Shea Butter Hand Cream & Foot Cream / Ultra Rich Body Cream Rosebud

Founded in 1976 in the small Provençal town of Manosque by Olivier Baussan, L'Occitane grew from his individual distillation of rosemary to its essential oil into an international organization offering an array of skin care and beauty products. The company partners with three women's cooperatives in Burkina Faso to obtain fairly-traded shea nut butter. Traditionally used to protect skin from dry winds and sand, women also apply it to their newborns to shelter delicate infant skin from the climate.

The best-selling Shea Butter Hand Cream combines twenty percent shea butter, honey, and sweet almond extract, scented with jasmine and ylang-ylang. This smooth balm soothes with apparent medicinal and cosmetic effects: hands that were once talons become hands again. Skin also benefits from vitamin E—excellent for gardeners, those in dry areas, or women who are exposed to toxic urban air. The Shea Butter Foot Cream relieves tired and sore feet through combining shea butter with antiseptic lavender essential oil to cleanse. Arnica, an anti-inflammatory, diminishes redness and irritation while mint cools. The Hand Cream is twenty percent shea butter; the Foot Cream, fifteen.

has released Ultra Rich Body Cream Rosebud—covering everything between the hands and feet—as a limited edition scent in celebration of the twentieth anniversary of its shea butter cooperative—now over 11,000 women participate. The Moroccan rose they use is light and reminiscent of rosehips, not heavy or too floral. For those who cannot plant a rose garden, it is a pleasure to hold one hundred milliliters of petals in your hand.

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