Repair summer-damaged beauty with new products from Drunk Elephant

We’ve checked out Drunk Elephant before, but this innovative lifestyle/skin and haircare brand is always coming up with new products! I was happy to be hosted to experience them.

Drunk Elephant takes a different position from most other lines: they don’t make a distinction between “natural” or synthetic ingredients. Rather, they focus on maintaining a healthy acidic environment and excluding specific ingredients that are known to cause irritation: essential oils, drying alcohols, silicones, chemical sunscreens, fragrances/dyes, SLS.

Many parts of the US had brutally strong sun this summer and it’s still going on. It’s critical for everyone to use a sunscreen, to prevent skin cancer and premature aging. If you’ve had a recent injury, surgery or old scars, you need protection even more. Umbra Sheer Physical Daily Defense provides a SPF 30. Zinc Oxide does the screening, while there are lots of other ingredients improving skin texture, including astaxanthin, grape juice, sunflower shoot extracts, raspberry seed and marula oils, jojoba, wheat protein and sea water. It has a rich face cream consistency, but blends to be completely sheer and dry to the touch.

Decades and decades ago, an all-purpose ointment/balm started a skincare empire. How to improve? Wonderwild Miracle Butter is formulated with restorative plant butters — marula, cupuaçu, mango, and shea — adding fatty-acid-rich plant oils like meadowfoam, pumpkin, green tea seed, kukui, and rose hip. Meadowfoam oil is the new “it” ingredient for skincare, check your high-end fashion magazines. You can use this on your body, face, hands, feet, eyes and lips! Do you have stubborn dry patches or crinkle lines on your face? Try this overnight! Flaky arms and elbows? Game changer.

If you’ve got a fading or flaking tan, old bug bite marks or dry and crepey skin, you’ll enjoy the new Scrubbi Bamboes Body Cleanser. This is not a scratchy, gravel-like exfoliant. Rather, it’s a rich and clear jelly that foams, with gentle bamboo buffers. It has a subtle vanilla scent, with amino acids, electrolytes and plant oils. I like to rub it in a bit while showering. I think that with some exfoliators, you have to watch where you use it, but this feels comfortable even on tender skin.

Another new product addresses a myriad of skin problems, many of which can crop up this time of year. A-Gloei Maretinol Oil refines skin’s texture, minimize the appearance of lines, hyperpigmentation, blemishes and sun damage. It incorporates vegan retinol, virgin marula oil and ceramides. It’s in porcelain container, applied with a dropper. You only need 2-3 drops on a dry face, once a day. Now, I’m not your dermatologist, so I can’t speak for your skin. But I have delicate skin that has suffered burns, crazy bright sun this summer, humidity and I was trying everything I could lay hands on. I was drinking all these vitamin waters, the whole nine. I started using this oil for a few days and I then could go outside without troweling on a ton of foundation and concealer.

So, during the summertime — swimming, perspiring, sun exposure, sand — do you feel that your hair looks like crap? Yeah, I know. I recently was forced by my cotton candy ends to have a haircut similar to Buster Brown’s and my hair doesn’t really grow back well. But Drunk Elephant has some new haircare products that would be a strong brand just on their own — they aren’t some throwaway, “Let’s add hair products!”

Silkamino Mega-Moisturizing Shampoo is radically different from probably any other shampoo you’ve used. It has the consistency of a very rich body cream. I notice a light sweet vanilla scent. It’s meant for dry and damaged hair, chock full of silk amino acids. Coconut acid and sunflower seed oil help with shine, too. The shampoo is specially formulated to not aggravate the scalp, which can get sunburned or irritated from coloring and blow-drying.

For heavy-lifting repair, a mask will help with dried and fried hair. Silkamino Mega-Moisturizing Masker has extra nutritious marula oil, sunflower fatty acids and panthenol, a form of protein. It has that famous sweet vanilla fragrance. You can use the lotion consistency mask for either 1-3 minutes or 20-30 minutes. It will not weigh your hair down!

Silkamino Conditioning Leave-In Milk is the final touch for shiny, lively hair. It’s new, it’s vanilla-scented and has a facial cream consistency. It helps with styling, hold, moisture and smoothing. They say just a small amount is needed and I agree. You can use it on damp or dry hair. This is product that doesn’t feel like “product”. It’s not sticky or stiff or goopy. You’ll be surprised at the modern and healthy look your hair has!