Weleda Skin Food Face Conquers #winterface

The air is so dry right now that my skin feels like I’ve been tumbling for days in a dryer set on high.

Into the teeth of this low-ambient-moisture, gloomy time of year, Weleda has mercifully launched a trio of new Skin Food face products that are both lanolin-free (ergo, vegan) and lighter-weight than the original Skin Food Ultra Rich Cream. Loaded with soothing ingredients like plant-based squalane, skin-calming tiger grass and fatty-acid rich sacha inch oil, they will help your poor, weather-beaten skin recover from seasonal moisture suck. Angry and red or ashy and drawn, #winterface is real.

There’s also a new cleanser that drew raves at the launch event: a Neosporin thick, oil-to-milk cleanser that transforms into a light milk when you add water. With sunflower seed oil that is high in unsaturated fatty acids, it leaves skin clean and hydrated, not taut and drawn. The face you see in the mirror will be your old, non-wintery face: a happy augury of spring.

Skin Food, which launched 97 years ago and now sells one tube every 11 seconds, inspires crazy devotion. I have sung its praises here. Celebrity makeup artist Pati Dubroff, who has kept a tube in her kit for 30 years, uses it on her makeup clients as pre-makeup skincare and ad hoc highlighter. She also applies it liberally on her own face when she flies. “For some it may be too heavy,” she says, laughing, “but for me, no way.” If you do fall into that other camp, the day cream is just what you’ll want to protect your skin on flights.

And I have a message for Weleda HQ: a dear friend fervently wishes that Skin Food lotion was available in a giant pump bottle for both maximum ease and the comfort of having an extravagant amount of Skin Food at one’s disposal. For real fans, a solitary tube or jar is never enough.

The Five Second Brow Lift

Top to bottom: Revolution Brow Soap, e.l.f. Brow Lift, Iconic London Brow.

When you turn 50 the government should send you a beautiful cake and something for your brows.

A cake would be nice and lord knows we deserve it, having made it this far, but the brow kit is critical. Because in addition to all the nonsense that happens to our bodies around that milestone birthday, our brows can go crazy in one of two ways.

“You’ll either get wiry, coarse brows or they’ll just become finer and finer and disappear,” brow artist Maribeth Madron once told me as she tamed my wild caterpillars with her signature Rubis tweezers.

If your brows pull a disappearing act, daily use of a brow serum can give them a second chance at life. But if nature has decided to bless you with brows that have started to curl like a Toni home perm, an industrial strength brow product (favourites listed below) will rein them in and make them lay flat. Then just brush them upwards, as brows that point down can make you look like a sad clown painting. And because these brow fixes aren’t tinted, you will never look overdone (see again: sad clown), but the effect will be dramatic.

Or you can head to the salon for chemical ‘brow lamination’, but I’d much rather spend five seconds with a brush.

From Top:

1. Revolution Beauty Soap Brow, $18, Shoppers Drug Mart, is a misnomer, as this soft waxy solid is soap with shea butter to keep brows in place. A sturdy wide brush makes it easy to brush brows up and the faint scent is an added bonus.

2. e.l.f. Brow Lift clear eyebrow gel, $8, elf cosmetics.com and Shoppers Drug Mart, a wee pot of glycerin-based, clear paste, is as mighty as it is tiny. it looks like gel, but it too has a waxy texture for taming the most unruly brows. And you cannot beat the price.

3. Iconic London is a brand for flossy young influencer girls who wear a lot of makeup. Ignore all that, go to Sephora and get this slender tube of Liquid Brow Silk Max Gel, $31, Sephora.ca. The thick white lotion dries clear and holds brushed up brows in place like a champ.

Klorane Baby Cologne is pure #sweaterweatherperfume

Is it a cheat to recommend baby cologne as #sweaterweatherperfume? Isn’t it just a liquid version of baby powder?

Except Klorane Petit Brin Eau Parfumée is French baby cologne (technically alcohol-free, scented water) for those Parisian infants being wheeled down Boulevard St. Germain in prams by impossibly beautiful young mothers. Elegant yet softly cozy and comforting, it is #sweaterweatherperfume in its purest state.

