Elle Vie Body Products

Elle Vie — pronounced L-V — is a Black woman-owned body care line out of Dallas, and it exists because a shop in Washington, DC discontinued a body butter.

Founder Lavida had been buying that butter on every DC trip for years. When a 2013 holiday visit turned up an "improved" inventory without it, she went looking for a replacement and found the usual problem: mass-market moisturizers that are too thin, too thick, too floral, or full of things you would rather not put on your skin. An engineer by training and a serial entrepreneur by habit, she made her own instead, and established the brand in 2014.

The line runs to whipped shea body butters, body oils, scrubs, shower gel, lip balms and parfum, sold individually and in sets and bundles — including a men's collection and a butter-of-the-month subscription. Products are made with quality oils and blended into fragrances the brand describes as grown-woman scents rather than wall-plug-in sweetness.

Elle Vie calls itself the ultimate ash kicker, and the mission it states is to eradicate global ashiness. Customers seem to agree: the brand carries thousands of reviews.

Based in Dallas, shipping nationwide.