I've tried a fair few fake tans in my time and ever since I hooked up with the budget-friendly St. Moriz I haven't really experimented with others as it gives me a perfect bronzed glow which manages to avoid turning Oompa-Loompa coloured on my skin because of its olive undertones.
Leighton Denny has joined forced with 'tan king' James Harknett and I was recently contacted to try out
Sun-Believable (gotta love a pun!) and was sent a dinky little 100ml bottle which was perfect to bring away with me on my work trip last week to the South of France. I could even have packed it in my cabin bag if I needed to. For a mousse formula which can't be transferred into another container for travel as you need the special pump to 'jushz' the formula it's great not to have to lug a huge bottle of tan abroad, particularly when you can get so many applications out of a small amount.
I normally use the Boots-own spongey tan mitts which work well for me, but I really loved how soft the Sun-Believable felt before I got started with application.
It's a little tricky to separate at the start, but it's not a major issue. What was an issue for me however was the little black fibers it left all over my skin. Quite often I just need to whack a bit of tan on in a rush and it's not really ideal to be covered in black fur! However, you can always just use another mitt. However, after a wash the shedding wasn't as bad.
The tan goes on quite dark, with almost an olive tinge - but I like this as it acts as a guide against streaking and the greenish tones I think are what ensures you don't turn orange!
I'll go through the drawbacks first as overall, I do think this is a really good self tan. After one use, I found that the bottle could be a bit leaky, but I think this is the nature of these mousse pump bottles as St. Tropez and St. Moriz are the same. You just need to pack smart - wrap them in a couple of plastic bags and secure the lid area with an elastic band. Of course if you're not travelling with it this isn't a problem. Sun-Believable claims to last up to 10 days, but on me it goes to five or six at best before getting a bit patchy around my chest area, but this is still pretty good going in my books and the timings of course depend on how often you shower/bathe. As I normally find fake tans very drying on my skin I like to moisturise a lot, but one evening I found that after slapping on some Molten Brown moisturiser it went a bit streaky and the cream picked up some of the colour. The Molten Brown was quite heavily scented, so an oil-based moisturiser like Palmer's might work better - and give you glossier limbs! I did notice a lot of the colour washed off in the shower, but strangely I remained pretty tanned. It just left my bath water looking like a swamp - but every fake tan does this.
Now, the two main things I like about tan are the colour and its non-drying qualities. For anyone who splashes out on St. Tropez I highly recommend that you give Sun-Believable a try as it give a much more natural, believable golden tan - and with a couple of applications you will be sporting this summer's hottest trend, a deep Brazilian tan. I used the Medium tone and it worked very well on my 'ginger skin' - pale, almost blue, and freckled. It develops pretty fast, within a couple of hours, which is good if you need to be brown, pronto!
I've always suffered with insanely dry and irritated skin after using fake tans, but I'm happy to suffer through it to avoid looking like a daywalker when I'm in a sunny place in my bright, summer clothes. Sun-Believable markets itself as kind to skin and it does live up to this claim. It didn't dry out my skin much at all - there were no manic midnight leg scratching fits and for me this is a total bonus! Another benefit is that the formula is practically odourless.
At ten times costlier than my current go-to fake tan, I'm not sure I'll be splashing out on bottle after bottle of this to get me through the summer, but if I had special occasions or events where I needed a bit of colour I would definitely save it for these. All in all, I've really enjoyed using this tan. Out of a 200ml bottle (£30 plus a free mitt) you get at least 10 applications, so thinking about it that way, £3 a pop isn't bad.
You can purchase Sun-Believable in Medium or Dark at John Lewis, online
here or through QVC. You can pick up a travel-friendly set of the 100ml versions of the tan mousse, body exfoliator and moisturiser for £35.
*PR sample provided for review