A mix of white flowers with (apparently, because I don’t detect them) ‘fruity’ notes, Petit Brin smells like luxurious bath oil not classic North American baby powder.

Sure there are more sophisticated powdery fragrances with added musk and amber notes to make them even more sweater weather-y and more adult. I love them too, but sometimes you just want full-on powdery comfort and nothing else.

Klorane Petit Brin needs to be on any pharmacy shopping list when you travel to France, but it’s also available in Canada at Well.ca for only $24, so you can get it right now.

Gym Lips?

Every generation believes they invented sex. And now, every generation thinks they invented using nude lip pencil under lip balm.

Old beauty tricks have found new life on Instagram and TikTok for the next generation and I am trying not to roll my eyes too hard, because once you get past the clickbait-y names, it’s good to be reminded of these moves.

Charlotte Tilbury Pillow Talk pencil with By Terry Baume de Rose is another excellent pairing.

• Gym lips is the evocative new name for outlining and filling in your lips with a pinky-nude pencil topped off with a bit of lip balm. A classic no-makeup makeup ruse (that could easily go undetected at the gym, ergo the name) it’s a great way to sharpen a fading lip line and boost natural colour. And the name is clever, so why does it make me churlish?

Nota Bene: when you are past 50, it’s best is to select a pencil that is a touch more berry toned, to return some colour to your fading, bloodless lips. Sephora Collection lip pencil in Rosewood, regularly $8, is such a ‘universally wearable” shade and right now, everything Sephora Collection line is 30% off until November 7th, so the pencil is a mere $5.60. Top it with a dot of non-shiny balm like Lip Wrap Reviving Balm from Ilia, $32, (also at Sephora) and done!

• Skin Cycling is what TikTokers call the sensible practise of not attacking your delicate skin every night with strong, active-heavy skincare. Alternate using retinol or vitamin C with nights of just moisturizing to prevent your face from becoming an inflamed, peeling, angry mess. It’s that simple.

• Liquid Hair (as seen on Dakota Johnson in this Vogue story) is what the rest of us call really shiny hair (usually thanks to luck-of-the-draw genes and an assist from a silicone-forward hair serum). Silicone needs to be used sparingly - three drops are usually enough. But if you overdo it with your anti-frizz hair serum and end up looking like you haven’t washed your hair in weeks, just remember that you didn’t make a mistake, you just now have ‘liquid hair’.

This is actually a good rule for any mistakes you make in life. Just re-name them and say they were intentional.

Forever Summer: Nuxe Huile Prodigieuse Neroli

Ignore all the online sweater and boot propaganda. There are roughly four weeks of summer left, so let’s extend the happy, bare skin feeling because soon enough the central air will get switched on and we’re all going to shrivel up like raisins.

The original Nuxe Huile Prodigieuse.

The original Nuxe Huile Prodigieuse was already the star of every single French Pharmacy haul video or story for its lightweight, non-greasy ‘dry oil’ feeling, its warm skin scent and magical ability to smooth frizzy hair and instantly make skin look supple. It epitomizes my belief that beauty-wise, French women have it better than we do. And now Nuxe has launched Huile Prodigieuse Néroli, ($53, Shoppers Drug Mart) a certified organic version scented with neroli oil, from the blossom of the bitter orange tree. Heady but with enough green citrus sharpness to keep it fresh, neroli is the smell of French summer.

Scent aside, Huile Prodigieuse is a skincare workhorse with antioxidant- and anti-inflammatory rich sesame seed oil to help repair skin and give hair strength and shine and plum seed oil, with fatty acids for dry skin and hair — critical as the weather turns to s(&^! and the air loses moisture.

Use it to gleam up your shoulders, shins and forearms, rub it into your cuticles (don’t forget your toes have cuticles too) and run some through your hair to smooth frizz or coax out some waves. Then head out into the world, smelling heavenly and glowing greaselessly.

‘Greaselessly.’ Not a beauty word. Oh well. Still accurate.

