I recently met the founder of Australian brand Vani-T and one of the questions I asked her was if she had any plans to add a self-tanner to the line which also contained an SPF (there aren’t currently, for those who are interested).

Now, there are a couple of problems with this, number one being people who’d blithely apply and then assume a protection level until the product wears off, which of course won’t happen. So my musing concluded that it’d probably be best kept for a wash on-wash off product and Rodial’s Skinny Beach SPF15 Tinted is doing just that.  Lancome too are on the ball with their 09 incarnation of Flash Bronzer, but it does develop, so you’d need to be vigilant with SPF on following days.

Those two brands weren’t first out of the starting blocks on it, though. No, new-to-Ireland-brand Au Courant have a product called Eclipse which claims to be ‘The World’s First Bronzing Sun Block’. That sounds great and all but unfortunately it has the most disgusting packaging I think I have ever seen – the pic above flatters it shamelessly – and is like something that crawled straight from the 80s. But in a BAD way. A ra-ra skirt kinda way.

I am baffled by this  – why put customers off at the first hurdle?  Yes, yes, of course it shouldn’t matter, but with cosmetics – things that are meant to make you look more gorgeous – it absolutely does.

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