No. Powder. Blusher. Ever.

If you are over 50, I want to forbid you to wear powder blush. Things can go rather Miss Havisham dusty pretty fast when you use powder after a certain age.

Maybelline’s new Cheek Heat gel cream blush ($11 at drugstores) gives you a natural flush and it applies fairly easily, so if you pause to breathe before blending it in, you won’t be left with dark dots of stain on your cheeks. There are six shades that look vivid in the paint-box inspired tubes (first popularized by Glossier, but no less cute for it) but they sheer out quite nicely.

The right blush enlivens your whole face and makes you look like you just spent a nice couple of hours tramping through the woods. Which is another thing to dream of doing when our house arrest ends.

The 65 Cent Brightening Vitamin C Facial

When the weather is endlessly gloomy, for fun I like to rip my face off with glycolic acid and then attack all that fresh, new skin with vitamin C to blast away sun damage and lighten any dark spots. It really works, and this method (can I patent it?) is stupid easy and super cheap.

I do it twice a week. (You may want to start slowly - like 30 seconds for the @aveenoca Positively Radiant In-Shower Facial instead of the whole 60, and only once a week) because I guarantee my skin is hardier than yours.

Do it when you get home. Apply the In-Shower Facial, scrub and rinse and then put on a layer of #theordinary Vitamin C Suspension 30% in Silicone. If the C stings, wash it off and go easier with the scrub next time. I go to bed with it on (“Life is pain, Highness.”)

The Ordinary’s C doesn’t contain water so it stays potent and won’t oxidize/darken like some other, much pricier (ahem) Cs. They also have a 23% C with hyaluronic acid, but the C is a bit gritty. This one feels nicer.

The @aveenoca In-Shower Facial is meant to live beside the tub (ergo, the name) which is perfect for super-forgetful and/or lazy types (🙋🏻‍♀️) but I do like to do this routine at night. That way, if I overdo it, I can put on a ton of (mineral) sunscreen the following day. (Of course, you know you should use sunscreen every day, but it’s critically important after peeling.)

And if you overdo it and your face becomes red and peely, some @larocheposayca #cicaplast will really soothe your tender, angry skin and speed healing. #betterthanpolysporin. *The In-shower Facial is $12CAN for about 28 ‘servings’ and The Ordinary C costs $5.80CAN which is practically free. (So go do this now, before Spring is here.)

Weleda Skin Food

The French take beauty and pleasure very seriously with words like ‘flaneur’, ‘gourmand’ and my favourite 'sensorialité', six syllables on the importance of appealing to the senses. 

German, on the other hand, is the language of “schadenfreude” (delighting in the misery of others) and kummerspeck (the weight you gain when you're unhappy) -- depressing but accurate reflections of the human condition. 

It’s ironic then, that German skincare company Weleda created the best skin cream ever, one that positively vibrates with sensorialité. 

In its Teutonic, no-nonsense packaging (that green tube has none of the retro nerdo-chic of French pharmacy beauty brands), Skin Food is the moisturizer we all need. It’s loaded with shea butter, beeswax, lanolin and rosemary, camomile and calendula extracts, with a lightly herbal orange, lavender and vanilla signature scent that belies its synthetic-free “clean beauty” bona fides. 

Use it when your skin is screaming at you from tightness and seasonal discomfort (thanks for nothing, central heating) or as a spot treatment on dry and flaky bits. It creates a dewy base for foundation or, if you’re feeling outdoorsily European, protects your skin from getting chapped when you ski. 

Makeup artists even dab Skin Food on cheekbones as a highlighter, which is the cool-girl version of using Vaseline as gloss when you’re a tween because your mother forbids you to wear makeup. 

After 93 years as a lone wolf, Skin Food has a family: Light Nourishing Cream for when your skin is only mildly complaining (perfect as hand cream), Body Butter to wrap your entire self in and Lip Butter to counter nature’s miserable, wintery attempts to suck all the moisture out of you while winds aim to knock you over. 

