Beauty

Taking a moment



Bruce Weber
When did self-care become a dirty word? The concept originated in the late 60s by radical feminists wanting to empower women by teaching them to get to know their anatomies. But in recent years, ‘self-care’ has come to encompass the Goopification of beauty, aka a capitalist catch-all that couches healthy habits and ancestral rituals in spa language and posh packaging. My take on self-care is somewhere in the middle. Nice-to-have products (that don’t have to be expensive) and free DIY practices to maintain health and wellbeing rather than ‘optimising’.

Olverum body polish scrub
Take foot care. Aside from the pampering pleasure of a pedi, the bones themselves also needs regular TLC – especially after a certain age. (As my friend F said on turning 50, “from here on it’s all about teeth, knees and feet.”) My fabulous podiatrist Joanna recommends these exercises for keeping foot ailments in check and suggests trying to walk barefoot on grass – or sand – as much as possible in summer. She also advises trying to keep toes unencumbered. (I just bought my first pair of Birkenstock Arizonas* – yep Steve Jobs influenced me.)

That aside, I do love a self-administered foot massage and fancy scrub. For major pamper points, Olverum Body Polish* (above) is the ideal candidate for this job. It’s not so oily or watery that it slides off and its hardworking ingredient list (including papaya enzyme, pumice and bamboo extract) promises a satisfying grain to polish the skin while allowing oils to penetrate. It doubles as a pre-shower body scrub for “firming skin, brightening skin tone and boosting elasticity” (gently massage into skin five minutes before, no pressure needed).

If you’re into spa smells, this one is bergamot and geranium heaven. Alternatively, if you prefer a traditional summer scent and you’re on a budget, & Other Stories Perle de Coco Scrub* (below) with its tropical beach notes is a strong dupe for Estee Lauder’s cult Bronze Goddess.
& Other Stories Perle de Coco Scrub

While you’re doing your barefoot-in-the-grass routine, why not maximise benefits with some light Tai Chi? A more active alternative to a morning meditation, these 6-minute routines are my go-to. It’s pretty hard to let your mind race and ruminate while trying to coordinate your double spirals and intentional breathing. (Fun fact: Francis Ford Coppola introduced daily Tai Chi lawn sessions on The Outsiders set in 1982, below.)
Tai Chi on the set of The Outsiders with Francis Ford Coppola.JPG

No time for facials? Me neither. Instead, I like DIY ‘frown knuckling’. This takes me back to massaging my dad’s furrowed brow and clenched jaw in front of the telly back in the day (not to mention, walking on his back – yikes). You can do this face yoga exercise at your desk to destress or at the end of the day (or both!). I like using a scented oil* or balm cleanser* to help my knuckles glide, but it’s just as easy to do it without any products. Simply place the knuckles of your crooked index fingers between your brows, press firmly and glide upwards in short strokes, alternating between the left and right knuckles. You can also use the same knuckles to press against your temples then gently rotate.

Katrien de Blauwer
Another deeply satisfying end-of-day ritual: a few minutes with a heated eye wand. Definitely a nice-to-have than an essential, but worth looking into if you suffer from dry eyes (increasingly common if you’re glued to screens all day). I use the Peep Club Heated Eye Wand Pro, which works by applying heat and gentle pressure along the lash line to loosen the solidified oils that clog the glands and cause inflammation but is also just extremely soothing and relaxing. You can use the accompanying oily balm around the eye, but I prefer REN Evercalm™ Overnight Recovery Balm*. This is designed as a skin barrier repair balm but as it’s safe to use around eyes, I prefer it applied to eyelids. (I also use it as an eye cream under concealer.)

