Beat #winterface with Weleda Smoothing Eye Cream & La Roche-Posay Cicaplast Spray

Maybe it’s because of the viciously dry air, or my skin getting thinner by the minute, but I’ve taken to applying lightweight eye cream in the middle of the day with the same fervour that I swipe on lip balm.

Eye cream is such Goldilocks skincare. Many are so rich you look freshly buttered and constant reapplication can leave you with under-eye bumps (milia) that need to be lanced by a dermatologist with a very sharp blade. Or they’re so lightweight they feel great but don’t do anything. Weleda’s new Smoothing Eye Cream, $45, well.ca) has caffeine to depuff and rosa moschata oil (rosehip) which is loaded with fatty acids and vitamins, to calm redness and strengthen the skin barrier. It’s perfect when you need to fight the ridiculous seasonal chill and low ambient moisture air. Damn you, winterface! (Shakes fist at sky.)

My latest ‘get home after being frozen solid outdoors’ routine is to plug in the kettle (obviously, that’s before anything) and then spray my face with La Roche-Posay Cicaplast B5 spray for a dose of soothing and skin barrier protecting madecassoside and panthenol. (Full disclosure: the spray is available in Europe and the US. Not Canada. In the meantime, just slather on Cicaplast B5 Soothing Relieving Balm.)

Then I dab dab dab a few drops of the Weleda Smoothing Eye Cream on my upper cheekbones and the outer corners of my eyes. I’m not in an office with other people, so I could conceivably spend my days unmoisturized and wizened, but why would I do that? This combo gives me a midday lift and makes me feel less desiccated which is my favourite word and so apt this time of year.

L’Oréal Infallible Brow Lamination is the Lift We Need

I will not list all the physical indignities that menopause wreaks on your body. Suffice it to say, they are numerous and unwelcome.

Even though downward-pointing brows do not rank up there with, say, bladder issues, it’s still a shock to unexpectedly catch your reflection in a shop window and see sad, old Eeyore staring back at you. Brows that used to be obedient, if rather thin (thank you, 1990s tweezing) are now skimpier and coarser as they wing off in any direction but most often south.

To combat this, there is L’Oréal Paris 24H Brow Lamination, $18.49, Shoppers Drug Mart.) Made for Gen Zs, for whom ‘brow lamination’ is shorthand for a brow perm that lays brow hairs flat against your skin while pointing straight up, L’Oréal’s take home version is an industrial strength brow glue that turns curly, menopausal brows into obedient little soldiers and keeps them lifted which makes you look more awake and un-Eeyore-ish.

Brush it on, first downwards to get as much product on the brows as possible, and then brush them up and they will stay put for hours. Anything that makes one look more rested and just better without looking like ‘makeup’ is a total win, right?

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.

Towards a Better-Smelling Bathroom

I have officially given up doing things I don’t want to do. I refuse to engage with tricky parking spots (no more backing into traffic at the mall) and I will not let air fresheners with scents like ‘Clean Linen’ or ‘Mountain Air’ cross my threshold. I want my bathroom to smell like the spa at a fancy resort, not the cleaning products aisle at Sobeys.

The best spa scent for home is Lotus Aroma’s Eucalyptus Home Spray, $21, Shoppers Drug Mart. And it’s Canadian. I give the air several blasts before my shower, so when I emerge, it is into a herbal, steamy fug. Just like the spa, but with no towel-wrapped strangers in my sight-line.

The internet discovered the joys of eucalyptus-scented bathrooms in a ‘complicated, but makes for a nice picture’ way early in Covid lockdown. Soon Pinterest was littered with images of twine-wrapped eucalyptus branches suspended from shower arms. But steam alone wouldn’t release the scent. It turns out you first had to crush the eucalyptus leaves with a rolling pin to release the volatile oils, which was a step too far.

I enjoy a silly craft as much as the next person, but spritzing Lotus Aroma Home Spray is much easier and way faster. And most importantly, you won’t be picking up dried eucalyptus shards for days afterwards.

Milk Makeup Jelly Blush Looks Real, Stays Put

Milk Makeup Jelly Tint in Splash (a deep berry).

Does your blush vanish by noon? My face eats makeup and I’m certain that my blood is 25 per cent blush and concealer by this point.

Applying a metric tonne of colour on your cheeks to ensure there is still some left at midday will only make you look dementedly clownish. Topping up with powder blush, although it’s easy to brush on, can add a dusty, dowager aunt vibe if your skin is dry. For a believable-looking flush, a sheer stain works best.

