Lush- The Olive Branch Shower Gel

I blame my olive blossom allergy for the fact I kept ignoring The Olive Branch shower gel from Lush. I'm not sensitive to olives or their oil, just to the pollen when the trees are blooming, so I should have tried it long before a generous friend gave me a bottle. Apparently,  I was missing out on one of the nicer Lush products, because this shower gel with its warm mandarin orange scent (more floral than juicy, though) doesn't just smell lovely, but it's also high in olive oil content: you actually need to shake the bottle vigorously before use to blend the oil and the gel together.

The Olive Branch looks a bit homespun, but SLES is pretty high on the list (no wonder the shower gel is very foamy), and there are other not very granola ingredients (methylparaben, anyone?). What makes it work so well for my lizard skin is the olive oil and the fact that I'm not sensitive to citrus oils (though they're known irritants). I'm a bit concerned that the slip of the product is the result of Sodium Cocoamphoacetate and not the oils, but the final judge is the skin of my limbs, and it responds very well to The Olive Branch.

Bottom Line: patch test first, but definitely worth a chance.

Ingredients: Vine Leaf Infusion (Vitis vinifera) , Water (Aqua) , Sodium Laureth Sulfate (SLES) , Sodium Cocoamphoacetate , Fresh Mandarin Juice (Citrus nobilis) , Fair For Life Olive Oil , Fragrance , Propylene Glycol , Bergamot Oil (Citrus bergamia) , Lemon Oil (Citrus limonum) , Orange Flower Absolute (Citrus Aurantium amara) , Mandarin Oil (Citrus nobilis) , Fine Sea Salt (Sodium Chloride) , Limonene , Linalool , Hydroxycitronellol , Lilial , FD&C Red No. 4 , Methylparaben.

Lush- The Olive Branch Shower Gel ($9.95- $28.95, various sizes available) can be found at Lush stores if you can tolerate them and lush.com.