Elizabeth Peyton Thursday (Tony)
Finally, the ultimate act of self-care, anything that encourages sleep and deep relaxation. I don’t actually have trouble sleeping but Anatome’s sleep oils are also good for calming an overactive mind. You can dab a couple of drops on your wrists, burn them in a diffuser or add a few pipettes to a night-time bath. I put them on my inner wrist and inside the elbow and that’s me out in minutes. The hero ingredient of the Anatome Japanese Seaweed Essential Sleep Oil* is Japanese Seaweed, famous for its high concentration of polyphenols, which are proven to reduce sleep latency. But it also contains 21 other potent essential oils including rose absolute and English lavender.

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WORDS: Disneyrollergirl / Navaz Batliwalla
IMAGES: Bruce Weber; Olverum; & Other Stories; The Outsiders; Katrien de Blauwer; Elizabeth Peyton
NOTE: Most images are digitally enhanced. Some posts use affiliate links and PR samples. Please read my privacy and cookies policy here

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CLICK HERE to buy my book, The New Garconne: How to be a Modern Gentlewoman
CLICK HERE to buy my beauty book, Face Values: The New Beauty Rituals and Skincare



On quiet beauty, Prada make-up 2.0 and the end of the glossy girl boss era



Australian Vogue Beauty Garconne

How cool to be quoted in Noelle Faulkner’s article for Vogue Australia on the emerging anti-perfect aesthetic.

In her piece, ‘The Whole Picture’ (in the August issue), she charts the convergence of discreet fashion and beauty, particularly the growing shift away from obvious enhancements in pursuit of so-called perfection (pillow cheeks, snatched jawlines, uber-pumped lips) and towards a more self-accepting, everyday aesthetic. If you hang out here regularly, you’ll be familiar with the brands we flagged in the discussion. Westman Atelier, Ami Colé, Fara Homidi Beauty; the beauty equivalents of ‘quiet luxury’ stalwarts The Row, Khaite and Bottega, if you will.

Vogue Australia - quiet beauty The New Garconne
Bottega Veneta pre spring 2023 ad campaign

Faulkner points out that these beauty upstarts pick up where Glossier* left off, following make-up missteps and HR mishandlings during its peak unicorn phase, as well as its original customers simply ageing out of the brand.

This is a good place to mention my summer staycation read. I received a review copy of Marisa Meltzer’s Glossy: Ambition, Beauty and the Inside Story of Emily Weiss’s Glossier* (below) and immediately got stuck in. I was an early Into The Gloss fan (the ‘what’s on my bathroom shelf’ editorial site that Weiss founded in 2010) and avid Emily Weiss watcher. Although actually, as a reality TV avoider, her pre-ITG and Glossier life as The Hills ‘super-intern’ completely passed me by.

Glossy by Marisa Meltzer book

Glossy (published in the US next month) multi-tasks as highly readable brand memoir, founder manual and 21st century history of the business of beauty. It unpicks the trajectory of the beauty DTC era, the influencer-as-entrepreneur age and the toxic positivity of girl boss culture. It reveals the graft and risk-taking required of start-ups beyond the fun phase of early buzz and creativity. While Meltzer implies Weiss did a disservice to young female wannabe entrepreneurs by downplaying her knowledge and WASP-y privilege to seem relatable to her employees, there’s no denying her ambition, vision and persistence.

Although Weiss eventually decides to pass the CEO reins on to someone more experienced, the fact remains that with Glossier she not only identified a nascent make-up-lite beauty consumer, but also pioneered a modern brand playbook. Glossier brought a new type of community-focused retail to the fore, nailed the experiential, location-specific pop-up, grew its social media following to cult status and was an early adopter of the IYKYK brand merch model.

Underpinning all this was the desire to reframe beauty as attainable, casual and free-spirited. No mention of “fixing flaws” or “anti-ageing”, only the mirror-selfie-friendly strapline, “You Look Good.”

Last week saw the arrival of Prada Beauty*, Prada’s second foray into make-up, following the success of Hermès Beauty and preceding a rumoured Louis Vuitton make-up line. Where the early-2000s make-up aesthetic was clinical, retro-futuristic and minimalist (remember the genius branding?), Prada Beauty 2.0 is a happy synergy of fashion-forward (the team have access to an archive of 27,000 prints and fabrics) and technical innovation.

