The American in me is primed to feel like anything instantly gets glammed up once you slap a French name on it. “Escargot” sounds way more appealing than “snails,” and “merci” seems more refined than “thanks.” So it should probably come as no surprise that I always think of La Roche-Posay as a premium brand, even though it’s widely available in drugstores, and not terribly expensive.

As a kid, I collected many things: stickers, bouncy balls, pencils, stamps, rocks…I guess I sound like a hoarder, eh? Now that I live in a small apartment in NYC, I can’t do that anymore. But I do still let myself collect one thing: hand lotions, especially ones that are packaged in small, travel-friendly tubes. I justify this habit by telling myself that I’m going to end up using it at some point, so each new item will only temporarily take up a bit of precious real estate in…

Drunk Elephant has to be one of my favorite names for a company, ever. The origin behind the name is interesting, too—apparently, it’s based on a myth that says elephants get drunk off eating the fruit from marula trees. The company includes marula oil as a key ingredient in many of its products (more on that later). Since Sephora’s birthday bonus was a pack of two popular Drunk Elephant products, I decided that it was a good time to try them out.