Skincare of the week: 31/10/2015

A (slightly) different format for Skincare of the Week this week ... Also, I've decided to introduce a little Product of the Week award too! 

This week was busy and stressful, and coupled with a bout of insomnia, it wasn't really fun.  I did have a good facial this week at the Askinology Facial Bar in Leadenhall Market, which is where I discovered Medik8 Red Alert Skin Serum. You can see it in every picture from Wednesday onwards. 

As many readers of this blog know; I'm prone to redness, and sensitivity is one of the banes of my existence.  I was a bit worried after my facial that a rather, ah ... enthusiastic scrubbing with a physical exfoliant (something I would never, ever do at home) was going to leave me red and sore for the rest of the week, but a few drops of the Medik8 before going to bed, and a few drops in my facial routine the following morning seemed to sort it right out.  I've stuck to blander cleansers since though, just in case a flare-up was imminent, but a pinkness crisis seems to have been averted, so far. Just in case though, I've been at pains to avoid essential oils for a few days too - as, with a very few exceptions, they all irritate when my skin is inflamed.  This is a shame, as I am loving the Votary range of oils at the moment and, especially, the cleanser, but they are essential oil-heavy, and delicious with it, but are something I need to wander away from when I think my skin is a bit irritable.

But, the real miracle product in my routine this week has been Pestle & Mortar Pure Hyaluronic Serum, and as such, it's my inaugural "Product of the Week"!  I picked this up on a whim when I was in Liberty recently - my Hydraluron stocks are running low - and I kind of fell in love with it.  A slight bout of insomnia this week (funny thing, I've been interviewing auditors all week, you'd think that would be a cure, not a cause, but I digress) means that I've been aware I've been looking tired - so very tired - when I wake up in the mornings and a quick swipe with two or three drops of this has had my skin plumped up and happy-looking even on the shortest of sleep-cycles.  With one of the shortest ingredients lists I've ever seen* in a skincare product, Pure Hyaluronic Serum is vegan and free of things like phtalates, parabens and silicone.  It costs £33 and is currently exclusive to Liberty in the UK.  If you're a bit tired, snap some up. I'll write about it in a bit more detail soon, but it's great stuff.

*Ingredients list in full: Aqua, *Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Juice,  *Sodium Hyaluronate,  *Cucumis sativus fruit extract,  Butylene Glycol, *Tocopheryl  Acetate,  *Glycerin,  *Xanthan Gum,  Phenoxyethanol,  *Caprylyl Glycol (all ingredients marked with a * are plant-derived)

The Fine Print: Mixture of PR samples and personal purchases.


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Maison Francis Kurkdjian - Mon Beau Sapin Candle

Yes, yes, I'm having a bit of a candle moment this week.  But, you know, 'tis the season and all that.  This Christmas Francis Kurkdjian is treating us to a golden tribute to the balsam fir:

Housed in a blingy golden container, etched with representations of fir trees Mon Beau Sapin is a smokey-pine-patchouli blend that definitely feels both foresty and wintry.  It's really lovely, I'm burning it now as I write this and it's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas ....

Available from November, MFK's Mon Beau Sapin will cost £xx 

The Fine Print: PR Sample


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Perfume, A Century of Scents by Lizzie Ostrom

Lizzie Ostrom might be better known in perfume circles as the brains behind the glorious "Odette Toilette" website, which runs inventive and exciting perfume-themed events and excursions thoughout the year.  I've written about several of them here, having visited both the Osmotheque in Paris with Odette and been to the re-run of that event when the Osmotheque visited London earlier this year. That visit to Paris was an important turning point in my life coping with being smell-disabled, but I've been going to Odette events for years, even before I realised just what a big deal fragrance was going to be in my life.  Lizzie is a lovely, and well-respected member of the UK perfume scene and seeing her name in print is a thrill.

I've known this book was on the way for ages, easily over a year, and I've had it on pre-order at Amazon since last April,  so to say I've been dying to read it would be a mild understatement.  Perfume books can easily slip into the either incomprehensibly pretentious or overly-florid (I've read some shockers over the years, believe you me) and Lizzie sidesteps these issues with the judicious application of a delightfully playful sense of humour and by allowing a real sense of love for fragrance - and by firmly acknowledging the occasional absurdity of the business itself - to rise from the pages.