After Sun Bliss: Exfoliating Bar Soap

Oh, the pure, unalloyed joy of unwrapping a fresh bar of soap to take into the shower. Specifically, this one, the SheaMoisture 100% Virgin Coconut Oil & Shea Butter Soap, $7.50 CAN, amazon.ca. A hefty half-pound of lightly scented, skin-nourishing happiness, it also contains finely ground coconut fruit and shell to gently exfoliate. All you have to do is rub it all over your skin after a day spent outdoors to gently remove grime and now past-it sunscreen. It’s as soothing as a head scratch but for your entire body.

Ah, bar soap. The world has slowly capitulated to body washes and in the mid teens bar soap sales declines precipitously as millennials viewed it as unhygienic and hard on skin so only men should use it on their rough, beardy faces. Body wash was convenient (shudder) and bar soap was a fusty relic of your grandmother’s powder room. (Remember all those pale blue, shell-shaped guest soaps in milk glass dishes?) And thus began the global domination of body wash and pump hand soaps and we lost the sensorial delight of unwrapping a fresh bar, the engraved letters still crisp under our fingers. I remember reading someone declare that if they won the lottery, they would open a new bar of soap every day for their bath.

Unlike pricy scented bars from fragrance brands — my favourite Sisley soap is now $135, which is patently absurd — SheaMoisture’s coconut oil and shea butter soap is very well priced. Each half pound bar (227 grams) is only $7.50, so you can make a pleasing stack of them in your linen closet to greet you every time you open the door to grab a towel. Because that too is one of life’s great pleasures: being welcomed by tidy, all-white towers of neatly folded linens, towels and an ample soap stash. It’s the little things.

The Scent of Water

“I know I cannot paint a flower, but maybe I can convey to you my experience of the flower.“

— Georgia O'Keeffe.*

Serge Lutens Parole d’eau is this quote in fragrance form, evoking the sensation of being in or near a giant body of water.

We all know that water doesn't have an actual smell (beyond, say, the chlorine smell of our Toronto tap water) but Parole d’eau, $165, Holt Renfrew, unerringly creates the feeling of, say, getting inadvertently misted by a sprinkler when you walk by one on a scorcher of a day. Or cracking open an icy bottle of water as a shimmering wall of heat rises up from the sidewalk.

The notes in Parole eau are apparently citrus, pine needles, eucalyptus and musk. Cannot confirm, but given that one of the best summer smells is ‘hot sun on dried pine needle’, I am going to believe the internet stranger that came up with this list.

Didn’t make it up to a cottage this summer? All the more reason to spray a cloud of Parole d’eau to walk through so you and your (hopefully breathable) summer clothing hang on to the light scent.

It is a perfect way to arm yourself against August’s insane and unceasing humidity.

* A letter from Georgia O’Keeffe to William Milliken (1930), quoted in Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O'Keeffe, Laurie Lisle (1981), p. 128 1930s.

Sunscreens For People Who Hate Sunscreen: City Edition

When it’s unbearably hot and humid (“air you can wear” as it’s known in the American south) the last thing you want to do is apply sunscreen to a damp and sticky face.

But apply sunscreen you must, both as protection against cellular damage that can mutate into skin cancer and for vanity’s sake, to keep your skin from mottling and wrinkling up like an old leather shoe. Sunscreen is so powerful it can even reverse the passage of time because (louder for the people in the back) wearing sunscreen allows your skin to heal from any prior damage instead of just compounding it. This from a 2016 study in the Journal for Dermatalogical Surgery.

And If you are truly sunscreen averse, especially during these dog days of summer, the three ‘best of breed’ lotions (pictured above, top to bottom) deliver on lightness with protection.

Garnier Ombrelle Ultra Light Advanced SPF 60 face lotion, $18.99, Shoppers Drug Mart, is a high SPF, broad spectrum screen (i.e. it protects against both UVA’s aging and UVB’s burning rays) that is so pleasingly lightweight, you will actually use it. And the non-sticky lotion absorbs into skin immediately so it’s perfect under makeup.

