Saltyface Essentials Tanning Set Review: goop Editors Are Obsessed
Everything in St. Bart’s is French, but the Hôtel Barrière Le Carl Gustaf, perched high in the hills over Gustavia, might be the most French. Particularly its beach outpost down the street, Shellona, an outdoor restaurant where the champagne comes in jeroboams even at lunch, the chaise longues are reserved months in advance, the bikinis are tiny, the accents are strong, and the tans are spellbindingly even and glowy.
I was glad to have come prepared: The night before leaving, I enveloped my body in an airy cloud of Saltyface self-tanning foam (here’s how), then brushed and misted on the water formula for face. It took all of 60 seconds and dried in even less time, and I was off to sleep (amazingly, it really doesn’t stain your sheets).
A day of terrifying air travel later, I stood on Shell Beach, my skin glowing as if—like the rest of my new plage-mates—I had been slowly burnishing it on the back of my yacht for the previous four months. The tan was subtle and toasty and natural; streakless; and, for me, anyway, sublime. I smoothed on my sunscreen and somehow, miraculously, nabbed a chaise.
Just off the beach, you can swim right up to rugged cliffs in the cool turquoise water; I soon found myself surrounded by some of the flashiest tropical fish I’ve ever seen. Down at the bottom was a not-very-big sand-colored flounder, whom I somehow felt a closer kinship with than I did his neon-striped brethren.
Whether your personal style is more French angelfish or lefteye flounder, if it’s a tan you want, get this set. Somehow the least amount of fuss, in this case, yields the most seamless, tawny, French-beach-appropriate result.