Tom Ford White Suede: #sweaterweatherperfume for bitterly cold days

Tom Ford’s White Suede eau de parfum should have been a superstar.

Launched in 2009, White Suede (50 ml, $335, The Bay) has been quietly earning fans as a smoky-into-powdery, musk skin scent. Beloved but always under the radar, it never reached the front ranks. Maybe it was too subtle to be a huge, noisy hit?

Back then, Tom Ford was best known for his room-filling, attention-grabbing Black Orchid, so it’s easy to see how White Suede slipped by unnoticed. Unlike Black Orchid, which smells like seduction or the promise of a party, White Suede is what you want on ‘big sweater and undone hair’ days, which are most days to a lot of us. Maybe this stealth allure resonates more now?

White Suede is quiet. Even though it is rich and layered, courtesy of rose, oud, saffron and frankincense, with unexpected brightness from thyme and lily of the valley, it never shouts. It’s a powdery, soft musk, in a quietly smoky leathery frame.

It’s perfect when you want something singular and not easily identified. And it will never turn sweet or overly floral as it dries down. Which is the kind of integrity and steadfastness we need going forward.

An Authentic NYE With This One Simple Trick

Dark red lipstick and a pair of diamonds encrusted snakes winding their way up your arm is all you need for New Year’s Eve.

I’m going to make our quiet New Year’s Eve feel like a crowded 1990s party by getting Craig to blow cigarette smoke directly into my hair after I go hard with red lipstick and spray myself with an extravagant evening fragrance. I really miss the perfume-plus-smoke smell of a party and want to feel like I had a wonderful time at an overcrowded fête without actually spending time in an unventilated room with drunken strangers.

But where can I buy just one cigarette? Maybe lighting and then blowing out a stick of Palo Santo to wave around my head would work equally well, because Palo Santo is something I actually have.

And these two newish perfumes epitomize the big party vibe I crave.

Mugler Angel Nova eau de parfum, $115, Shoppers Drug Mart, launched last year when no one was feeling particularly festive, so I am drawing your attention to it now. It doesn’t smell much like the famously vanilla/patchouli/cotton candyish Angel. It’s more of a tipsy, smeared lipstick scent: all waxy rose and woods, patchouli and musk. It smells like being beautifully dressed and somewhat slutty, but slutty somewhere cool, like Venice.

Carolina Herrera Very Good Girl eau de parfum, $130, Shoppers Drug Mart, starts out as a happy, fizzy cocktail with lychee and red currant before deepening into dark rose and resinous vetiver. It’s like a shiv hidden under a poofy crinoline. Or like a sleek-limbed vamp in a black and white Helmut Newton photo (see above).

Burt’s Bees 100% natural Lip Crayon in Napa Vineyard, $9.99, London Drugs, is an under-appreciated gem with clean beauty bona fides at a drugstore price. The colour is a deep rich red, the formula is beautifully moisturizing and the twist up crayon format makes it easy to apply. We need the small joy of buying a glorious product that doesn’t make our wallets shriek. New year, new budgetary restraint, amirite?

#sweaterweatherperfume For Only $14

We interrupt gift guide season to suggest you buy yourself something small when you’re stuck at the mall with your long list and your waning patience.

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It’s very Cool Girl to not let price dictate what you like. Carolyn Bessette Kennedy was known for wearing Karim Abdul Egyptian Musk Oil that she would buy from NYC street vendors. The Body Shop White Musk perfume oil has that same quiet cool energy. It’s a gentle skin scent that doesn’t smell like ‘perfume’ per se, but instead becomes a part of you. This is especially welcome during sweater season when you are hiding your actual skin away under so many layers.

White Musk was the first non-animal derived musk, when it launched in (gulp) 1981 and its most recent iteration, launched this year, is now 100% vegan. And if you did wear it way back in the early 80s, when we all flocked to The Body Shop for Kiwi Fruit lip balm and Peppermint Foot Lotion, you’ll be happy to know it is still the same great ‘laundry’ musk, with floral notes to subtly amplify its clean vibe.

Isn’t it reassuring when something you loved in your youth hold ups and isn’t a massive embarrassment now?

The Best Luxury Beauty For Giving

Sure, Hermès Les Mains Hermès nail enamels, $63, Holt Renfrew, might look like the most extreme sort of frivolity, but the colours (inspired by Hermes’ iconic leather shades) are beautifully executed and have wonderful depth. They’re a lovely gift for a friend if you feel hesitant buying them for yourself.

19/99 Beauty’s Countertop Precision Colour pencil set, $134, 1999beauty.ca, is all the Canadian brand’s carefully curated pencils for eyes, lips and cheeks gathered in a sleekly graphic glass cup. Having everything in front of you lets you simplify your daily ‘get out of the house’ makeup or amp it up for a holiday festivities with minimal fuss.