Enter Milk Makeup’s new Cooling Water Jelly Tint lip and cheek blush stains ($33 CAN, Sephora) that once applied, stay bullet proof for the whole day. They work as wonderful transparent lip colours as well (just add a wee dot of lip balm, because they can be drying.) The four shades look vivid when swatched (see below), but sheered out on cheeks, the effect is quite natural. The only caveat is that, as stains, you have to blend them out quickly before they set on your cheeks.

This means using your fingers (you’ll have to wash them afterwards) or, if you’re so equipped, a blush brush. But for this effort you will be rewarded with a glow that lasts well past lunch.

And not just any glow, but the lit-from-within glow of someone who attended a reformer Pilates class this morning while everyone else was still in bed.

I did swatches! (OK. Those four arms of various skin tones aren’t me, but they are helpful.) The colours, from the top down are Burst, Chill, Spritz and Splash. While swiping makes these shades look alarmingly bright on the lighter arms, once blended in they provide a natural looking healthy glow.

Eat Spray Love: Cozy Meals, Perfect Scents

As a general rule you should always use your nicest things first. So many of us do this bass ackwards, believing that we should go through our dull, practical purchases first and save the good stuff for some notional future day. This is a terrible idea. Crack open the good stuff now because if not now, then when? Every day needs to celebrated. (This is also one of the reasons that I fundamentally disagree with wedding culture and its ‘best day of your life’ extravagance. But that’s an argument for another day.)

Ostensibly tied to Valentine’s Day, but really more of a mid-February uplift, here are some fragrance and meal pairings to inspire you to treat yourself better. The recipes are not grand and show-offy. They’re cozy, so if you want to eat sitting on the couch instead of at the table, then definitely do that.

And three of them contain cheese, because cheese is love.

Gris Dior and Cacio e Pepe Scrambled Eggs

Sprayed throughout Dior boutiques around the world to olfactorily transport you to the Avenue Montaigne mothership, Gris Dior is earthy (hello, oakmoss and patchouli), gently floral and ineffably elegant. I made a vow to myself to not use the expression ‘quiet luxury’ but boy, does this fragrance epitomize that notion. Spray some on yourself and notice how you immediately feel more put together even if you are in your most stretched-out, not-for-public-viewing sweats.  

Gris Dior will also magically turn you into the sort of person who easily elevates even the most basic breakfast-for-dinner into something special. Cacio e Pepe Scrambled Eggs from much-missed New York City restaurant Maialino fits the bill perfectly. it’s very easy to make with none of Cacio e Pepe’s complicated emulsion building, so please try it. Serve with sourdough toast soldiers or flatbread crackers.

Cacio e Pepe Soft Scrambled Eggs

Recipe by Maialino Chef Nick Anderer  
Serves four

Ingredients
10 fresh eggs
½ c. whole milk
1 c. grated pecorino, plus more to taste
2 tbsp. coarsely ground black pepper
1 tbsp. butter
Salt to taste

1. Melt butter in a nonstick skillet (9 to 10 inches in diameter) over medium heat.

2. Whisk together eggs and milk; pour into the skillet.

3. Stir continuously for four to five minutes with a heat-resistant rubber spatula until the eggs begin to lightly scramble.

4. Stir in the pecorino, black pepper, and salt.

5. Transfer eggs to a platter before they cook to a hard scramble. The final product should be creamy and loose.

6. Sprinkle more pecorino over the top and serve with the bread of your choice.

Carolina Herrera Good Girl Blush and Truffled Grilled Cheese

Carolina Herrera Good Girl Blush is what happens when a big, attention-loving gourmand perfume decides to have a quiet night at home.

Image from Stacey Todd Boutique instagram (I added the chips. Duh.). Model is wearing Another Grey Day cashmere sweats.

Soft and powdery, Carolina Herrera Good Girl Blush eau de parfum might at first telegraph a luxe clean vibe. But it also has an irrepressibly narcotic white flower and thumping rose heart that says “I can pull off a big night out. I just choose not to.” Even with its signature Good Girl gourmand heart, Good Girl Blush is way more sophisticated than any of the scores of baby girl candy fragrances out there. If you wear this to stay in, do not cook. Maybe have some truffle chips, but eaten from a porcelain bowl, never straight from the bag.

And if you must eat cooked food, have someone prepare it for you. I have a friend whose husband makes truffled grilled cheese sandwiches for her whenever she wants. May everyone have a partner like that.

Cheese is love.