In fact, the branding and imagery also lean ‘futuristic’ and minimalist, with their trademark ice green backgrounds and bare skin aesthetic, but the colour products have the Prada edge we expect, with off-beat eyeshadow colour combinations (£65) and ultra-matte lipstick finishes (£29.50). For the no-make-up-make-up girl (or guy) there’s an intriguing sheer green-tinged lip balm (£37) and the foundations (£49) promise skincare benefits to add that ethereal hi-sheen glow.

Prada Beauty lip balm
Greta Hofer Prada Beauty
Prada Beauty eye shadow

While there’s a ‘global creative e-make-up artist’ employed to create make-up for ‘the 3D virtual world’, the IRL lipsticks and eye shadows are – thankfully – advertised on human models. They‘re youthful but racially diverse (Greta Hofer! Chenyin Qi! Dara Gueye!) plus, although I can’t find any photos of her, we’re promised Guinevere van Seenus to represent the 90s model as midlifer.

The campaign blurb is very, well, marketing-y – not surprising as Prada Beauty is under L’Oreal’s purview. Titled Rethinking Beauty, it’s a familiar word salad liberally peppered with feel-good lingo: “empowers”, “self-expression”, “curation” and “self-reinvention”. Yet overall, Prada Beauty presents as intellectual, forward-looking and arty and so far, no age-phobic or ‘flawless’ rhetoric.

Instead of looking baby-faced or hyper-feminine, grown-up garconnes want to look healthy, vital and un-filtered, thus the rise of skintellectuals schooled in sun protection and skin barrier health and the launch of shiny new products to assist.

As I said to Vogue Australia, “now we take so much pleasure in the care of skin, our knowledge has increased around why we need to look after it and the products themselves are much more enjoyable to use, especially the protection products. The textures are luxurious and the branding is more sophisticated and desirable, in a kind of fashion way. If it looks good on your shelf, you’re more likely to reach out for it, and that is part of where fashion and beauty are coming together.”

If Hermès Beauty and Prada Beauty are anything to go by, I expect to see the ritualistic and tactile factors come to the fore (Prada’s Saffiano leather-textured lipstick bullets and gestural packaging already appears to hit those notes).

Prada Beauty lipstick with saffiano texture
Prada Beauty
Prada Beauty eye shadow
Prada Beauty Lip Balm

In the interest of balance, I’d be remiss not to acknowledge the elephant in the room. Jessica Defino has a ton to say on this subject in her newsletter, The Unpublishable. The crux being that positioning costly make-up and skincare as ’empowering’, “siphons women’s actual sources of power in the process: their time, their money, their effort, their energy, their thoughts. These are finite resources that we have.”

She’s right of course. But while we undo decades of damage, at least quiet, anti-excess beauty is a small step in the right direction.

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WORDS: Disneyrollergirl / Navaz Batliwalla
IMAGES: Vogue Australia x 2, Bottega Veneta; Glossy: Ambition, Beauty and the Inside Story of Emily Weiss’s Glossier*; Prada Beauty x 7
NOTE: Most images are digitally enhanced. Some posts use affiliate links and PR samples. Please read my privacy and cookies policy here

CLICK HERE to get Disneyrollergirl blog posts straight to your inbox once a week
CLICK HERE to buy my book, The New Garconne: How to be a Modern Gentlewoman
CLICK HERE to buy my beauty book, Face Values: The New Beauty Rituals and Skincare



Shop the post: an olfactory escape



Lola James Harper - The Betty Lee

Going anywhere nice this year? If not, perhaps you’d like an olfactory vacation? No, not the classic coconut-and-vanilla beachy blends, but something much more niche and personal.

