Masstige is a marketing buzz word. It signifies the idea that you can have a cult product at high-street, mass-market level, such as the Celia Birtwell collection at Topshop or last summer’s £12 Primark ballet shoes. This year’s must-have is the radiance cream: Johnson’s Holiday Skin, Dove Summer Glow, Boots No 7 Naturally Sunkissed and Nivea Body Sunkissed Skin. It all started in 2002, when Clarins launched Radiance Plus, the first moisturiser/self-tan hybrid. This summer, a raft of high-street versions has followed. And they’re a masstige hit.
Johnson’s Holiday Skin is the first adult body moisturiser to sell more than 1m bottles in five weeks. At its peak, it caused a bidding war on eBay, with prices rising to £20 (it normally costs about a fiver). Dove Summer Glow has sold one bottle every two seconds (during shop-opening hours) since its launch in March. I tried Holiday Skin (as an experiment, since I am avowedly pale) and found it rather streaky, but those around me say that’s an anomaly. Use it for a pre-tanning veil of colour as well as post-tan glow enhancement.