Sometimes, on a cloudy and frigid late-winter day when you’re feeling down, you just have to buy something completely self-indulgent and light-hearted. (Well, maybe you don’t, but I do!) This month, it was Paul & Joe Beauté to the rescue. I’m always fond of their limited edition cosmetics packaging, and this kitten design is a Paul & Joe classic.
My latest post on Now Smell This is a perfume review of Reminiscence Tonka. You can read it here.
Have I complained about this unusually cold and snowy winter yet? I’m sure I have. In any case, it’s the kind of weather that really puts skincare products to the test. One product that hasn’t let me down in this recurring polar vortex chill is Aesop’s Primrose Facial Hydrating Cream, a “daily moisturizing cream for normal to dry or stressed skin.”
I apply Primrose Facial Hydrating Cream in the evening, after washing my face and pressing a few drops of Aesop’s Fabulous Face Oil into my skin. I concentrate on dabbing the cream onto areas that always need a little extra moisture (between my eyes, the tip of my nose), as well as any other areas that might be feeling drier than usual. If it’s been a particularly cold and windy day, I apply a very thin layer of cream all over my face, on top of the facial oil. This combination, used nightly all winter, has kept my face amazingly free of flaking or redness.
This cream is packaged in a glass jar—not ideal, since you have to handle it a bit carefully, but I always apply my nighttime skincare with freshly washed hands anyway. (The bigger problem, for clumsy me, is not dropping the jar on the floor.) It has a light lavender scent and a pleasingly creamy (not greasy) consistency, and it’s packed with skin-healthy ingredients:
Water, Hazel Seed Oil, Glycerin, Stearic Acid, Sweet Almond Oil, Macadamia Ternifolia Seed Oil, Cetearyl Alcohol, Ceteareth-20, Evening Primrose Oil, PEG-20 Stearate, Rosa Canina Fruit Oil, Glyceryl Stearate, Lavender Oil, Phenoxyethanol, Tocopherol, Rosemary Leaf Oil, Grapefruit Seed Extract, Wheat Germ Oil, Disodium EDTA, Sage)Oil, Sodium Citrate, Linalool, d-Limonene.
Even when the dry, freezing weather gives way to spring, I’ll still be using this cream in conjunction with the Fabulous Face Oil. It’s just an effective, customizable duo that works for me.
Have any particular skincare products really won your devotion this winter?
Product source: I purchased this product at an Aesop boutique.
I love this VOGUE cover (by illustrator Will Foster) for several reasons: the model’s impossibly long neck and Gibson Girl-like features, the rose fastening the front of her white feather wrap, and—last but not least—the bottle of perfume that she has just unstoppered. We can only imagine the scent she is inhaling, but we can guess that it is brightening her mood and warming her soul on a cloudy winter day.
Image: via Conde Nast Store.
Here we see Kim Novak circa 1950, impeccably coiffed and dressed (gloves! purse! pearl bracelet!) while she samples perfume at the Christian Dior boutique in Paris. The bottles with the houndstooth-print labels are most likely Miss Dior, in all its original glory. The dark, curvy Baccarat flaçon standing just in front of Ms. Novak may be Diorama. The bottles with the “basket-weave” labels at left might hold Eau de Cologne Fraîche.
Whichever fragrance she’s wearing, she must smell marvelous.
I’m posting this photograph because Ms. Novak’s appearance at last night’s Academy Awards has caused a bit of online commentary, to put things kindly. Please do take a few minutes to read my friend Farran’s post on this subject at The Self-Styled Siren.
Image: Kim Novak testing perfume at the Dior boutique on the Avenue Montaigne, Paris, circa 1950. Collection of Jean-Louis Quémar.
TINSEL CREATION 