The story of 100 fragrances, organised into ten each per decade of the previous century, Lizzie selects perfumes that best exemplify each era (whether good, bad or indifferent - they just need to be important, not necessarily good), and tells the story of each in just a couple of pages.  Putting each into the context of the time it was released, and discussing the impact of ingredients as well as the pop culture of the time makes this read slightly unlike any other history of fragrance that you may have read before.  By not just focusing on the classics (you're likely to find the "great smell of Brut" discussed alongside the merits of Shalimar in here) Lizzie has found new tales to tell, and it's all the more fascinating to read as a result.

Beautifully bound, and prettily illustrated A Century of Scents is that rare beast, a coffee-table book that is wonderfully absorbing.  For anyone with even the slightest interest in fragrance, this is a perfect Christmas present. At only £16.99, it's a bargain, too.

Look out next week when I'll be giving away a copy of the book to one of my readers. 





The Fine Print: Purchase


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Clinique Aromatics in White Candle

I hoard my Clinique Aromatics Candles.  They don't come out every year, and I always like to have one around, because Clinique Aromatics Elixir is one of my favourite perfumes ever.  EVER.  I have a couple of the originals around at the moment, and I'm saving them for when winter really, really sets in.  

You can imagine how happy I was when I found out that this year they were launching candles in the flanker fragrances Aromatics in White, and Aromatics in Black.  I have the white version here,  and it's a lovely version of the original "White" fragrance, softer than Elixir, and brighter with rose and violet to the fore, it's a genuinely lovely candle.  They're launched exclusively in Harrods at the beginning of November, and I'm tempted to pick up a "Black" one whilst I'm there too, even though I didn't get along with the fragrance as well as the white because of my parosmia.  I think I'd be able to habdle it better in a candle, and hey!  I'm a completist ...

Perfect Christmas gift for the Aromatics Elixir fanatic in your life, these ... 

 The Fine Print: PR Sample


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Pixi Skintreats Nourishing Cleansing Balm

I'm slowly working my way through reviewing (almost) the entire Pixi beauty skincare range, and this week it's the turn of Pixi Skintreats Nourishing Cleansing Balm.  A gently rose-scented balm, this is great for makeup removal, and leaves skin soft and cleansed after use.

A mix of almond oil, coco butter and shea butter fortified with vitamin E, this is a very soft balm, which is slightly grainy from the shea butter. It melts really easily on the skin, and provides more than enough slip for a good massage.  It's rather bland, and slightly "thinner"-seeming than more essential-oil heavy balms, and as such, I prefer this for a first cleanse rather than a second. You won't necessarily need a second cleanse with it, but sometimes I do like to follow it up with something richer.  It dissolves makeup quite easily, even the heaviest of full-coverage foundations, and copes well with  eye makeup too - I still prefer to use a separate eyemakeup remover, personally, but my approach to mascara and eyeliner is possibly a little more ...ah ... theatrical than a lot of people's.

Full list of ingredients:

Prunus Amygdalus Dulcis (Sweet Almond) Oil, Theobroma Cacao (Cocoa) Seed Butter, Cetearyl Isononanoate, Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride, Glyceryl Behenate, Cetearyl Olivate, Sorbitan Olivate, Glyceryl Stearate, Glyceryl Cocoate, Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea) Butter, Lecithin, Tocopherol, Cetyl Alcohol, Benzyl Alcohol, Fragrance.

This is a big 90ml tub for £18, and as such, I don't mind throwing a huge glob of this onto my face to remove my makeup.  I'm really impressed with the Pixi Skintreats range so far, they're reasonably priced, don't make any outlandish and unverifiable claims for changing your life, and do what thy tell you they're going to do very well indeed.  They're hard to beat.

