Get the look: Beauty buys to brighten your mood
The colour, scent and texture of the right beauty product can cheer you up like a chat with a friend, or act as a pick-me-up on a dreary Monday morning, says
Emma Stone wore a fresh flower-crown to work (well, to The Favourite New York premiere) in September and made Instagram smile. As expressions of ‘Hakuna Matata’ go, putting roses in your hair is right up there with wearing Celia Birtwell prints and playing Sly and The Family Stone. Her citron eye-shadow, taken from NARS Eyeshadow Duo in ‘Rated R,’ €34, is also pretty fresh. Beauty can be champagne-like in its evergreen appeal: Happy-making when you are on a high, but an even nicer boost when you are feeling down. Beyond hiding fatigue in the mornings, its colour, scent, and emollient effects can perk you up like a quick chat with a good friend.
With early starts growing darker, these are some beauty buys that will brighten your mood.
There’s been a pink VW Bug parked near my flat the last few weeks, always with peonies on the dashboard. The flowers can’t be real; it’s months too late to get even one decent-looking bunch (and now is the time to plant them, apparently), but the whole picture is nice on a rainy Monday. Yankee’s ‘Peony’ Candle, €24.99 for a medium size, brings home the flower’s marshmallow-rose, as well as a sparkling, summery scent that’s lovely at bath time. Created with two species of peony-extract and a woody base-note, the large version of this candle can burn up to 110 hours.
Peony-pink makes an especially uplifting-lip colour, but who’d think to do one with a leather finish? Tom Pecheux, apparently. ‘Le Slim’ is the first lip collection by YSL Beauty’s creative head, who used to make the world’s sexiest smoky-eyes for Tom Ford. Square-edged to create a precise line (or outline, if you crave a fuller look), it is as intense in colour as it is lightweight on skin. The matte formula feels as dainty as the name suggests and stays put like skinny jeans. I think Pecheux might’ve gone a little slimmer with the packaging, as well, but YSL products do always look more at home in your jewellery box than beside it, and less is never more in there. Try Le Slim in no. 14 ‘Rose Curieux,’ or ‘Nu Incongru’, for a touch of pink.
Davines, a family-run haircare brand in Parma, does some fantastic, quick-fix hair treatments. Skincare ingredients for the hair are a very hot way to nourish your locks right now and The Spotlight Circle, a gloss-infused moisturising mask, is just the pick-me-up to change a ‘Blue Monday’ to a good hair day. Jojoba and moringa oils, Vitamin E, and hyaluronic acid combine to make strands super-shiny, while a smattering of silicones works to keep them frizz-free. The formula’s texture is light enough to layer with a scalp treatment, such as the green tea-infused Purity Circle, which provides pollution protection. Both suit all hair-types and smell terrific. Davines is sustainably produced and packaged. The resealable pouch allows for two uses on fine-to-medium hair.
Adam Sandler’s rewritten the lyrics to ‘Grow Old With You’, with which he serenades Drew Barrymore at the end of The Wedding Singer, for his new Netflix special, which arrived this month. There are lines about Eat, Pray, Love and being a dad and — somewhat pertinently — about foot-rubbing. If you practice reflexology or just like a good pedicure, you’ve probably noticed how treating your feel well can improve your mood. M&S Bare Feet Nourish Heel Balm, part of the high street giant’s collaboration with A-list chiropodist Margaret Dabbs, is delightful, no matter who applies it. The formula is rich in ginger extrac, green tea, and manuka honey. It also contains a zingy aroma of bergamot and lime, with a subtle floral and sheer-musk base.
Mutiny is a warm, oriental-floral scent to drown out winter blues. It is also an unusually spirited concept for a Margiela scent, but John Galliano, the brand’s creative director, has been drawn to high-seas drama before. Eight years ago this month, he showed a Dior collection inspired by On The Waterfront and a dream of Kate Moss as a siren who lures seamen to their deaths.
Afterwards, he took a bow in naval uniform. The brand John Galliano, which sacked him after his anti-Semitic rant, but retained his friend and protégé, Bill Gaytten, for design, this spring put out sailor-inspired trousers stained with tea. And this intoxicating new fragrance, Mutiny, which could overpower an army if you get too liberal with your spritzing.
Margiela’s Mutiny also speaks to the dissenting mood of the moment, using ‘mutinist’ cool-kids, like Willow Smith and Princess Nokia, in its ads. It is described as unisex, as are all Margiela fragrances, but its mix of autumnal fruits and various expressions of tuberose is so feminine it makes J’adore seem muted.
An agarwood and leather base brings the heat. The flacon is a very gold, multi-faceted jewel of a thing, beautiful in its own right.
Margiela offers personal engraving of its front panel, at mymutiny.com.
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