Three 30 ml organic hand creams in a gift pouch: sweet almond, rose and jasmine. All three are built on the same base — shea butter, aloe vera and vegetable glycerin — in a light, non-greasy texture, and differ only in fragrance.
What is in the pouch
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Sweet Almond — the softest and least floral of the three; a warm, faintly marzipan note. The one to choose if you find floral hand creams too perfumed.
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Rose — powdery and classic.
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Jasmine — the most intense; jasmine is a heady, indolic flower and the fragrance follows it.
How the formula works
Three ingredients do nearly all the work. Vegetable glycerin is a humectant, drawing water toward the skin surface and holding it there. Aloe vera adds water and polysaccharides. Shea butter is the occlusive layer that slows evaporation. That combination — humectant plus occlusive — is what every effective moisturiser does, natural or not.
Where cosmetic copy says "hydrated*", the asterisk refers to the water content of the upper layers of the epidermis. Nothing applied to the outside of your hand hydrates you from within.
Why hands need their own cream
The back of the hand has thin skin with very few oil glands; the palm has thick skin with none at all. Neither produces enough sebum to protect itself, and both get washed several times a day. That combination is why hands chap while the rest of you is fine, and why a face cream does not solve it.
Fragrance, honestly
Fragrance is the leading cause of contact allergy in cosmetics, and natural fragrance is no exception — geraniol, citronellol, linalool, benzyl benzoate and benzyl salicylate all occur naturally in rose and jasmine materials and all appear on the EU's list of 26 substances that must be declared on the label. Read the tube if you have reacted to scented products before.