Product Review: Fresh Sugar Lip Gloss and Lip Treatment SPF 15

Fresh cosmetics started with one product, as many lines do. The Co-Founders of Fresh, Lev Glazman and Alina Roytberg started off with artisanal soaps. The iconic oval soaps remain a staple in the Fresh line. As they started to expand Fresh, Lev and Alina chose to incorporate natural products like milk, sugar, soy and rice into their skin care products and cosmetics. Fresh products are like nothing you'll find anywhere else, and they pamper and perform at the same time.

The Sugar line was started by Lev, when he talked to Alina about how his grandmother would treat his childhood scrapes and cuts with sugar. Her grandmother had done the same. Sugar, besides being a great antiseptic, is also a humectant - that is, it moisturizes.

Both those properties are joined in my favorite lipgloss, Fresh Sugar (shown in Sugar Charm). Like the other shades, Sugar Charm is based on a natural skin tone. These colors amp up the shine on your lips, and add dimension as they add natural color. The sugar in the gloss gives it a sweet scent that doesn't come from a chemical perfume, and it also makes it a great moisturizer. The gloss also contains shea butter, jojoba oil, grape seed oil, black current seed oil, and Vitamin E, a great anti-oxidant. It's not sticky, and it has little pearls that diffuse light and make lips appear plumper.

Just a gloss wasn't enough for Fresh, so they created their best-selling Sugar Lip Treatment with SPF 15. The treatment comes in three shades: the original Sugar Lip Treatment, clear in a brown case; Sugar Rose Lip Treatment, with a hint of real rose scent, sheer berry rose color in a pink case; and the newest addition: Sugar Plum, a sheer berry plum in a purple case. Alina tells the story of how Sugar Plum came to be; on a trip to France, she visited a farm with a plum orchard, and when she plucked and tasted a sun-warmed plum, she was surprised to see how the dark plum skin enveloped the sheer burgundy plum flesh. She knew she had to put it into the lip treatment line, and so we now have Sugar Plum.

Fresh Sugar lip gloss retails for $18, and the Sugar Lip Treatments with SPF 15 retail for $22.50. You can find them at major department stores and online at http://www.sephora.comhttp://www.sephora.comand http://www.fresh.com.

(Sources: http://www.fresh.com/,http://www.fresh.com/content/about,http://www.sephora.com/browse/brand_hierarchy.jhtml?brandId=Fresh , http://www.sephora.com/browse/product.jhtml?id=P263909&categoryId=C11400 , http://www.sephora.com/browse/product.jhtml?id=P189210&categoryId=RPYMAL&navAction=jump )