Sigh. Winter.

Say No To Matte Foundation

Matte foundation is the ugly dad sneaker of makeup. It only looks good on young people.

If you are over 50, run far away from those deliberately ironic shoes (they won’t look cute on you, sorry) and run even faster from skin-deadening evil foundation with a matte finish. 

Matte foundation must have been the brainchild of an old and bitter person (trust me, I know a lot of them) who thought “Let’s take the most alluring and evanescent feature of youth -- luminous skin -- and hide it under a thick coat of paint.” 

Why the attraction to matte skin? I suppose if you’ve spent your entire life with a shiny face ceaselessly pumping out oil, the idea of a velvety, unreflective surface could be appealing. But really, do you want your face to have the spooky, other-worldly appearance of a synthetic wine cork? 

Even if you are blessed with oily skin in your late adult years, you doubtless now have lines around your eyes, which a matte formula will only emphasize. Once you start aging in earnest and your skin wrinkles up and the folds on your neck look like someone’s elbow, you do not need to accelerate the process. 

If you want the coverage that foundation brings, I get it. Just go for something hydrating and leave the industrial spackle to Flat Tummy Tea 'models' who look fine on Instagram but alarming in real life. 

The only matte item you can wear when you are older is bright lipstick. (And even then, a little dab of balm on top wouldn't kill you.) Anything on the pink to fuchsia continuum or a highly pigmented red I’ll allow. Never, ever a matte nude mouth (you’ll look like a Law & Order SVU corpse) or a matte brown (you’re not Kylie Jenner, so just stop.) 

And if I do see you in deadening, matte foundation and you are over 50, I am going to spit on a Kleenex and wipe it all off.

A Makeup Bag is Just a Pencil Case for Grown-ups

This Margiela pouch with two fragrances, was a Sephora holiday offering last year. But my favourite part was the pouch itself.

I could never figure out why I was such a Goldilocks about finding just the right makeup bag: not too big, but not too small. Do I prefer nylon to leather, luxurious or practical? And on and on.

My friend and colleague Lesa Hannah explained my obsession with her post (below) written during her tenure as Beauty Director of Fashion Magazine. (She’s now at Elle Canada.)

Of course. Pencil cases!

Think about it. As a kid, you fetishize your pencil case and its contents and then, just as you enter the adult world of responsibilities, car repairs and dental appointments, you are no longer encouraged to keep cheering items like strawberry-shaped-and-scented erasers or stickers on your person at all times. So your makeup pouch has to fill a gaping cheer-void in your soul.

And although she didn’t address it, maybe Lesa would agree that the bag itself is critical choice too. Chic or whimsical? Practical or extravagant? Anything goes, as long it delights you whenever you spot it at the bottom of your bag.

And doesn’t her post make you want a Bic 4 colour pen?

The Best Candle You Can't Buy

This half-empty glass jar is all that’s left of my Annick Goutal Le Sac de ma Mère, the first and most imitated of all makeup-and-perfume-inspired candles. 

It was created by Annick Goutal’s daughter Camille as a sense memory of her late mother’s leather Hermès Kelly bag and its cigarette, face powder and lipstick contents after her far too early death at age 53. It predated Astier de Villatte’s Rue St. Honoré (commingled women’s fragrances in a Paris dress shop) Ladurée’s Rice Powder (rose and violet face powder), Byredo’s Loose Lips (lipstick) and Diptyque’s 2016 limited edition rose, violet and leather Rosa Viola, also inspired by a mother’s purse (and also needing a reissue.)

They’re all good, but Le Sac de Ma Mère is the queen: powdery violet, a rose ‘lipstick accord’ and oakmoss, tied together with a singular leather note. (I should go to Hermès and start huffing the bags to see if it’s a true ‘Kelly’ scent. That would get me banned pretty quickly I should think.) Le Sac de Ma Mère is complex, it’s fantastic, and it’s no longer for sale because it’s been bloody discontinued.

