Autograph Velvet Touch Tinted Lotion

For those who don't know, last year (I believe) M&S launched their Beauty Hall which has tons of fab products from both high end brands and their own lines. One of the recent releases is their own self tan by their Autograph range.

Just to give you the basic deets, this is a tinted tan lotion which is available in Light/Medium and Medium/Dark (I obviously went for the darker of the two). This is described as being suitable for face and body, and develops within 4 hours for a streak free glow. Sounds good right? So I thought I'd give it a go...

As with all new tans I tried this on just my legs to start with - they take colour well and if it goes horrendously wrong I can easily cover them up! I found that the initial application wasn't the easiest and it took quite a while to work the product into the skin, although I am usually a mousse kind of girl (this is a lotion) so I'm not used to this type of formulation. Against my skin tone the guide colour didn't show up well, although it made my skin around a shade darker the tone of it was what I consider to be a "true tan" (not too olive or too orange), and it didn't take too long to dry enough to get dressed.

My right leg (so the one on the left of this photo) is the one with the tan on, my left leg is my natural skin tone... As you can see there is very little difference between the two (but judging by that mitt, there is a lot of guide colour in this product!)

The one thing I would say is that this is seriously fragranced, as in almost headache inducing, so that is definitely something to think about. The scent is quite artificial, but as this is marketed as having Aroma Defence (which I assume means no tan smell), so the strong fragrance may be to mask the biscuit pong...

As recommended I left this on for around 4-5 hours while going about my daily life. I didn't notice the usual fake tan smell developing, which is always a plus, but I did find that the guide tint rubbed off on quite literally everything so I found the only thing to do was wear loose fitting dark clothes (I normally just wear my PJ shorts for ease). After my time was up I did the usual and hopped in the shower to rinse off the excess and guide colour - the water was a very red based brown, which for me is good as that's what suits me the best. The end result wasn't that dark - it was a very subtle tint of tan, that just made my legs a little more even and glowy.

At this point I did try to get an "end result" photo, but you really couldn't see any difference in the skin...

In all honesty I'm not too sure about this product - it's great that it doesn't have that nasty tan smell, but for my skin the darkest shade just wasn't worth the faffing. Personally, if I'm going to all the effort of putting on fake tan, I want to actually look tanned (know what I mean?!) However, for someone with a much fairer complexion I would highly recommend this! The end result was very even and quite subtle, so I think even the Medium/Dark shade would be suitable for all skin tones!

As the colour wasn't very noticeable I couldn't really judge how it wore off, although I did find that my feet (which seemed to take the most colour, in a good way) were very even for a good 4-5 days. After that they started to lose colour where my sandal straps were rubbing them, but that's still pretty good I'd say! 

If you fancy giving it a go you can pick yourself up a tube for £8.50 by visiting your local M&S store or by clicking here.