The Fine Print: PR Sample


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Cire Trudon Gaspard Candle

The coming of winter, and the turning back of the clocks is my favourite time of the year because to me that means blankets on the sofa, better programmes on the telly, and candles.  Mainly candles, admittedly.  The arrival of the Cire Trudon Christmas collections always makes me smile, and when I initially thought the new candle was called "Gaspode", I was delighted*.  It's actually called "Gaspard", and, it turns out, I'm just an idiot.

Cire Trudon insist this is a "black" candle, I think it's actually a rather splendid and unusal (for a candle) battle-ship grey.  It fits perfectly with my rather monotone coffee table decorations, anyway. I love the gold interiors that Cire Trudon always outfit their christmas collections with, it looks so beautiful and welcoming when the candle is burning.

Scentwise, Gaspard is a warm and slightly orangey, bouyed by a base of sandalwood and incense.  It also has some vanilla in there, so it is a creamy-orange, rather than a traditional Christmas-sy orange-spice confection.  

Cire Trudon candles are always clean-burning and last a good 30-40 hours.  You can now find them in John Lewis, where the Christmas candles will cost £70 each. 

What's your favourite part of winter? 


 The Fine Print: PR Sample 

*If you don't know who "Gaspode" is, then we can never be friends


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#LipsNspritz 25.10.15

 

I love instagram at the moment, and one of my favourite things I do on there is cataloguing my daily perfume and lipstick choices via the hashtag #LipsNspritz. Lipstick and perfume are really the final finishing touches to any outfit, and, whilst no one needs to know how boring my eyemakeup and dress-choices are every day (cardigans ROOL!), perfume and lipstick do add life and colour to this accountants day, every day.

Occasionally you need a Tom Ford day, and I'm entranced by the Sahara Noir bottle.  It's just so blingy and OTT.  But the fragrance inside is a good one, reminding me heavily of Serge Luten's Ambre Sultan, but drier and with a touch less spice.  I paired it with Tom Ford Cherry Lush, which is a wonderful cheerful cherry red. Far more after the jump...

 

 Cartier La Panthere is another stunning bottle, carved from the inside into an intaglio of a panther head, and the contents are sophisticated and really interesting.  Both waxy and leathery, and heavily floral with hints of gardenia once it dries down, it starts with muted fruit.  It's softer than this makes it sound, and I really like it.  I paired it with No7 lipstick in Soft Ruby, another of my pinky-red favourites.  This perfume really calls for a punchy shade of lip!

 Jo Malone London Wood Sage and Sea Salt.  I don't really know what to say about this one, as it was at the launch of this fragrance where I discovered that I had lost my sense of smell completely.  Being able to smell it now is a mixed blessing. It's a sea-salty-herbal fresh fragrance, with a hint of something else beneath that my damaged nose now can't put a name to.  I'm annoyed that I missed such an interesting fragrance from Jo Malone London!  I paired it with Tom Ford Scarlet Rouge, a bright and very, very warm red.

At a launch for a book written by a friend of mine (more about this later this week), I wore a fragrance I'd had a (tiny) hand in creating myself: Paradox by 4160 Tuesdays.  It's bright with violets and lemons, dark and earthy with orris and grounded by woods and musk.  I truly love it, and can't believe that something so lovely and unexpected came out of such a dark and horrible time of my life.  It's the only fragrance I'll be repeating whilst #LipsNspritz is ongoing, because sometimes, familiarity is what you need.  I paired it with the violet-plum of Becca Matte lipstick in Antoinette, because I'm good like that.

And finally this week, Lily and Spice by Penhaligons.  I'm so annoyed that they discontinued this, I can't even begin to tell you, as it's a stone-cold classic fragrance. An almost photo-realistic lily fragrance over a bed of warm and creamy spice (saffron and clove, apparently), it's a beautiful and glorious perfume for a chilly autumn day.  Such a shame it's impossible to get hold of now.  I was wearing a dress on Friday, and fancied a more ladylike lipstick than usual then, so went with Clarins Joli Rouge in Pink Berry, a creamy pink that doesn't scream LIPSTICK when you're wearing it.

What have you been wearing this week? 

The Fine Print: PR Samples and purchases


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