A Fall (Faux) Tan With Tanologist & Caudalie

Dear beauty industry: why is self-tanner easy to buy in the summer, only to vanish from store shelves in the fall? Now that it’s chilly (hello sweaters, my old friends) my skin has dried out and paled out overnight, and I could really use some moisture and colour.

The same November week that I assess the contents of my tea cupboard in preparation for winter, I also pull out my Tanologist Daily Glow Hydrating Gradual Self Tan Lotion, $38.01, Walmart.ca, the moisturizer-slash-self-tanner that will be my staple during these ‘dark by four thirty p.m.’ days. It does double duty, resuscitating desiccated skin with ingredients like squalane, hyaluronic acid and fatty acids, and providing natural-looking, buildable colour so I look healthier than I probably am.

Now comes the clever bit. Once I establish my ‘I do sunrise yoga on the beach’ (faux) colour, I apply my favourite Caudalie Smooth & Glow Oil Elixir, $70, Caudalie.ca. I evangelized it at length here. Its name in French “Huile de soin” means ‘care oil’, and I find that much more accurate and less of a mouthful. The fig in question is figue de barbarie, aka anti-oxidant rich prickly pear, which along with argan and shea oil gives your skin a light-reflecting gleam and a really elegant, definitely transporting fig scent. It’s some much-needed happy frivolity for these times.

Coveting: A Men’s Blue Shirt

A couple of weeks ago, I became obsessed with the idea of wearing an over-sized, pale blue, men’s linen shirt as a cover-up at the beach. But by then, it was already mid-July and they were sold out everywhere. So I began searching online resale.

Doppelgänger shirt’s Poshmark listing

Clothing resale is growing rapidly online, given the surfeit of unsold garments created by the relentless churn of fast fashion. With 70 pounds of clothing per person going to landfill each year, it is definitely time to start mining that mountain of misfit clothes.

Instead of searching on a designer site like theRealReal, I tried the more populist Poshmark, and quickly found two men’s shirts: a very pale number for $25 from Doppelgänger (an Italian chain that I’d never heard of) and a never-worn one from Uniqlo still bearing its in-store fold marks and a size L sticker, for only $15.

Unlike flipping through the racks at Value Village, Poshmark wares come pre-sorted so there’s no real life digging, followed by that “eureka” moment when you spot a treasure amidst the dross. But finding the exact thing I wanted was still pretty satisfying. And there is quite a bit of summer left to wear my “new” blue shirts to the beach.

D&G Light Blue Body & Hair Is Impulse Body Spray For People With Actual Taste

As a teen in the 80s, I knew that perfuming yourself all over, like the model in the Impulse body spray commercial, was peak grown-up glamour. I didn’t want a man running through the mall to offer me flowers - that seemed terrifying - I just wanted to drench myself with scent. But even then, I intuited that Impulse fragrances, with problematic names like “Instantly Innocent”, were kind of cheap. (Still, all respect to the eBay seller asking $6,000 for a single can of Impulse ‘Innocent’ last week.)

Dolce & Gabanna’s new Light Blue Body & Hair spray (100 ml, $42, Shoppers Drug Mart) taps into this nostalgia but instead of (shudder) Impulse’s “Always Alluring” or “On Fire” fragrances you can mist yourself with Light Blue’s singular Sicilian lemon, apple, cedar and white flowers scent. A consistent but never over-exposed success since 2001, Light Blue evokes languorous sun worshippers on the Amalfi coast. More complex than any one-note lemon summer fragrance, it’s bright and citrusy but heady with white roses and jasmine and a skin-scent musky amber finish. And it demands to be sprayed on sun-warmed skin after a day at the beach.

But best of all, Light Blue hasn’t been tediously overexposed on social media and ‘gifted’ to a zillion influencers, so you won’t feel weird buying it if you’re over the age of 23.

Forever Summer: Caudalie Soleil des Vignes

Caudalie Soleil des Vignes is pure beach in a bottle

Here’s a counterintuitive take: summer fragrances should be released in August to help ease you into fall and give you something to hang on to during the cold, coming months.

Whether by design or not, Caudalie’s summery Soleil des Vignes ($46 CAN) eau fraîche just launched in Canada, And while I’m wearing it now because it smells like monoï oil, I will be gripping it with ice-cold hands throughout the winter. It is pure and potent summer-in-a-bottle and I’ll need that more in January than I do now.

Monoï oil is tiare flowers (aka Tahitian gardenias, see photo below) steeped in coconut oil to create a singular, complex, vanilla-ish floral, coconut scent. And while that sounds like a lot, it’s actually ethereal, sunlit and very beachy, but in a glamorous, non-Hawaiian Tropic way. (In France, monoï is available in every pharmacy, like it was toothpaste for heaven’s sake. Lucky French.) Caudalie’s homage to monoï is spiked with bitter orange and mandarin, transforming it into an energizing but still beach-evoking eau fraîche.

There’s also a Soleil des Vignes bath gel, which I am not even cracking open now, but saving for my February box, because I am forward-thinking and I know how much I’ll need it then.

Monoï oil from Tahiti via France. (See the now-darkened gardenia floating just above the label?)

A February Box is an assortment of summery gifts you collect now to give your future self when you will be at your lowest, olfactorily and psychologically speaking.

This is not to be confused with the November box, which is stuffed with cozy treats, because in November you’ll need things that aid in creating your winter nest.)

And yes, I make it through the endless Canadian winter with a variety of targeted boxes. Sue me.