Almost 2 months ago to the day, I attended the launch of some new products for The Body Shop's Shea Butter Collection at CF Pacific Centre downtown and even made an exfoliating lip scrub to take home all by 8:45am (gotta love morning events)! The Shea Butter range is not a new one, but over the last few years The Body Shop has revamped packaging, added new products and more importantly, raised awareness for ethical wage compensation, community trade ingredients, animal testing and transparency within the global supply chain. All of us were able to see the women in Ghana make this very shea butter I'm using as well as how these job opportunities have given these women their independence. Here I was being all grumpy about having to go to work after the event and then I hear these women talk about how proud they are to finally be able to provide for their families instead of relying on their husbands and I shut right up!
PR samples
The new products focused a lot on hair (fine by me!) starting with the Shea Butter Richly Replenishing Shampoo and Conditioner* (comes in 250ml and 400mL bottles) which targets dry hair prone to breakage and frizziness and is enriched with community trade shea butter from Ghana. My hair is definitely prone to breakage and I have tons of baby hairs that are always all over the place so I was looking forward to testing out the richer formulation of this haircare duo. I will give a thumbs up for formulation as both the shampoo and conditioner were quite creamy, but in terms of results my hair has felt softer with other haircare like with John Masters. The frizziness WAS better though which was something I noticed when I was styling my hair as I didn't need as much product to smooth out stray hairs.
Ah, my now favourite product in any haircare routine - the hair mask. The Richly Replenishing Hair Mask* is a thick one and promises the same things as the shampoo and conditioner. This is a 5 minute mask so you can exfoliate and do other things in the shower easily while this mask does its thing. Yes, this mask made my hair feel even softer compared to just using the conditioner, but I now have two hair masks I am using that beat this one in terms of how much healthier my hair felt after use and they are the John Masters Honey and Hibiscus Repair Hair Mask and the Truly Organic Star Fruit Hair Mask. My hair just didn't feel quite as silky with this one as it has with other masks though I'm sure if I had used this early on in my hair journey or before I had colour-treated hair I would have given it a FULL thumbs up.
This is probably the most interesting product out of the group as it is a "multi-purpose, you really can't go wrong with it" product. This is 100% Natural Shea Butter with this packet right here being made from 192 SHEA NUTS! This can feel a bit stiff if it's cold so you have to warm it up with your hands, but this can be used to make an exfoliating lip scrub (just add sugar), a hair treatment (warm a tiny bit up with your hands and apply to the ends of your hair), a healing balm for dry spots and my favourite - a shea butter bath melt!
I squeeze out about a golf ball sized amount of shea butter, add a few drops of essential oil (either orange or eucalyptus) and let it melt in them tub. When I get out of the tub, my skin is deliciously moisturized and if you are feeling lazy, this is the ultimate way to moisturize!
Final verdict: All in all, I found this collection quite pleasant, but I do have one negative observation about this whole collection (except the 100% natural shea butter). When I think of shea butter, I think of a creamy, nutty scent and while I sort of smell it here, the scent of artificial perfumed fragrance is quite strong. I was expecting something much softer or with nothing at all like the 100% natural shea butter. I am still happily using the shampoo and conditioner since I like the frizz-taming effects they seem to have and the all natural shea butter is just awesome because you can do so much with it!
You can find The Body Shop Shea Butter Collection at all Body Shop locations.
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