LUSH Miranda Soap

A LUSH Bar Soap can never fail to make my day!  This time around, I am trying out the Miranda soap, also known as The Girl From Ipanema soap from the LUSH Japan website.  A bit of background because I confuse everyone.  A close friend of mine lived and worked in Japan for two years and was able to go into LUSH in the major cities every few months.  One time, she bought me a piece of this lovely scented citrus soap and sent it over to me in the States.  I had never heard of this soap before and so I tried looking through the United States LUSH website.  Armed with a scent description and the bar itself, I was forced to give up becuase it resembled nothing on the website.  However, I was playing around on the site a day or two ago and found this new soap that I had never heard of before.  It is called Miranda and it IS my soap!!  Both the description and picture match exactly and I pulled a shot of the original up from the Japanese website and they are perfect matches.  I was so excited since I love this soap and have been keeping a small chunk aside, thinking that I would never see it again.

Like the Japanese version, this soap smells of sweet kiwi and orange, it is great choice to get me going in the morning.  "A fresh fruit salad of a soap, Miranda is made with fresh, organic kiwi fruit because they're bursting with Vitamin C and gently cleanse the skin.  We add in bergamot because it's soothing and smells of oranges.  There's toning ylang ylang and juniperberry for clearing up congested skin and refreshing tired spirits.  Simply fruit-tastic." 

This isn't the only product in the LUSH line that uses fresh kiwi as an active ingredient, it is in both a face mask and a shampoo.  For today's purposes, I will write about how well it works in the soap and leave the other two products for when I get to purchase and review them.  "Fresh kiwi fruit is an excellent addition to our palm free soap base in our juicy Miranda soap to really refresh the skin.  Kiwi fruits also contain excellent levels of Vitamins E and A and have exceptional mineral content too.  Kiwi fruits contain a very high level of anti-oxidant Vitamin C, even greater than that of oranges.  Anti-oxidants combat the formation of free radicals.  The damage our skin develops through the onslaught of sunlight pollution and the aging process can be helped the action of anti-oxidants.  Raw kiwi fruits contain an enzyme called actinidin that is capable of dissolving protein.  Enzymes accelarate a chemical reaction without being used up in the process and are known as catalysts.  Actinidin breaks down the surface protein based dead skin cells and dirt on the skin."

So, we all see that this soap not only smells fantastic, but it has a host of other great properties to it.  Personally, I never knew that Kiwi was this effective before since I rarely ever see it used as an active ingredient.  Hopefully more companies will pick up on how effective it is and begin to work with it but I won't hold my breath for products as high quality as those from LUSH.

This bar of soap ranks in my top five favorites soaps from LUSH and might even end up in my top five favorite overall products from this company.  The scent is nice and strong and just like the Rockstar soap, I can smell it in my bathroom long after my shower is over.  I use it right on the skin instead of on a washcloth so I get just a bit of foam from it.  It is a heavier soap and so far my bar has lasted over three weeks (this is not a big bar).  It doesn't dry out my skin at all so I could use it in the winter months without any problems.

LUSH soaps are always a winner for me and this is yet another one that I have come to hold in very high regard.  If a shower gel or body scrub would come out in this scent, I would be first in line for it...

photo courtesy of LUSH