It’s the era of the hyper-specific location perfume. Rather than Mediterranean colognes and fruity-florals, the latest crop of wanderlust fragrances are landing in far-flung places like Dubai, Tokyo and the Sahara Desert or close-to-home hang-outs like The Woody Office of Daddy and The Bomboneria in Barcelona*.

ROADS Club Tokyo fragrance
Take ROADS. The travel-themed Irish perfume brand conjures narrative fragrances with specially chosen artwork adorning its packaging to convey the full anywhere-but-here experience. Club Tokyo* (above) for example combines citrus, floral and woody notes to reflect the non-stop buzz of contemporary Japanese culture, accompanied by Angela Di Finizio’s equally hyper streetscape photography. Harmattan* meanwhile is almost the polar opposite. Inspired by the Saharan wind, it’s a spicy, incense-y affair with a whiff of the cult Black Afgano by Nasomatto.

Lola James Harper 213 Rue Saint-Honoré Air
Lola James Harper also encourages aromatic escapism. With perfumes, candles and room sprays boasting such location-specific names as The Guitar Shop on Denmark Street or The Da Rosa Epicerie, they let you project your own meaning onto their scents. 213 Rue Saint-Honoré Air* is a personal favourite. The fig-heavy scent is the same one used for Colette’s famous L’Air de Colette candle (as in the legendary Paris store), brought to life by Lola James Harper founder Rami Mekdachi. (I use the room scent as a perfume, walking through the mist or spraying it on my sleeves.)

As well as creating the smells and the names, Mekdachi also takes the evocative travelogue snaps that help transport you to said destinations. He also creates fragrances for hotel brands – think Hotel Costes – so you can bring your holiday romance home with you in the form of candles, shower gels and soap.

In fact, hotel-smells-as-souvenirs are on the rise. As Air Mail reports, the Aman Resorts fragrances* have their own loyal following, as does Baccarat Hotel’s Baccarat Rouge 540*. This year the Carlyle Hotel commissioned David Moltz of D.S. & Durga to create a signature perfume to complement its celebrated honeysuckle soap (below). We all know smells create memories, so these olfactory postcards make perfect commercial sense.
D.S & Durga Carlyle Hotel EDP

Officine Universelle Buly - The French gardens fragrances
At Officine Universelle Buly the vibe is expectedly more “glocal”. Its new ‘The French Gardens’ fragrances (above) inspired by a trove of antique seed packets, conjure up your very own rustic vegetable garden with mouth-watering combinations such as Iraqi Beetroot and Egyptian Rhubarb (juicy, zesty and musky) and Scandinavian Redcurrant and Peruvian Tomato (earthy, sweet and herby). If that’s not enough, each water-based scent is accompanied by a dry body oil, soap and moisturising lotion for a full four-course immersion.

Santa Maria Novella Gelsomino
More traditionally, Florentine botanical perfume house Santa Maria Novella also transports you to historic gardens, this time a celebration of the Medici family’s aesthetic citrus gardens. Four new scents – L’Iris, Magnolia, Gelsomino and Bizzarria – are inspired by unique plant varieties cultivated in these gardens.

Most intriguing are Gelsomino, a jasmine and geranium-heavy citrus-floral that riffs off the ‘Goa jasmine’ gifted to Cosimo III De Medici in 1688 and thereafter only allowed to flourish in his secret greenhouse, and Bizzarria, a bitter orange, lemon and etrog (a thick knobbly citrus fruit) cocktail sweetened with neroli and timur pepper. For the best experience, pick them up from the magnificent Santa Maria Novella pharmacy in Florence.

Marks & Spencer Autograph Plum Blossom
For those on an economy class budget, Zara and Marks & Spencer have ramped up their perfume options considerably in recent years with high quality offerings under £30. For the Zara globetrotter it’s all about dynamic-sounding destinations and the decadent smells to go with them (as imagined by Jo Malone). Think Boldly Seoul, Creatively Shanghai, Energetically New York and Magnificently Dubai.