Because Shiseido Oil Free Urban Environment Oil Free sunscreen SPF 42 $45, Sephora.com, is oil-free, it’s perfect for those brutal days when your skin is unpleasantly slick. It plays the clever trick of actually hydrating your poor depleted skin while leaving a soft suède-like finish, so you can look fresh while everyone around you is melting.

Burt’s Bees SPF 30, Gentle Day Lotion, $29.99, Well.ca, is perfect for anyone whose skin reacts to temperature extremes by immediately going scarlet. This mineral, paraben-free lotion is gentle gentle gentle, and restores your moisture barrier and calms redness while protecting skin against UVA and UVB damage.

Sport Sunscreens For People Who Hate Sunscreen

Is this a trend? I have friends who use mineral sunscreen on their faces and chemical protection on their bodies. It’s like the sunscreen version of being mostly vegetarian but still enjoying a barbequed hamburger in the summer.

I have no horse in this race as I am an equal opportunity sunscreen user and will go to any lengths to protect my skin from UV rays. Chemical screens are, admittedly, much easier to wash off. The tenacity of mineral sunscreen is something to behold. I use a gentle exfoliating cleanser, like Tatcha’s Rice Polish, $84, Sephora, to remove it.

This sunscreen duo, above, is a perfect summer pairing for full-on protection when you’re out being active. Vichy Idéal Soleil SPF 60 Sport sunscreen, $29.95, Shoppers Drug Mart, is sweat and water resistant for 80 minutes and the light lotion formulation absorbs virtually instantly when applied (it feels like sorcery. No lie.) It leaves a faintly satin finish on your skin which is the polar opposite of those 1980s tanning oils that sat on your skin like you’d been dunked in a deep fryer. If you basted yourself with Hawaiian Tropic or Bain de Soleil during regrettable backyard teen tanning sessions you know what I mean.

I handed the Blue Lizard Sheer Lotion Face SPF 50 Mineral sunscreen, $22, Shoppers Drug Mart, off to a friend for her to test out on the water. She swims in Lake Ontario year round (impressive, right?) and wants a high SPF face sunscreen because her olive skin freckles quite easily, so anything under 50 SPF is a no-go. Blue Lizard, from Australia, home of the world’s most discerning sunscreen consumers, is also water-resistant for 80 minutes and while it “goes on white, it does sink in after about a minute” and most importantly “doesn’t migrate into eyes” which is critically important when you are in the water or sweating on a bike or tennis court.

These two are perfect for a day on the water (Lake of Bays, Ontario.)

Chanel Paris-Paris is Sunny and Dirty

As any Parisian woman worth her Isabel Marant boots will tell you, it’s imperfection - a larger nose, charmingly crooked teeth - that elevates a conventionally pretty face to truly beautiful. It’s the same in fashion. Adding something old and beat-up, or sentimental or just plain offspeed to your outfit ensures you still look like you and that you didn’t just buy your whole ensemble straight off the store mannequin.

Chanel’s latest ‘Les Eaux’ Paris-Paris abides by this unspoken rule as well. It has a quiet, unexpected edge that is ineffably, truly Parisian, because the real Paris isn’t only those endless perfect cups of coffee on marble tables that you see on Instagram. The real Paris can actually be pretty gritty - the traffic, jostling with a sea of humanity in the Metro, inhaling diesel fumes belched from trucks as you sit in a boulevard café - and it’s that contrast that Paris-Paris embodies. It’s a rose scent, but it is much more than yet another rose scent.

Paris-Paris opens like a light, summery fragrance. There’s freshness courtesy of citrus and pink pepper and damascena rose, bright but still plush. But give it a minute and there’s a surprisingly insistent patchouli rumbling away underneath, adding a whisper of (and I really hate to use this word in case it gets misconstrued) ‘dirty’ to that bright rose. It’s the perfect alluring scent for a languorous dinner — one those evenings spent around the table for hours, while the candles gutter and dessert is long finished. Paris-Paris is earthy, but it’s quietly, discreetly earthy. Not quite unwashed, but it definitely alludes to the human animal wearing it.

So whether you read Paris-Paris as light and unimpeachably daytime chic or as more of an evening fragrance, consider it your summer-in-the-city scent that will easily go into fall and beyond.