Smoothing Body Oil was the second product we ever developed, and we developed it because my mother has spent most of her life singing the praises of castor oil.
Unlike Nourishing Face Oil, which came together quickly, Smoothing Body Oil took about 30 formulation versions to get right. We finally landed on one — supplemented with argan and rosehip, substantial but never heavy, with the richness of castor oil and without the stickiness — with clary sage, rosemary, basil and bergamot.
It's an oil that smooths, softens and nourishes even the driest skin. Use a dropperful at a time on damp skin, straight out of the bath.
Shop Smoothing Body Oil — 4 fl. oz.
A castor body oil people come back for
Smoothing Body Oil has never been the centerpiece of our line, but it's the one the people who get it come back for, season after season — stocking up, coming into the shop and making a beeline for its spot in the corner of the display, and every so often sending us an unprompted email, gushing about it.
“Finally someone realized how to use castor oil in skin care without it being sticky.”
— Deb, a customer
Generational tradition, made for now
In the 1970s, my mother was a traveler, and sometimes a model, living in Venice Beach with artists and surfers, and Nashville with musicians and hippies, and making the rounds through Morocco and Egypt — lightning rods in the generational western imagination, glowing with electric possibility and the naive promise of some mystical new-culture utopia. She used plant-based skin care then, and she still does today.
Our body oil base, rich in castor oil, is a tribute to my mother. She has been committed to castor, in her mind the best of all oils for the skin, since before I was born. When my own modeling career had convinced me that expensive synthetic things in little gold tubes and jars were superior to what nature had to offer, she never stopped pulling out the castor oil, in its little plastic squeeze bottle, to happily apply in front of me. It was her silent, not-so-subtle way of reinforcing that what I was doing wasn't what she would do.
Mom was, and is, the coolest.
My mother's love of castor oil isn't accidental — the plant's history entwines with her own. The castor plant appears in the Ebers Papyrus, an Egyptian medical text written before 1500 BCE. My mother got to Egypt about 3,500 years later.
Read more about the plant, its history and how we source ours in our castor oil botanical profile.
What's inside Smoothing Body Oil
Smoothing Body Oil is built with seven oils — three carriers, castor, rosehip and argan, and four essential oils, carefully balanced for the finished feel and scent.
The carriers
Castor
India · organic, cold pressed, hexane free
Rich and substantial, castor oil helps soften dry skin and seal in moisture. It's the starting point for the whole formula.
Rosehip
Chile · organic, cold pressed, unrefined
A lighter oil that helps balance the richness of castor. Read more in our rosehip oil botanical profile.
Argan
Agadir, Morocco · organic, cold pressed, unrefined
Lightweight and smoothing, argan helps give the blend its silky finish. Read more about our sourcing in the argan oil botanical profile.
The essentials
Only the bare essentials: bergamot, clary sage, rosemary and basil. These four oils give the blend its botanical scent.
Bergamot
Calabria, Italy · cold pressed, bergaptene removed
The citrus note in the blend, with a long history in eau de cologne. We use bergamot oil with the bergaptene removed. Explore our bergamot botanical profile for more.
Clary sage
Organic, steam distilled
A herbal part of the scent, from a plant long known as clear-eye. Its history and our sourcing are in the clary sage botanical profile.
Rosemary
India · organic, steam distilled
Rosemary brings its familiar herbal scent to the formula. Its long history in personal care is part of what we explore in our rosemary botanical profile.
Basil
Organic, steam distilled from the leaves
A middle note, at the heart of the scent.
Seven ingredients. 100% natural.
How to use Smoothing Body Oil on damp skin
After a bath or shower, pat yourself mostly dry, then smooth on a dropperful at a time while your skin is still damp. Add more as needed for the areas you're applying it to.
The oil helps seal that moisture in. You can also apply it over your usual moisturizer as a finishing layer, or smooth it onto your hands and body whenever they feel dry.
For more on application, read how to use body oil after a shower. If texture is what has put you off oils before, our non-greasy body oil guide explains what makes a blend feel different from a single oil.
The scent profile is so beloved, one customer asked us to make Smoothing Body Oil into a candle.
Shop Smoothing Body Oil
4 fl. oz. / 118.2 mL
The herbal properties described here include common traditional uses and have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.
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