Meanwhile Marks & Spencer’s summer floral fragrances* are made with location-specific oils that will ‘smell-eport’ you to sunny climes. Plum Blossom EDP* (£19.50, above) is made with Turkish rose oil, Wild Jasmine EDT* (£19.50) boasts Provence lavender oil and Riviera Neroli EDP* (£19.50) uses orange essential oil from Italy. Can’t decide? Try this trio of M&S travel miniatures* (£22.50). The best bit: it’s all available by swapping the duty-free hall for the mall – no passport needed.

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WORDS: Disneyrollergirl / Navaz Batliwalla
IMAGES: Lola James Harper/The Betty Lee; ROADS; Lola James Harper; D.S & Durga; Officine Universelle Buly; Santa Maria Novella; Marks & Spencer
NOTE: Most images are digitally enhanced. Some posts use affiliate links* and PR samples. Please read my privacy and cookies policy here

CLICK HERE to get Disneyrollergirl blog posts straight to your inbox once a week
CLICK HERE to buy my book, The New Garconne: How to be a Modern Gentlewoman
CLICK HERE to buy my beauty book, Face Values: The New Beauty Rituals and Skincare



Au revoir Jane, the ultimate garconne



Jane Birkin - the ultimate garconne

Celebrities dying is nothing new, but word of Jane Birkin’s passing feels personal. Not because she was an icon or a diva but because she wasn’t.

Despite her obvious physical beauty and talent she always came across to me as down to earth and real. I remember ‘meeting’ her with That’s Not My Age at a Miller Harris event (Lyn Harris had created a bespoke fragrance for her and they had remained friends). Well, Alyson actually spoke to her while I hovered awkwardly. She was as unaffected and chicly dishevelled as you would hope. I always liked how despite her much-lauded beauty, she had the same hang ups as us all. Her interviews would frequently reveal her vulnerabilities around her looks, such as her description in 2021 of buying oversized men’s garms in which to look ‘fragile’ – the 60s waif body ideal clearly still omnipresent in her psyche.

Yet, as far as I know, she resisted the lure of tweakments and plastic surgery succumbed to by most other high-profile women of her era in their bid to future-proof their careers. She was famously non-princessy. Regularly asked about beauty hacks and product recs, her go-tos were a relatable high-low mix of French pharmacy staples (Embryolisse! Dr. Hauschka!) and bougie duty free splurges (Sisley!).

Jane Birkin epitomised the ‘garconne’ style and philosophy I identified in my 2016 book, The New Garconne: How to Be a Modern Gentlewoman. I would have happily used her on the cover to exemplify not just the dualities of masculine-feminine dressing, but her personal values – she was proudly woke long before that was even a word. Despite being partly famous for inspiring the Hermès Birkin bag, she was known for selling her Birkins to raise money for deserving causes and eventually swapped bags for pockets!

A final word from la Birkin on ageing – despite her ups and downs she was emphatic that life is for living…

“I think at 40 years old, I was at my best, really. Not for me at 20 or 25. Forty is, I think, a great, great age for a girl, 40 and even 50. It’s a lovely age because girls are as fragile as when they’re 15, and they don’t know what’s coming up. They know what they’re losing, but they don’t know what they’re going to get; 40 and 50 is a bit like that. You turn into something else a little bit, and it’s rather exciting. You do rash things. You do rash things because it’s your last chance in lots of ways, so I find that girls of 40 are interesting characters to write for, and 50 too.”

WORDS: Disneyrollergirl / Navaz Batliwalla
IMAGE: Jane Birkin / photographer unknown
NOTE: Most images are digitally enhanced. Some posts use affiliate links and PR samples. Please read my privacy and cookies policy here

CLICK HERE to get Disneyrollergirl blog posts straight to your inbox once a week
CLICK HERE to buy my book, The New Garconne: How to be a Modern Gentlewoman
CLICK HERE to buy my beauty book, Face Values: The New Beauty Rituals and Skincare