Narciso Rodriguez All Of Me and Pastina

Narciso Rodriguez All of Me eau de parfum is a skin scent masquerading as an irreproachable floral fragrance. What starts out straightforwardly floral unfolds into an elevated sandalwood and musk that is equal parts soothing and sexy. Wear it while eating the classic Italian comfort dish, Pastina. ( It was given new life when it went viral two years ago on social media and the video recipe at this link is my favourite and is dead easy to make.)

Pastina is baby-sized pasta stars cooked in chicken or vegetable broth instead of water, with a healthy amount of butter and a generous grating of cheese for the perfect, nurturing meal. Giant blanket to wrap yourself in like a human burrito optional but encouraged.

Aesop Ouranon and Nigella’s Pumpkin & Chickpea Thai Curry

Aesop’s Ouranon Eau de Parfum is time lapse photography in a bottle. A journey through the changing seasons, it starts with sun-warmed lavender, then takes a spin through harvest season with dried hay before ending up at a giant stone fireplace welcoming the warm embrace of a smoky fire.

It’s what to wear when eating Pumpkin and Chickpea Thai Curry from Nigella Lawson. This stew is vegan but hearty, full of soluble fibre (my new obsession) and you can adjust the spice level from lightly warming to yeow. Perfect for a cold or rainy night when you need to thaw your poor bones.

Nigella Lawson Pumpkin and Chickpea Thai Curry

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 1/2 cups finely chopped onion

1/4 teaspoon salt, or to taste

2 teaspoons Thai red curry paste, or to taste (available in Asian markets. If you can avoid the grocery store versions made for western palates, then do so. The best Asian ones are Maeploy, Aroy-D and Maesri brand.)

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon ground coriander

2 pounds peeled seeded pumpkin, cut into 1 1/4-inch chunks

2 (15-ounce) cans coconut milk

1 cup chicken or vegetable broth

1 Tablespoon Thai fish sauce*

4 15-ounce cans chickpeas, drained

Freshly ground black pepper

1 cup loosely packed finely chopped cilantro leaves.

Place a large wide pan over medium heat, and add oil. When hot, add onion and salt, and saute until softened but not browned. Add curry paste, and saute for 1 minute. Add cumin and coriander. Raise heat to medium-high, and add pumpkin. Stir for about 1 minute. Stir in coconut milk, chicken broth and fish sauce. Partly cover with a lid, and reduce heat to low. Simmer gently until pumpkin is almost tender, about 20 minutes. Add chickpeas, partly cover, and simmer for 10 minutes more. Stir gently, and adjust salt and pepper to taste. If more heat is desired, add more curry paste. Ladle hot pot into serving bowls, sprinkle with cilantro, and serve.

* As reader Tracy points out in the comments, fish sauce is not vegan, so you can substitute miso paste or tamari or just skip that ingredient entirely.

Yield: 4 to 6 servings.

Soothe #winterface With Rhode Glazing Milk

Exploring Iceland, Feb. 2015. Rhode Glazing Milk would have come in handy. (Photo: Janine Falcon.)

Loving a celebrity skincare line feels unseemly when the celeb is 27-year-old Hailey Bieber and I am older than her mother. But Bieber, wife of Justin and creator of the ‘glazed donut’ glow, launched Rhode in 2022 and has the best new skincare product for menopausal women and I am as shocked as you are.

The Rhode line (Hailey’s middle name) has three core products: a serum, a rich moisturizer and the ‘must have been created for menopausal women’ Rhode Glazing Milk, a hydrating essence loaded with skin barrier repairing and strengthening ceramides that provides instant calming moisture so you can look into mirrors in the dead of February without recoiling. #winterfaceisreal

It makes Hailey (above) practically shiny, but if you are starting from a moisture deficit (aka ‘if desiccated is your baseline’) you will look more naturally glowy and less like a hot glazed Krispy Kreme.

Why it’s targeted to teens and tiktokers is beyond me. Just look at the ingredients list (below). It’s basically made for my cohort. And a daily concentrated application of those skin barrier-loving ingredients is all the more critical in these ‘low ambient moisture’ winter months. So thank you, Hailey.

Some of her young fans have complained on social media that Rhode products break them out, which further proves that these products were meant for us, not them. When you’re a teen, your body is diligently pumping out oil and moisture and you do not need a ceramide and glycerin rich milk to rebuild your skin barrier and protect you from central heating.

But thanks to TikTok, there is a new tranche of consumers, young girls, the ‘Sephora kids’, spending their generous allowances on retinol and other anti-aging skincare. This is puzzling and humorous in equal measure. Wouldn’t tweens want perfume and lipsticks and bras before they need them instead of retinol? But then I don’t get their obsession with Stanley cups either.

