Read the ingredient list of the Geranium Leaf Body Balm beside the list for Aesop's Resurrection hand balm and the two are the same cream to the emulsifier: water, glycerin, sweet almond oil, stearic acid, cetearyl alcohol, ceteareth-20, coconut and macadamia oils, then shea and cocoa butters, aloe, wheat germ and soybean oils, vitamin E, a little carrot and beta-carotene for colour. Only the aroma differs, mandarin and cedar swapped for the green geranium, bergamot and mandarin accord that has defined this range since 1998. That is not a criticism; the base is a good one, and a brand that has found an emulsion its customers like is entitled to reuse it. It does mean the review of the body balm is largely the review of the hand balm, with one large practical difference: a body takes a great deal more cream than two hands, and this tube holds 100 millilitres. The leaf-green aluminium, at least, is honest about which range it belongs to, and it creases as it empties in the way the brand's tubes are meant to.
The cream itself is easy to like. Glycerin second on the list gives it real hydration, the almond oil gives it slip across a shin or a forearm, coconut and macadamia soften, and the shea and cocoa butters mid-list give it enough body to keep elbows, knees and heels from drying out again by the afternoon, all without petrolatum, silicone or mineral oil. It is richer in the tube than on the skin, spreads far, and is gone in a minute or two with the matte, velvety finish that lets clothes go straight over it, which is the base's best trick, the reason the hand balms survive on desks, and the reason this one survives under trousers. On normal-to-dry skin it does the everyday job well. On very dry, cracked or eczema-prone skin it does not go far enough, because it has no occlusive of the petrolatum kind and no urea or lactate to hold water in damaged corneum; it maintains skin in reasonable condition and is not the tool for repairing skin that is not. A body cream is judged on shins and heels in February, and this one passes on the first and asks for help on the second.
The accord is the reason to buy it over any other cream with the same base, and it is strong. Bergamot and mandarin oils sit tenth and eleventh with the geranium extract behind them, higher than the shea butter, and the list closes with five declared allergens, limonene, linalool, citronellol, geraniol and citral. On a hand balm that is a consideration; on a body balm applied over most of the skin twice a day it is a larger one, and anyone with a fragrance allergy, atopic skin or a history of contact dermatitis should read that list as the brand intends it to be read, literally, and choose something unscented. For everyone else the scent is the product: green, fresh and lasting an hour or more on the skin, the Geranium Leaf cleanser's trace made permanent. Anyone who has stood in an Aesop store and wanted to take the smell home will find that this tube, more than the wash, is the way to do it.
The practical problem is the arithmetic. A body cream used from neck to toe twice a day goes through 100 millilitres in about three weeks, and at fifty-one dollars that is a habit costing well over a dollar a day for chemistry that a pharmacy almond-and-glycerin cream matches for a tenth of it; the brand's eight reviewers at 4.4 praise the absorption and the scent and note, reasonably, that the tube empties fast. The 500 millilitre pump at a hundred and nine dollars halves the per-millilitre cost and is the only sensible way to use this as a daily full-body moisturiser, if that is the plan; the small tube makes more sense as an arms-and-legs cream, a travel size or a scent that happens to moisturise. There is no shame in a body cream being bought for its scent; there is only a case for knowing that is what is happening, and for buying the size that matches the intention.
Judged as skincare, then, it is a competent, fast-absorbing plant-oil cream for normal-to-dry skin, a notch behind the brand's own lactate-boosted and Eleos balms in formulation and well behind a good fragrance-free occlusive in repair. Judged as what its buyers actually want, which is the Geranium Leaf scent on the skin all day in a tube that looks right on a bathroom shelf, it is exactly that, made well, and priced like the fragrance it partly is. That is a narrower brief than the description's 'exceptionally hydrating' implies, and within it the balm is a pleasure.
