BB Cream: The Body Shop All-In-One BB Cream

The Body Shop markets itself as the more environmentally friendly, socially conscious alternative in make up and body products.

A lot of their body product ranges lean towards natural scents, so there are your sweat pea, moringa, shea butter, brazil nut, chocomania, almond, strawberry, passion fruit, sweet lemon, mango, olive and other clean and identifiable scented products. 

Similarly, their face skin treatments come in set ranges, leaning towards natural healers, with ranges based on vitamin E for moisturizing, vitamin C for a pick-me-up, tea tree oil for acne and sea weed for balancing out oiliness. 

They also do a fair range of makeup, with foundations ranging from compact powders, through to mineral based liquid foundations, lipsticks in a variety of different shades, bronzers and body shimmers, blushes both baked and your normal powder blushes, eye shadows, eye shadow pallets, eye shadow duos, concealers, eye defining kohl pencils, lip liners, lip glosses, mascara, and makeup applicators. Ok, so they do more than just a fair range of makeup.

Their pricing varies depending on the product in question, for body butters, shower gels and 'body' products, they are on the expensive side. For makeup, depending on what you're looking for, they're in the upper drugstore range. Generally, there's some kind of special going on in the shop, and you'll normally get a discount of some kind off on something in the store. Having said that, some products will be a bargain, others can be quite the splurge.

The Body Shop has jumped in on the BB Cream scene, with two BB Creams, their All-In-One BB Cream, and their Vitamin E BB Cream, which I've seen advertised online, but haven't yet seen in store.

The All-In-One BB Cream promises the following:

• light to medium coverage;
• adapts to your skin tone;
• 24 hour hydration;
• even finish; and,
• non clogging

(Taken from their UK Website)

It comes in a 25ml, slim metallic silver tube, with a black screw on lid. There are three available shades, 01 for lighter skin tones, 02 for medium skin tones and 03 for dark skin tones.

Coming out of the tube, the 'cream' is fairly runny, having a similar viscosity to a liquid foundation than a moisturizer. The ingredients are written on the back, on one of those peel back stickers. Unfortunately, The Body Shop took it upon themselves to print 7 pages worth of material on a rather slim sticker. I have yet to split sticker page one from sticker page two, and so do not know what is in the BB Cream - I'm sure the website has the ingredients, though. Coming out of the tube, it looks like melted cookie and cream ice cream. When applied, it changes colour and takes on the appropriate shade. 

It blends into the skin quickly, and provides a light weight moisturizing effect. I have to apply it fairly quickly to avoid the colour from sinking in too quickly and becoming too concentrated at certain places on my face. The 01 light shade is a little dark for my skin right now, so it's definitely more of a summer BB Cream shade for me. It gives a dewy and fresh finish to the skin, for a natural look, which is what BB Creams generally like to piggy back ride on.

Oh yeah, let's get this out of the way now, it smells. It has a green-leaf, chemically smell that is rather unpleasant for any product, let alone one that goes on my face, in close proximity to my nose. I'm not sure if the smell disappears after a while, of if my brain just stops noticing it, but smelling the product out of the tube is a little blach. Honestly, the first time I tried it out, I was worried that I had bought an expired tube and hence the smell.

Besides that, there's no sun screen in this at all. This is a huge let down. I maintain that BB Cream is meant to be more than just a tinted moisturizer, it should be doing something for the good of my skin. In this case, I don't see what good this product does to deserve the title 'BB Cream,' it really is just a tinted moisturizer.

As a tinted moisturizer it's fine, it does provide light to medium coverage, it provides the even finish - though I'm not sure how it couldn't do that, and it is kinda cool to watch a spotted white moisturizer change colours. However, it is expensive, at least as far as available mainstream BB Creams go, it smells, it has no sun block, it doesn't brighten or illuminate my skin the way other BB Creams on the market do. It does not work well as a makeup base, I tried putting foundation on top of this, and it seemed to skew the foundation colour, making my foundation significantly darker and a little botchy in certain places. Honestly, given the option between a liquid foundation and this BB Cream, I'd rather get the foundation. Foundation can be applied with a light hand to give the same dewy fresh faced appearance that this product gives.

One last thing, it's the same price as my liquid foundation. It's a shame really, I had wanted to be wowed by The Body Shop's take on BB Cream. I would have thought The Body Shop would really put in the effort to make the most of a product that would be good for the skin, whilst as a secondary function, providing some coverage like foundation. Apparently, I was mistaken.