I’ve always had sensitive skin, but during my first pregnancy in 2015, I began having allergic reactions to all sorts of products that I had previously been fine with – moisturisers, hand wash, deodorants, detergents, bleached/normal toilet paper, feminine hygiene products…
The only thing that made any difference was using products that were as natural as possible, and so I made effort to ditch anything around our house that used harsh chemicals or other ingredients. Although my skin’s pretty much returned to normal, it’s because of this experience that my beauty reviews are relatively few and far between these days – I’ll never pop something up on here that I wouldn’t use myself and I still prefer to use natural products. So when the opportunity came up recently to sample this range from Aotearoad I knew it would be a good one to feature on this blog.
The Aotearoad range
Hand made in New Zealand ( I LOVE to support local), the packaging is beautiful and what’s inside is amazeballs too; cruelty free, environmentally friendly, vegan, and free from aluminium and parabens. Plus one of the best claims? That all the products are high performance and long lasting.
One of the biggest issues I had when I did the big changeover of our household beauty and cleaning products was that natural options were only really just becoming more mainstream. This meant scent/variants were limited and the products were generally very expensive as I had to get them from specialty stores. And so I forked out a lot of money to give products a go that frankly didn’t work that well. I think it’s great that the Aotearoad range is more accessible budget-wise, that there are a number of scent options and that you can buy them from the supermarket.
Road testing
The products I was provided for review included:
- Dry Shampoo (50g, RRP $14.99)
- Body Moisturiser (55g, $14.99)
- Deodorant (60g, $12.99)
- Hair Clay (70g, RRP $12.99)
- Foot Deodorant Powder (50g, $11.99)
The moisturisers and deodorants are in stick form and you push up the centre of the tube from the bottom to release it out the top. All the moisturisers and deodorants feel quite light without being greasy, and the scents smell amazing without being too overpowering.
Unless I’m straightening my locks, I haven’t used much hair product since I was a teenager. However, now that I’ve been doing regular filming for Grace, Grit & Gratitude, I’ve been needing something with decent hold to keep my hair in place while I demonstrate exercises. My hair isn’t particularly unruly, but I do have a lot of frizzy shorter bits around the edges of my hair since having two babies several years apart in recent years. This is a medium hold hair clay with a matte finish that certainly does the job of keeping the frizzies at bay.
The dry shampoo comes as a powder in a shaker and has options for both light and dark hair. As I’m brunette, I tested the Wild Orange & Cacao for dark hair. It smells delicious and presumably the cacao content makes the powder a pale brown colour. My hair is a very dark brown – almost black – so I really need to work the powder into the roots to get it to blend in, however, it does get there eventually and it does work to get my hair feeling less greasy and fresher without washing it.
The foot powder also has a lovely scent and while I don’t have foot odour issues or particularly sweaty feet, it does help freshen them up.
About the brand
The New Zealand owned and operated company is all about premium organic and natural products that are affordable, ethical and sustainable.
The range of products from Aotearoad is now available from www.aotearoad.com, and selected New Worlds, Pak ‘n Saves and organic retailers nationwide.
All products for this review were provided by Aotearoad