ELLE TESTS
EXFOLIATING TREATMENTS
By Amy Lawrenson
Exfoliating in the shower is a love or hate thing, you either see it as a treat or a chore. Either way regular buffing is one of life's necessities, a must for summer dressing and essential preparation for a long lasting, golden tan - fake or real. A skin sloughing salon treatment is the most luxurious and the least tedious way to indulge and the ELLE team have been scrubbed, sloughed and exfoliated to bring you our pick of the best buffing treatments, here's the results...
Raw Glow Body, £88 at Glow Urban Spa
The spa
I visit Raw Glow in the heart of Knightsbridge for my exfoliation treatment. The spa is absolutely beautiful, the décor and atmosphere so serene that I feel instantly relaxed.
The treatment
I have the ‘full body polish’ which is a body scrub followed by an application of cocoa butter to leave skin smooth and hydrated. My therapist grinds up a course mixture of organic ingredients prior to my arrival, this includes pomegranate and seeds, which smell delicious. All products are entirely natural - but the spa itself does offer a variety of treatments and is not exclusively organic. The application is light and relaxing and my eyes are covered with a warm towel to encourage relaxation. Once the scrub has been massaged in, the therapist expertly removes the residue with a dry towel and then gently massages some luxurious cocoa butter into the skin. The whole treatment lasts about forty minutes, which sounds like a long time but actually passes really quickly.
The result
Post treatment my skin feels soft and smooth and the lumpy bumpy bits on my thighs, which I never get round to scrubbing myself have disappeared. The results last for a couple of weeks making this a perfect pre holiday treatment. I’m sure that I could have purchased the cocoa butter had I wished to but the other ingredients were spa secrets - making it a special treatment that I would definitely return for.
Best for: A natural and organic scrub.
Rating: 5/5
