Our Ouai Rose Hair & Body Oil review: I don’t know much about Cleopatra except for how she was basically a real-life Cersei who bathed in honey and washed her hair in milk. (No entirely sure these historical tidbits are accurate, but you get the idea.) What is acccurate: She f-ing loved roses. Kim Kardashian West has nothing on the Cleopatra-level of rose mania. She piled rose petals 20 inches high in her palace and soaked the sails of her royal barge in rosewater. This isn’t me guessing, this is historical record: “On the fourth day she distributed fees, amounting to a talent, for the purchase of roses, and the floors of the dining-rooms were strewn with them to the depth of a cubit, in net-like festoons spread over all.” (Credit: Athenaeus.)
Here’s the thing about roses: They get a bad rap! Go the wrong way with a rose, and you’re channeling more of a Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey vibe — though obviously the Dowager Countess would be much wiser than to anoint herself in that bad, weird, papery rose parfum so beloved of fragrance stores in failing malls. Get it wrong, and you smell like an expired Laura Ashley fragrance sachet. Like a pillowcase at the worst B&B you’ve ever visited.
So — where does Ouai Rose Hair & Body Oil fall on the rose-fragranced spectrum going from Point A (Cleopatra-style rose majesty) to Point B (Victorian-style rose sadness)? It is so far on the Cleopatra side that I might literally be writing this to you from Ancient Egypt. It’s clear, never powdery. And it lasts — Lord, how its lasts. Our favorite thing? In the entire world? To dribble some of this along an arm, then let that arm rest in an attractive sunbeam, and then smell the length of our warm, rose-y arm. It’s delectable. Clearly the heat activates the scent in some way, making it stronger and warmer and just like the rose-summer skin version of a cinnamon bun. (I’m doing it right now. It’s amazing.) “A little goes a long way,” is an important thing to note about this particular product, but other than that, it’s perfect. Have you ever put it in your hair? Put it in your hair, this very instant. In its way, it’s as much of a perfect summertime body oil as Nuxe.
Sometimes I don’t smell amazing. Sometimes I smell like sweat, or the woods, or whatever I had for lunch. (I can be open about this, after many sessions of therapy.) My dream, and the highest compliment I can hear, is “You smell incredible.” There is no faster way to achieve this than with Ouai Rose Hair & Body Oil. I’d buy it by the gallon if I could.
