You know how so many honey beauty products smell like one of the bees was turning 21, so the whole hive went out to celebrate, but they could only afford cheap pollen, and as a result they got completely blitzed on cheap pollen and bootleg nectar, then they made their way back to the hive and yakked all over the place, then the bees woke up the next morning and could smell their own breath and couldn’t look themselves in the eye because they’re pretty sure they didn’t have that snapdragon tattoo before they’d gone out last night and they just remembered they have to have brunch with Grandma B and her friends and who in the heck is Yaller Jaxt and why is he texting to say he and his friends loved meeting us last night and UGH IS THAT MY HAIR? Well that leads to a strong scent of “honey” and… booze. Or something.
And that’s how a lot of honey products smell, at least in my mind.
But not Save The Bees Honey Lemon Chamomile Organic Soap from MatchaMe Cosmetics, which is my new absolute favorite soap in the world.
I got a hold of it through a rather interesting route.
About that interesting route….
As an opera singer, I lurk in a Facebook group of opera singers looking to buy, sell and trade gowns (yes, very specific), when someone posted a request for people to try out a different beauty product they were formulating. I signed up, and it arrived along with some other products to sample, including a beautiful soap with a bee stamped on the top and little herby looking bits on the bottom. So that’s what I tried first.
I hopped online to read the ingredients in the soap, because honestly, I couldn’t tell if it was for the face or the body — and I tend to use bar soaps on neither. But perusal of the ingredients prompted me to do something I’d never done before — I decided to try using a body soap on my face.
ON. MY. FACE.
(This would quickly become a pattern with all the MatchaMe soaps I now own.)
The first thing I noticed about my new soap bae was the lather: creamy, luxurious, more like a cleansing cream than the mere lather of a soap.
Then I noticed that scent — light, gentle, and like honey but not like HONEY. (See paragraph 1.)
This soap smells like each bee has a little bee butler, and they do bee yoga and pilates, and get little bee massages. These bees are Oprah’s bees. This soap smells like what I’m SURE the back of Beyoncé’s neck smells like: Sweet dreams, endless possibilities, and success.
More info than you probably need but here it is anyway
When I’m trying out new cleansers, I always take few moments to examine my skin close up in a mirror after cleaning. I’ll run a finger over various parts of my face to see how my skin feels to the touch. I check to see how my pores look as well as look for blemishes and signs of irritation. I also have a lot of allergies and I can usually tell pretty quickly if my skin doesn’t like a product I’ve used.
After my skin dries a bit more, I’ll get a sense of whether or not the cleanser stripped or dried out my skin.
The Save the Bees Honey Lemon Soap checked every good box.
Plus, I love that you can turn the soap over and get a light exfoliation from the dried chamomile flowers on the bottom, or even shake a few of those leaves into your hand and exfoliate that way.
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So who is it for?
I honestly cannot recommend this soap enough, whatever your skin. In my experience, it’s moisturizing enough for dry skin, gentle enough for sensitive skin, balancing for problematic skin, and strong enough to clean oily skin without stripping it.
As a confessed product junkie, I’m constantly on the search for The Next Great Product. You know, the one that will give me skin as smooth and soft as a 3-month-old baby’s cheeks (both kinds), as pure and radiant as a unicorn in direct sunlight on a cloudless day, with a glow you only see in old paintings of The Baby Jesus.
I just found it.
Find Save The Bees Honey Lemon Chamomile Organic Soap and other wonderful soaps and beauty products from MatchaMe Cosmetics, Portion of the proceeds from this soap be donated to the Center for Biological Diversity in Arizona and Wild Save Bee Fund.
Top image: Laura Marques via Unsplash