So many ‘holiday’ makeup offerings are just intense ‘evening’ colours garishly overloaded with excessive shimmer or chunky glitter. The Gift Edition $180.64, from Westman Atelier lets you create a festive less-is-more holiday look with only two items: a gleaming pearly oyster highlighter stick and a quartet of richly pigmented, moisturizing matte lip shades.

Sulwhasoo’s herbal facial soap is skincare masquerading as a beautiful bathroom accessory. You get two bars of antioxidant-rich red ginseng soap and a delicate filigree-patterned soap dish for only $50. Holt Renfrew.com.

This trio of Fresh Colour & Care Hydrating Lip Gift Set is only $35 (luxury isn’t just about price) at Sephora.ca, but the joy of having a heavyweight balm (the metal cases feel substantial and solid) in your coat pocket, in your bag and one by your reading chair cannot be overstated.

I see new Kérastase Chronologiste Sérum Universel, $250, Kerastase.ca, as more of an extravagant hair perfume (fragrance lasts longer on hair than skin after all) with nourishing benefits, then as a haircare product. The tea rose, wood and musk scent is rich and deeply fancy while hyaluronic acid, vitamin E and deep sea Abyssine tame frizz, plump hair fibres and protect from external aggressors. It even comes in its own dust-bag (I am a sucker for a good dust bag.)

Beauty Advent Calendars 2021

Holt Renfrew’s Beauty Advent Calendar is a month-long tour through the most luxe beauty brands.

Don’t wait until later in the season to give your dearest friend their holiday gift. A beauty advent calendars is a daily present from December first to the 24th, and the best substitute for the chocolate-stuffed ones we got as kids. (Remember how much bigger the last window was and you knew that the chocolate hiding inside would be huge as well?) The calendars with drawers are gorgeous and reusable, but the ones that require you to carefully open all the perforations are a retro thrill.

L’Occitane’s Classic is the beauty advent calendar OG and clocks in at only $89 Canadian. The mix of soaps, hair care (and purse-sized shea-butter skin and hand care from L’Occitane’s partner artisans in Burkina Faso and Ghana) is a delight that guarantees the recipients are properly moisturized for months to come.

The Body Shop’s Share the Love Big Advent Calendar is a cornucopia of face masks, hand creams, shampoo, soap, as well as a headband and a full sized Avocado Body Butter, all for $129. And this year, The Body Shop is supporting First Nations by donating $50,000 to The Caring Society to help community leaders focused on First Nations children’s rights.

Charlotte Tilbury’s Beauty Dreams and Secrets, $250, charlottetilbury.com contains nine travel and three full sized, best-selling skincare and makeup items in a sparkly chest of drawers, which, after emptying, needs to be reloaded with tiny treats and gifted to the nearest young family member to make their head explode with joy.

Holt Renfrew’s Beauty Advent Calendar, $525, is a heart-stopping beauty fully loaded with beautifully wrapped generously-sized luxe beauty treats from brands like La Mer, Diptyque, Sulwhasoo, Westman Atelier and Gucci, each in its own protective dust-bag. Maybe you just want it all for yourself? We are not here to judge.

The Shoppers Drug Mart Beauty Surprises Advent Calendar, $95, contains a wide assortment of classics like Clinique, Estee Lauder and Darphin as well as lines you need to discover.

Lancôme’s Beauty Advent Calendar, $199, Shoppers Drug Mart, is a flatlay, 3D Parisian streetscape of iconic quintessentially French products like Monsieur Big mascara, Advanced Génifique eye cream and L’Absolue Rouge lipstick (in a classic French girl red, of course.)

Bioderma Atoderm Cleansing Oil is Your Winter Skin Saviour

Bioderma Atoderm Ultra Nourishing Cleansing Oil will save your skin this winter.

Dermatologists must get so weary, telling us every year that hot showers are terribly drying to our skin. It’s advice we mostly ignore because, come winter, is there anything better than a quarter hour spent blissfully thawing out under a scalding spray?

Bioderma Atoderm Ultra Nourishing, Anti Irritation Cleansing Oil (Shoppers Drug Mart, $22.99) will save you from yourself when you decide to take up permanent residence in the shower. Its light fragrance is a faint echo of 1970s pearlized bath oil beads, while the coconut oil/glycerin formula gently cleanses without stripping skin or leaving you feeling overly greased up.

Atoderm helps your skin barrier stay strong to protect you from TEWL (trans-epidermal water loss) because dried out skin is itchy, uncomfortable and may be vulnerable to irritation which can lead to redness, cracking and inflammation.

When I’ve posted seasonal Atoderm reminders on Instagram in the past, in-the-know friends and colleagues unfailingly tell me that they have their requisite ‘one bottle on the go and one bottle on deck’. We’re a not-so-secret society of well-moisturized women who can now fearlessly face the dry air and winds that the coming season has to offer. Atoderm is that good. Ignore this edict at your own peril.