Ingredients and benefits:

The Rhode Glazing Milk ingredients rundown is basically a checklist of menopausal skin-nourishing ingredients. There’s ceramides and cholesterol to help skin barrier recovery, humectant-rich beta glucan to soothe skin and calm itch, phytosphingasine, another barrier function booster that we produce less of as we age, zinc gluconate and copper gluconate which have anti-inflammatory properties, gluconolactone, a hydrating polyhydroxy acid to maintain moisture in the top layers of the skin and gently exfoliate.

It’s not at all greasy. You can pat it on like an essence to hydrate skin and prep it for skincare. Or just put some on if your skin is feeling dry or tight. It improves the whole crepey skin situation pretty much instantly. To that end, I am waiting for a spray version. A blast of Rhode Glazing Mist would be great during the day when you’re flagging and need a little something to bring you back to life.

I would like this sized bottle to drench my whole self with..

Cool Girl Beauty For Only Five Bucks

You could spend $5 on a Starbucks holiday peppermint mocha and get a brief sugar rush or you could snag this pomegranate lip balm from Burt’s Bees for months of complexion brightening and mood lifting. (At $5, you can get one for each coat and bag.)

This balm is a certified cool girl staple and I can say that because Julia Leach keeps citing it in online profiles.

Leach is a creative director (right now at Athleta) who has imparted her vision to brands like Apple, Target and Ralph Lauren. And just look at her Venice Beach home’s curated but laid-back style.

While some influencers do have a singular point of view, I still prefer an old school beauty reco from someone who is not in that game. Truly inspirational women do not have Amazon storefronts.

No lie, I’d be more interested to know what Christine Lagarde has in her medicine cabinet. She always looks so immaculate and sharp when delivering news about the euro.

Burt’s Bees Pomegranate balm imparts just enough of a faintly red tint that you look ‘well’ but not overtly done. And because it’s a beeswax balm, lips stay matte so it doesn’t read as ‘makeup’. It’s beauty subterfuge like glowing skin or groomed brows - nothing identifiable.

I’ve already sung the praises of Burt’s Bees Pomegranate balm here, but it’s an icon and I wanted an excuse to post photos of Julia Leach’s beautiful rooms.

And while I may be exaggerating the $5 price tag (it’s $5.49 in Canada, and the cheapest non-caffeinated thrill I can think of.)

#sweaterweatherperfume: Guerlain Eau de Cashmere

Guerlain Eau de Cashmere

Could the sky be any grayer?

#sweaterweatherperfume season is here and it’s time to fight the gloom with Guerlain’s not-nearly-famous-enough Eau de Cashmere eau de toilette. Soft and comforting with powdery iris, white musk and cedar, Eau de Cashmere ($225CAN) is perfect for when you want to hunker down and roll yourself up in a blanket until April.

Unjustly unsung and dating back to 2014, Eau de Cashmere is cozy and powdery yes, but also sunnily optimistic thanks to an undercurrent of lavender which is bright and herbal and not at all fusty.

Guerlain’s website suggests misting Eau de Cashmere on surfaces, and while I understand the temptation to go full-on Quiet Luxury with a room spray, I cannot, in good conscience, suggest spraying something this fancy onto your bedsheets and throw pillows. But definitely spritz it on a large scarf to wind around your neck and wear out of the house as a DIY scented talisman to protect you from the chill.

Good (Coconut) Things Come In Large Packages

Marketing has convinced us that the smaller the container, the pricier the contents. Think eye creams in wee jars accompanied by doll-sized spatulas or caviar in diminutive, shallow tins. (I’m so glad I never developed a taste for caviar.)

But if a bottle is huge like Renpure’s Coconut Milk & Vitamin E body wash, you might dismiss it as being somehow less than. And you’d be wrong, because Renpure’s coconut body wash is the ideal shower companion as Canadian winter approaches (insert portentous organ music here.)

Sulphate-free with coconut oil and hydrolyzed milk proteins, it is a gentle cleanser that won’t strip away your precious skin oils. This is especially crucial in the winter when central heating and low humidity conspire to turn your skin into crinkly tissue paper.

And more important to us picky fragrance people, in addition to its ‘clean beauty’ ingredients and post consumer recycled plastic bottle, Renpure absolutely nails the fragrance.

The creamy, light coconut scent is a dead ringer for Skin Trip, the luxe hippie cult favourite body lotion sold in posh health food stores like LA’s Erewhon Market.

But unlike Skin Trip, you can get Renpure in Canada. Its generously-sized bottle, all 710 ml (24 ounces in old money) is only $8.79 at Shoppers Drug Mart and $7.97 at Walmart. Be still my penny-pinching little heart.