Korean cosmetics behemoth Amorepacific bought the brand in 2011.  Goutal was best known for Eau d’Hadrien, a citrus and cypress aromatic cologne that’s been shorthand for in-the-know Parisian chic since its debut in 1981, but the brand was moribund and its packaging dated (gilt bows on ribbed Victorian cologne bottles, endearingly fusty, striped candle jars.)

It relaunched in 2018 as Goutal Paris with a snappy new font, the candles in faceted sleek glass vessels, all good, all fine, but they didn’t bring back Le Sac De Ma Mère which defies understanding.

Bad things can happen when brands get sold and favourites are discontinued, erasing the brand DNA that made the company desirable in the first place.  

I don’t light my Sac de Ma Mère anymore, it’s way too precious. But it’s held its scent beautifully, so I put in my bureau, to perfume my scarves (which is a very mom thing to do, I think.)

Remedial Winter Self-Tanning

Self tanner can be a bad boyfriend: promising true love, but delivering only misery and patchy, orange colour. (OK, so maybe this metaphor doesn’t work.) By this point in the calendar I’ve had a few months of standing for hours in blazingly hot showers while turning my skin lizardy, ashy and dry.

What to do? Scrubs made of sugar or salt granules suspended in oil scare me. If anyone is going to slip, fall and die in the shower it’s yours truly.

So instead, I rip through most of a tube of Aveeno 60 Second In-Shower Facial, covering my whole body with something meant to be applied sparingly to faces. I feel very Marie Antoinette extravagant as its glycolic acid formula smooths away all the roughness on my ‘gator-like exterior.

Then the right self-tanner, discovered through much trial, streaked heels and Cheeto-orange error.

Avène Moisturizing Self Tanner Face & Body’s light gel cream spreads easily over arms and legs (with no tell-tale dark patches or streaks) for natural-looking colour. My torso stays pale and hidden under clothing at all times, so only the sticky-outy bits need doing. (Picture a turtle’s limbs emerging from his shell. That’s me. I am the turtle in this scenario.)

And for my face, Sisley Self-Tanning Hydrating Facial Skin Care smells ‘heavenly-slash-expensive’ (spoiler: it is) but the result is a hydrated ‘day on a Mediterranean chaise longue’ glow. (You know it’s chaise longue, not chaise *lounge*, right? Just wanted to clear that up.)

Once you’re over the shock of having spent a lot on Sisley, you’ll see that it’s worth it, as you’ll look naturally tan and never like someone heading into their fourth season on a Bravo housewives franchise.

A final note: please do not accessorize your tan with a French pedicure. Thank you. 

It’s Not Easy Being Green: Don’t Fear the Mirror this Winter

I am in awe of Jennifer Lopez’s steadfast refusal to age and I would like the phone number of the demon who gave her eternal youth. But that doesn’t mean I should attempt to self-tan my way to her level of tawniness. The JLo glow would look very mutton-bronzed-as-lamb on me.

I just need to look marginally less cadaverous as I head into the full-on greenish-white pallor that defines me from November to May. And as fun as it is to scare small children on the subway — “Look, mummy. That lady is dead!” — I don’t want to frighten myself when I stare glumly into the mirror every morning.

So I offer my profound thanks for Charlotte Tilbury’s Overnight Bronze & Glow Mask, a gradual self-tanner slash moisturizing sleep mask. Sleep masks usually leave me cold, but skin plumping *and* tanning is a worthwhile twofer and Tilbury’s version is great (streak free gradual tanning with a heavy dose of overnight plumping, so you wake up less winter-wizened.) All without the usual (unnecessary) strong sleep mask fragrance that dissuades me from using them.

Two nights in a row and then every third night for colour maintenance. Face, neck and for god’s sake don’t forget your ears. Mirrors will soon lose their power over you.