£90 for 30ml makes this face oil one of the more expensive treatments in my war chest of beautifying weaponry. I seem to remember mentioning it a couple of months ago, and I was pretty worried about what the response would be. I can’t even do my usual ‘price per ml’ calculations on this one, because it’s not as though you’re getting a whopping great bottle of oil for ninety quid!

What you are getting, however, is a facial oil of beautiful quality. It’s a blend of eleven essential oils including Argan, Apricot Kernel and Jasmine and it can be used on any skin type. Yes, you read that right – any! I found this hard to believe when I first read it – my skin gets terribly oily  (as you all know) in the run up to the Monthly Carnival of Hormones, and there is absolutely no way that I would normally put any type of oil on my face. But ‘oil it up’ I did, and I was quite shocked by the results; swapping my usual moisturiser for just one or two drops of the oil actually kept my skin spot free! How on earth that worked out I have no idea, but I can confirm that (on my skin, at least!) this oil seems to work well all the month round. My skin was soft, supple and really very glowing.

One thing that I will point out is that the oil is very strongly scented with Jasmine. It’s almost overpowering, but not quite – I’d describe it as ‘seriously heady’. I really like it, some people might not. It reminds me of summer evenings on holiday somewhere vaguely exotic and coincidentally, I think that it would be an excellent product to take on holiday to somewhere exotic! It’s amazing for really re-moisturising the skin, and I found it very useful over those months when the central heating was cranked up to the max.

So, on to the £90 issue. (Wipes beads of sweat from eyes.) I have been looking into the individual oils used in the Rodin blend and a lot of them are pretty expensive. Not that that justifies the £90 price tag, I’m sure – but this is Moneybags Monday where nothing has to be justified. It’s about pure luxury whatever the cost and the Rodin Olio Lusso is nothing if not luxurious. It makes skin silky and soft and it sinks in like no other oil that I’ve tried. And I’ve tried a fair few! I’m increasingly getting into my oils more and more – and not just for my face; hair oils, body oils, even nail oils and oils for the feet. Oils feel altogether more pampering – you have to spend a little bit of time working them in, but the results are definitely worth it.

I apply the Rodin Olio Lusso directly onto cleansed skin using the palms of my hands to press and gently massage. I don’t follow the oil with anything else because I am prone to the odd bout of oiliness, but you could use a serum before the oil if you wanted to – as a general rule I just swap in facial oils in place of a moisturiser when I use them, and that seems to work perfectly for me. I use the Rodin oil once or twice a week as a pampering treat and so far have only used about a third of the bottle in a few months. It’s pretty potent stuff.

Rodin’s Olio Lusso is £90 from Apostle Online.