Glossier makes a splashy debut with body products that offer a one-two punch of cleansing and hydration, earning a spot as this week’s “Chosen One.”
First, Glossier came for our faces. I became a full-on stan circa the release of Cloud Paint earlier this year, and it was recently reinforced when Wowder came onto the scene a few months back.
With the recent rollout of their first-ever non-facial product a.k.a. the Body Hero Daily Oil Wash and the Body Hero Daily Perfecting Cream, I was fully prepared to just sign my entire beauty routine, head to toe, over to them.
And as it turns out, this hunch wasn’t wrong. Sold together as the Body Hero Duo or separately, both products live up to their promises of bringing some dewiness vibes to your dermis, though in somewhat expected ways.
The oil wash presents itself as something of a conundrum on the surface; aren’t we trying to ridour bodies of oil when we wash them? Well, yes. But even traditional soap-making methods rely on animal and/or plant-based fats, which, when combined with an alkaline substance, latches onto grease and dirt particles, and then suspends them so they can be washed away.
Glossier’s version contains seven different plant-based oils—coconut, meadowfoam, olive, soybean, sesame, grapeseed and sunflower—and when you apply it to your skin in the shower, it does indeed come out feeling quite oily.
But then, a moment of drama: Once you start rubbing it into your skin, it begins to foam up. Not quite in the same bubbly way as a traditional body wash, but enough to convince you some grime is getting a good beat down.
When you rinse it away, a significant amount of oil is still left behind to do some hydration on the back end, and I emerged from the shower significantly more moisturized-feeling than I normally do with a run-of-the-mill body wash—primed and ready for even more moisture via the Daily Perfecting Cream.
I’ve previously noted that many of Glossier’s products like the Perfecting Skin Tint and Wowder lean towards the light side—something that can be both an asset and a drawback, depending on how good you’re feeling about your skin at the moment.
In this context, the Daily Perfecting Cream seems surprisingly robust; it’s thick, and even from the initial spread, you can tell it means business when it comes to the company’s claims of “all-day hydration.”
Yet Glossier continues to prove its mettle as a master of shifting textures. The cream absorbs into your skin almost at once, without the stickiness that many heavy-duty moisturizers leave behind. While I didn’t particularly notice any of the skin-tightening effects asserted by the product description, I was impressed by how soft my skin stayed right up until my next shower.
Skin-wise, these products were a big hit for me. The only caveat? The smell, derived from an “orange blossom neroli blend,” according to the product description, reminded me of early 2000s hairspray—citrusy, but a tinge chemical-y as well. It triggered an immediate association with dance recitals of my youth, where my hair was lacquered with enough hairspray to protect my skull from mild head trauma.
But hey, that’s just my own personal Proustian sense-memory baggage. Doubtless, the majority of people will find the scent quite pleasant, in which case, the duo of products makes for a mightily impressive one-two punch of hydration for your skin.
Purchase the Body Hero Duo for $35, the Body Hero Daily Perfecting Cream for $22, and then Body Hero Daily Oil Wash for $18.
