The best lotion for dry skin is water and oil. You can make your own body butter by melting together about a cup of shea butter, a tablespoon of raw honey, a milliliter (eyedropper full) of oblipicha oil, and a cup of cold pressed olive oil, unhydrogenated palm oil (also called pure vegetable ghee), virgin coconut oil, or expressed sunflower oil, in a saucepan. Only heat it until you can mix it, but not to the point where it is too hot.
In a pinch, or if you don’t have a talent for DIY, you should use a lotion that is very oily but based on natural oils. Lubriderm, Vaseline Intensive Care, and Nivea are good, but they use mineral oil. Mineral oil is a great emollient, but that’s all it does. Vegetable oils that are unhydrogenated still have their botanical properties that help to tone the skin’s surface and in the case of sunflower oil, protect it from microbes.