Growing up in Hawaii, Skin Trip Mountain Ocean Coconut Moisturizer formed the trinity in any beach bum’s bag. Along with a lemon to lighten your hair and Maui Babe Browning Lotion to tan your skin, Skin Trip was the virtuous one of the three. It’s made with coconut oil! The label looks like something your best friend might have drawn while on ‘shrooms (which is apparently true, I’ve heard from friends)! And it was the only thing that balanced out the damage we were all wreaking on ourselves day after day in the consistently balmy weather.

Only, I hate moisturizers, especially the lotion variety. Virtually all are too heavy, too fragrant, too greasy, or have too many ingredients to my liking. Skin Trip is none of those things—it just took me moving to New York to figure out that I already had a pretty good thing going. See, there’s a difference between dryness from seawater evaporating off your skin (nice) verses cold, blistering winds taking your skin off (terrible). Moisturizer, my patchy, flaky, burnt skin made very apparent, would be necessary in my life.

Packaged like a bottle of acrylic paint, Skin Trip feels similar to a thin, lightweight varnish. The ingredient list is short. It smells of coconut (obviously) but only faintly.

Most importantly, your skin, even after slathering the stuff on, still feels like your skin. It instantly soaks in, leaving no greasy, slippery mess behind. I know Skin Trip is supposed to celebrate a kind of psychedelic, hippy heritage—it’s made in Boulder which is basically like Hawaii but with snowy mountains and legalized marijuana—but I take it literally. As in my skin has taken a trip back to its pre-exposure-to-the-harsh-elements state: soft, supple, and lightly scented. At roughly $10, it’s almost as good as a plane ticket home.

—Alexis Cheung

Photo courtesy of the author.