Nuxe Body Oil Is My Fancy-But-Affordable French Pharmacy Beauty Secret

The fact that I wasn’t born a European is an eternal disappointment. My birthday is July 14, Bastille Day, the French equivalent of Independence Day, and there’s a kind of chicken-or-egg quality to my raging Francophilia. Berkeley, California, the actual place of my birth, is fine—some would even say great. Yet it lacked the intrigue of my fantasy version of the South of France.

I spent my teenage years steeping in my favorite genre of movies and books—what I call “people enjoying their summers in Europe.” Bonjour Tristesse, Call Me By Your Name, La Piscine, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and Eric Rohmer’s A Summer’s Tale all gave me a unique understanding of the problems of the petit bourgeois, as well as an affinity for a very specific, undone, vaguely vintage style. I don’t want to look like some blogger’s tired version of French style with a trench and ballet flats. I want to look like Alain Delon is my lover and I eat breakfast in bed every day around noon. That’s why I fell in love with Nuxe’s Huile Prodigieuse OR Multi-Purpose Dry Oil, which, for about 35 bucks, makes me look and feel like I’ve just spent weeks lounging around on the French Riviera.

I discovered pharmacy brand Nuxe at a duty-free shop at Charles de Gaulle Airport while stocking up on sunscreen. French pharmacies are famously incredible, full of some of the best cheap-thrill products I’ve found to satisfy my unquenchable thirst for all things French: high-quality moisturizers, probiotic tampons—I’ve even seen pill organizers with a certain elegance. You can find Nuxe products on pharmacy shelves all over Europe, and they’re sold in the US, too, but not nearly as widely. Though Nuxe makes a big line of lotions, perfumes, and lip balm, it’s especially known for its oils, including my favorite, glimmery Huile Prodigieuse, which is meant to be used on the body, hair, or face. This may cause some apprehension—I know slathering myself in oil flecked with glitter gave me some. But it’s a dry oil, so it isn’t sticky. And it absorbs quickly into the skin, which is convenient and good for oil skeptics. Then there’s the matter of the scent, which Nuxe says “evokes the sun and warm sand” with orange blossom, magnolia, and vanilla. I think it smells like the platonic ideal of sunscreen. It makes me feel both carefree and lazy, two things I would love to cultivate more of in my anxious and highly productive daily life.

Nuxe takes a more-is-more approach with its oils. Besides the classic one I love, it offers an extra-nourishing version and a floral one. I’ve tried all of them, and my advice would be not to get bogged down and to go right to the Huile Prodigieuse Or ($35 for 50 mL), the signature oil with some gold sparkle. It’s the only one with added color, but know that it’s not glittery at all. You will not look like an extra in a rave scene on a ’90s TV show. Instead it gives a shimmer, a sheen, a little hint of something festive. As if you just spent a day at the beach and you’re going to a party at night. Why anyone would want to look matte, I’ll never understand.

This oil can be used for scent, for sheen, for moisturizing. I have watched a 13:27-minute YouTube video on “5 Ways to Use Nuxe Dry Oil,” and you definitely don’t need to do that. I like mixing a few drops into an unscented lotion, or to sometimes warm up a drop or two in my palms and pat it onto my hair and on my cheekbones and collarbones before going to a party. If oil is not something you want to rub on yourself, Nuxe has the signature scent in a perfume, which I also own. Or you can be extra and layer the perfume over the oil and waft scent wherever you go. Really any party is a solid excuse to apply Nuxe, though I have also worn it playing tennis and hanging around alone at my house eating cheese and crackers. And the oil definitely enhanced both experiences.

Isn’t that the point? To elevate the banal and the quotidian via an affordable treat? Because I am not European, nor do I own a villa anywhere, and still haven’t been back to France since February 2020 (it’s where I heard reports on the French news of some virus I wondered if I should be concerned about). Until I return to France to re-create Supermarket Sweep in its pharmacies, I have Nuxe oil.