Oribe Desertland is #sweaterweatherperfume

The biggest upside to colder weather is being reunited with your favourite sweaters that have been reverse-hibernating, patiently waiting for the falling temps.

Desertland eau de parfum, $156 CAN, Oribe.com, was born to be paired with your best-loved knits. Inspired by a trip to Marfa, Texas, every note, from the herbal opening of juniper, lavender and wild flowers to its Texas cedar, vetiver and sandalwood dry-down is sun-warmed and comforting. It’s the perfect vibe to carry with you as you bundle up against November’s signature gloom.

Desertland is the latest from Oribe, the cult haircare range that became a de facto perfume house after parlaying the fan favourite jasmine-and-citrus scent of their line into Cote d’Azur eau de parfum. This was both a clever marketing move and a public safety measure, as I know people who would literally huff Oribe Superfine Hairspray because it smells so good.

Wallet-melting pro tip: Both Côte d’Azur and Desertland would make excellent, if somewhat pricy, room sprays.

Upgrade: Deborah Pagani Silver Hair Pin

This large Deborah Pagani hair pin looks like a modern money clip or elegant murder weapon.

I never realized just how embarrassingly susceptible I am to the lure of pretty things until I was stuck at home for months on end with nothing but the internet and a credit card to keep me entertained.

This Deborah Pagani silver plated hair pin (Saks Fifth Avenue) looks like a sculpture or a murder weapon and is a much more elegant hair tamer than a plastic, drugstore claw clip. Its creator, Deborah Pagani, posts calming Instagram videos where she twists her (abundant, never frizzy) hair into a bun before effortlessly anchoring it with one of her heavyweight pins.

After a couple of lopsided results, I think I have it down. I rake my favourite leave-in conditioner through my hair (Rene Furterer Absolue Keratine Repairing Beauty Cream) before I begin to twist, and the result is a satisfying cross between a bun and a French twist. It’s worthwhile remembering that achieving an effortless ‘not trying too hard’ look actually requires some effort. And best of all there is no plastic claw clip in sight.

Rene Furterer’s Keratine Absolue line smooths even the wiriest of wiry hair.

Gucci Westman Loves Jergens Natural Glow Self Tanner

The tubes are not chic, you find them at the drugstore or the grocery store, and yet Jergens Natural Glow instant and gradual self tanners are just so good that even celebrity makeup artist Gucci Westman, lover of expensive beauty products and founder of Westman Atelier (my favourite ‘clean beauty’ line, hands down) uses them, as seen in this YouTube screen grab. (Yes, this is the self-same Gucci Westman who did Gwyneth’s wedding makeup, which must be the biggest clean beauty flex of all time.)

Jergens Natural Glow products create a beautiful, authentic-looking tan, come in two strengths (for fair or deeper-toned skin) so you can’t overdo it and the gradual tan lotions are on sale right now at Shoppers Drug Mart, possibly getting cleared off of shelves for winter (which makes no sense, because that’s when we need self-tanner the most.) So I would humbly suggest you go get some immediately.

Pro Pedicure Tools & Techniques From Tips Nail Bar

Photo: Vogue Paris

If you were inspired by our last post to give yourself a pedicure, but don’t know where to start, the team at Toronto’s beauty editor favourite Tips Nail Bar has created a professional grade nine-piece Deluxe Pro Pedicure Kit ($75), which comes with all the ‘how did I ever live without these’ tools to bring your feet back from the brink. Just follow the steps on their IGTV video (below, or find it on Instagram in their IGTV under ‘10 Steps to Pedicure Perfection’ and then sit back and admire your handiwork.

Photo courtesy of Tips Nail Bar

The kit contains these professional grade items: a wooden foot file, a stainless steel cuticle pusher, straight edge nail clippers, a nail file and buffer, a 2oz Bodtini exfoliating body polish/scrub, a 2oz Bodtini hydrating silk lotion, 2oz cuticle/callus softener, 2oz 100% acetone and a pair of hydrating foot booties/foot mask.

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Extreme Measures Foot Saver aka The Tips Medical Pedicure

If you’ve watched your feet get into ever-worse shape as a result of aging or even just walking too much because Covid closed your gym (thickening nails, uneven texture, code red-level calluses) there is a pedicure for that.

Tips’ own Naomi Misu and Melissa Pepe have trained in and offer a medical pedicure that I can attest is truly life-changing. (I was rendered speechless by its clock-rewinding effectiveness that borders on magic.)

This medical pedicure can “alleviate the discomfort and pain associated with ingrown toenails, creates toenail enhancements on nails that have been damaged or don’t grow properly, as well as being an ideal pedicure for diabetics, or seniors as the skin is more fragile and requires a different approach and products.”

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These could be your feet!