers from 80s talent shows and ruined a cashmere jumper (I know, as if you would wear that to get a spray tan but I plead fake tan virginity your honour).
Then the streaks that relentlessly formed whenever I tried what I thought were the gentler ‘touch of sunshine’ variations. Maybe because my skin has an olive (read yellow) tone to it , fake tans have no choice but to intensify this to a few steps up on the pigment scale to the wrong side of oronge (No, spellcheck I actually mean orOnge aka Perma Tan as seen on the likes of well, all the wrong people).
But I was forced to try another because you can’t run a Summer Skin Week without subjecting yourself to some fake tan – what with all the other content inches we’re devoting to protecting yourself from the sun with a high sunscreen and getting a glow about you.
I don’t know what made me pick Ambermist as the one to try out of the eight fake tanners that crossed the trial products desk at Healthista Towers. Maybe the pink on the packaging matched the pink of the dot on our logo.
The first time I tried it I used my hands to apply. Big mistake. It turned my hands orange and I expected a similiar tone on my body. But no, I applied it on Saturday night and it developed in eight hours so the next morning, when I was running the Race For Life 10K ( which I finished btw #justsaying) my friend remarked on how well I looked. The colour was literally a hint of a glow. Needless to say, I bought two tanning mitts that day from Boots – which it does say to use on the instructions – and tried again that night.
Again, no orange and no streaks and the interns yesterday said it looked ‘like a real tan’ and that you couldn’t even tell I had any fake tan on. Plus, there’s not a single streak in site. It seems to have slightly deepened my natural skin colour like what happens when you actually are on holiday and wear a sunscreen but end up getting some healthy colour building up each day. Here’s a peek at the results (sorry for the angle, there is no one in the office and leg selfies are an art I have not yet mastered):
So, I love it. Let me count the ways. It rubs in straight away and sort of goes on dry so there isn’t lots of rubbing to do. It dries virtually instantly so you can get dressed afterwards and if you sweat during the day, it doesn’t seem to make any difference as the colour has set. It doesn’t smell. Most of all though, it’s not drying on the skin and doesn’t leave the little blotches of patchy colour that others have in the past – perhaps because it’s alcohol and paraben free. I used the eight per cent DHA (the tanning active ingredient that gives the product its pigment) concentration, being fake-tan-phobic but it also comes in 10, 12 and 14 per cent concentration.
Ambermist mousse is part of their new home tanning range, a hybrid of the spray tans offered in salons throughout the UK, Ireland and Europe.
They have also just launched a new product to complement it, The Perfection Brush which you use to drag some of the product onto wrists, elbows, tops of hands and feet after you’ve applied to the other parts of the body with your mitt and – the press release says it’s great for use on the face as it lets you work product in. The brush hasn’t been part of my experiment though.
The Ambermist Instant Tanning Mousse is £12 and Perfection Brush is £14.95 from ambermist.com
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