Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Shower Like It's Your Birthday: Philosophy Birthday Cake Shower Gel

Rusty






One of the great things about being part of Sephora’s Beauty Insider program is that you get free little birthday gifts every year. I realize it’s a ploy to get me to buy stuff by forcing me to come to the store to pick up my gift or forcing me to order online to get them to ship it (since you can just ship the free gift alone) but I’m pretty much pro-free things in all aspects of my life and occasionally have the willpower to leave my local Sephora with nothing but my present. Occasionally.

This past year the free gift was Philosphy’s Vanilla Birthday Cake bath and shower gel and I only recently got around to using it.


First the scent; while it doesn’t smell as strongly of cake as their Red Velvet bath and shower gel, it does smell like vanilla in a nice subtle way. It’s pleasant rather than overpowering, which I appreciate out of scented shower gels. The gel has a satiny quality to it and is very thick. I’m down to about half the bottle now and it takes a little time for it to flow down towards the cap to get it onto my shower pouf. It also results in a thick lather which is very nice.

While I haven’t used it as a bubble bath or a shampoo, I could definitely see potential for the bubble bath use. The thick gel and lather seem to me like they’d make nice bubbles in the tub and the scent would be lovely in that context as well. I’m not buying it as much as a shampoo, but I suppose I can’t knock it till I’ve tried it. As a body wash, I like it. It seems effective without being overly drying and the scent doesn’t seem to cling too much so you don’t have to worry about it interfering with perfume, scented body lotion, or deodorants.

My skin during winter is always dry, but this body wash doesn’t make it any drier than it would be otherwise if that makes sense. I love the scent, and the satisfyingly thick lather so I’m rating this a 7 out of 8. And I’ll get back to you on the shampoo part.

Rating: 7/8 tentacles

2 comments:

  1. I *hated* this stuff. I think the biggest problem I had with it is that it had that weird, plasticky smell that I seem to get from every Philosophy product I've ever tried. And it made my skin really dry and gross. It was awful as a shampoo. I'm glad I didn't pay anything for it.

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  2. Completely agree with Figgy. It smells plasticky, like a kid's toy that is supposed to be vanilla-scented. I tried to exchange it at a Sephora store but they wouldn't let me since it was "free."

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