It’s hot. You lay out a towel and before you’ve even finished the motion of positioning, adjusting, smoothing the surface, beads of sweat have formed on your brow. You lay your sticky-wet form down, adjusting it limb by limb. This year, the sun feels heavier and hotter. Someone is brewing tea using the sun’s rays and you can hear the spoon—clang, clang, clang—against the inner walls of the pitcher. You close your eyes and see the starburst of the sun, opening and opening, endlessly unfurling in shades of yellow and orange and blue behind your eyelids. In the distance, a lemon tree releases its blooms and the scent reaches you, but just barely.
You stretch your senses toward it—is it the actual smell? is it a memory?—it doesn’t matter; either way, you’re already gone.
Summer Soap is here to take the sweat from our bodies; to refresh our senses and wash away the sluggishness of the season. To invigorate. To renew. Welcome, Lemon Blossom Tea Body Scrub Bar. Like sun tea brewed on a friend’s porch, this soap is season-specific (summer!), but it’s a season that you carry with you wherever you go. It’s that one summer from memory that haunts and torments you—asking all other summers to be as memorable, as beautiful and sweet. This one is less ephemeral. You can rub it all over yourself and return there again and again.
Laced with poppy seeds, this new summer soap scrubs our bodies afresh, invigorating beach-weary muscles and pepping up our minds, snapping it out the past and putting it in the here and now of the shower. It’s like a lemon-poppy tea cake in soap form. (Sweet.)
And unlike our polarizing Tangerine Basil Soap, also full of poppyseeds (RIP, it was my favorite soap!), with its love-hate anise overtones, our Lemon Blossom Tea Body Scrub Bar is unlikely to offend even the most sensitive noses. It’s all summer, sweetness and lemon-drop ease.
Hop in the shower. Brew yourself a cup.
Lemon
Lemon essential oil is created from the skin of the lemon. It has antioxidant properties which neutralize free radicals on the skin and it also boosts collagen production. Lemon is helpful in balancing skin’s sebum (oil) and reducing inflammation. It’s a total mood booster too, with its acidic and bright scent. Breathe in a lemon when you want to feel awake and alive to the world.
Litsea Cubeba
The organic litsea cubeba essential oil in this soap is a rare beauty of the aromatherapy world. The essential oils are steam distilled from the ripe fruit of the Litsea Cubeba flower, which grows on small tropical evergreen trees native to parts of eastern Asia. They yield a fresh green, vibrant, lemony scent with light floral undertones—think: flowers along a wooded path in the dappled summer light. For the skin, it relieves congestion and balances oil. For the mind, it lifts and calms.
Clary Sage
Clary Sage soothes skin’s complexion and quells irritation (hello, summer mosquito bites), while also moisturizing. The scent is fresh and sweetly herbaceous with some soft notes of tobacco and tea leaves. When smelled, Clary Sage is known for elevating the spirit and waking up the mind.
Poppy Seeds
Lovely little poppyseeds are the star ingredient in your favorite tea cake, and when added to a soap bar they do something utterly incredible—they give your butt (or any part of you) a massage. I speak for myself when I say that after using a bar soap with poppy seeds, you will never go back. It just feels so darn good. And of course, it also exfoliates skin (good for armpit exfoliation too!), and boosts circulation due to the scrubbiness. Try it on achy legs and hips and never, ever look back.
We’re bagging this delicious little bar up in a reusable canvas drawstring sack with a summer solstice drawing by Jeff (limited edition!). It’s the best way to transport soap for travel because it’s lightweight and won’t trap moisture. So what I am saying is, this is the soap you’ll want to bring to that beach vacation you are finally taking.
Happy summer dreaming, cats. Happy lemon-y scrubbing.
Find Lemon Blossom Tea Body Scrub Bar here
Written By Vera Kachouh
