The sun is out, but is your skin ready for it? If you’re anything like me, you’ll be rummaging through T-shirts and floaty skirts with a critical eye – not just for fashion status, crumpling and moth holes, but for compatibility with pasty, post-winter skin. That knee-length number? Oh heavens no, not with those corned-beef calves.
What you need is a decent fake tan and pronto. Imagine, if you can, a faux glow so quick you can slap it on at breakfast and see it fully developed by the time you’re drinking your morning coffee in the office. It sounds impossible, but St Tropez reckons it’s cracked it with Express Dark Whipped Mousse, its fastest-ever glow.
St Tropez Express Dark Whipped Mousse 200 ml
St Tropez Express Dark Whipped Mousse 200 ml
It’s an express tan, they say, but not like you’ve known before. In the past, the ‘express’ element was all about the short time it needed to stay on your skin before showering: anything between 1-3 hours, depending on how dark you wanted your skin to go. Eventually.
In my 20-plus years as a beauty editor, I’ve tried them all, and been eternally grateful for their sheet-sparing convenience, but resigned myself to the wait while the tan itself developed. My skin always looks just as pale when I shower off the guide colour, and the bronzed gratification is always delayed until I wake the next day.
But not with St Tropez Express Dark Mousse, I’m promised. Just give it three hours on your skin, and you’ll already be good to glow.
What’s new about Express Dark Whipped Mousse?
‘This is a game-changer, it’s unlike any other express tan I’ve ever tried,’ says A-list tanning expert Michaella Bolder. ‘By three hours, you’ll already have a lovely bronzed glow that’ll then last you all week. I just love that it’s really reliable. If I’m going out in a couple of hours, I know I can pop some tan on first, then shower it off and I’m ready. I’m tanned and don’t have to think about it again.’
That speedy colour, she tells me, is down to some clever formula tweaking on St Tropez’s part. ‘They’ve combined the tanning actives with a penetration enhancer, so the chemical reaction happens more quickly,’ she says. ‘And because you have extra skin hydrators in there, that allows the golden colour to go deeper and keep skin feeling soft and supported. I love that they’ve taken the best product on their shelf and made it even better. It’s an incredible product that absolutely smashes all the others out of the water.’
And it’s not just the speed that makes it special, she says. ‘It’s also the colour on the skin,’ she adds. ‘I found the original Express mousse was a medium-golden tone, but a lot of people want to have that really rich, deep-looking tan. You get that depth with the new product. I know every client will achieve a rich depth of colour with it, and it’s not orange in the slightest.’
What’s Express Dark Whipped Mousse like to use?
To give it a fair test, I applied it at 4pm on a weekend and set an alarm for three hours. The formula was a delight to apply, being a fluffy, ultra-light mousse that floated effortlessly over my skin. I was also pleased to see that the guide colour was daylight friendly, and not muddy or grubby-looking.
(Incidentally, I wore the guide colour to the office yesterday, without any embarrassment or tan-shaming. I did, though, get a couple of curious looks when I mentioned I was nipping to the loos at 10am to speed-wash my tan off with paper towels!)
The first time I tried it, I was sceptical that the tan would work within three hours, but I was wrong. As you can see from my pictures, my skin was visibly tanned when I came out of the shower. I was shocked – and delighted. The idea that I could wake up ghastly pallid and be Gisele Bündchen by lunch was revolutionary.
St Tropez claims the tan is fully developed at three hours, but in my personal experience, the colour did continue to deepen over 24 hours. This isn’t a complaint at all, as the colour is about the most perfect I’ve ever achieved from a bottle.
It’s smooth, streak-free and rich yet still believable, and it also fades in a very forgiving fashion. Hideous scaling to slough off? Not here.
Having road-tested it last month, I didn’t hesitate to whip it out again when the sun came out again this week. I’ve had so many lovely compliments today, with colleagues scribbling down the name of the product and planning a post-work trip to Boots. I’m confidently expecting a glowy-looking office tomorrow…
