fruitybeauty

When you're busy, your skin starts to hate you.

Especially when you REALLY don't need it to misbehave and start being dry and spotty and just generally quite shit.

It's the crap food you eat when you work back.
It's the rubbish cold, dry weather and the heaters.
It's the water you forget to drink.
The gym you don't go to.
The flying, the wine at dinner to relax from the big days and the scorching hot showers you take to relax.

So, you know what I do when all of this happens and my skin is all like, "Oh, poor me, I'm all reactionary to stress, ooh, I'm so upset and dismayed at the way you're treating my body, oooh, why don't I just go and cry about it like the big epidermal baby I am, waaaaaaaaah," and I'm all like, "Whatever, skin, I'm gonna get me some beer battered chips."

Usually, I'd recommend a quick DIY peel (very much enjoying La Prairie's new 3 minute peel, after all, who has 4 minutes?) and a little hydrating mask (Alpha-H does a cracker called the 15% Glycolic mask. If you haven't heard of Alpha-H, I suggest you trot over to their site and sniff around. They are very very underrated, and very very good. Strayan, too. I love their Liquid Gold lotion, the aforementioned mask and their Micro Cleanse scrub. KaPOW! Spots gone, skin clear and all hydrated. Take five, Alpha-H. Your work here is done.)

But today I'll recommend a holiday to the Seychelles.

I can recommended an amazing travel agent, if you need one. Here he is, all ready to book your flights for you.

Ladystaches. Discuss.

Do you ever catch your face in a certain light and think, "Good GOD man!  I am the proprietor of a ladystache!"

I had one of those moments today. As usual I just altered the angle of my mirror and pretended it never happened.

Ladystaches of course, are those little faint moustaches we ladies get that kind of perch on the corner regions of our upper lip. They are not serious, nor are they something to get all obsessed about and start peering at your face in your compact at 45 degree angles in sunlight every chance you get and go create a blog called Ladystachette or anything wild like that. No, no, no. But if you are genuinely worried about it may I suggest not to pour hot liquefied wax on it, but rather you purchase a little home bleachy kit, like the ones our friend Andrea makes, and bleach your little ladystache until it's all invisible like.

Trust me on the wax thing. *Whispered* I've seen what happens when girls wax their 'stache; it grows back. In a kind of "more" way. Bleach better.

Donna knew the babies breath might
make her a laughing stock with her
big city friends, but in her heart
she knew she was going to be the most
beautiful bride there ever was, and that
was all there was to it.

Aesop: Pretty easy to recommend.

I get asked: What's a good skin care product? a lot. It's a kind of insane question, as everyone's skin is different and has different needs, but I have found myself, for the sake of simplicity, advising Aesop B Triple C Facial Balancing Gel lately, which smells and feels a little, uh, strange, but which my skin is very very much enjoying. (Of course, you need sunscreen on top or in your tinted moisturiser afterwards.)

Aesop, a Melbourne based brand, has been around for over 20 years, and I've always loved their body products, (Qualia in Hamilton Island and The Prince Hotel in Melbourne both feature their hair/face/body products. Yes, they were pinched.) But it wasn't til recently I gave their face stuff a nudge. My sister, who lives in the UK, still only uses Aesop after being there four years (it is a hugely successful brand overseas) and she's got, like, all of London's best organic/biodynamic skin care on offer.

I should warn you that if you love creams, thick, luxurious creams, this probably is not going to be sitting on your sink anytime soon.

And oil say that again.

Man, cleansing oils are the bizzo.

You've heard me rave about Dermalogica's Precleanse, but lately I've been using SK-II's cleansing oil, (which has a pump, and I'm very pro-pump) which requires no follow up cleanser. No, you just:

1. Apply to a dry face groaning with makeup

2. Rub it in all over, eyes included (it doesn't irritate, well not for me anyway)

3. Step into the shower

4. Lather it up to emulsify

5. Rinse off.

And I tell you what fruits, gone are the days of getting out of the shower with great rings of black fury around my eyes! Gone are the days of missing some mascara, only to locate it under my eyes when I peer into my puffy little face at 6.57am the following morning! Gone are the days of squeaky, stripped, dry skin!

Yep, it's just one groovy, smooth ride to clean town with cleansing oils.

(Just ask Bloom, MAC and Utowa: they know, they've all made one, too.)

Artificial skin for cosmetic testing: Creepy, but in the best possible way.

I went to a Lancome launch today (keep one very alerty and eagley eye out for their Definitely Excellent new nail polishes is all I will say) and I learned that L'Oreal have created synthetic human skin in order to eradicate the need to test on animals. It's called Episkin, it's made from donor cells and not only will it allow cosmetic companies to test for things like irritation or sensitivity with great ease, it will save thousands upon thousands of poor little creatures from being subjected to animal testing so that we can look pretty without swelling up, developing extremely unsavoury rashes, or, uh, dying.

Read about it more in depth here.

Or, don't, and just go back to watching Girls of The Playboy Mansion. Oh come now, you can admit you watch it. We all do. And yet we only remember how terrifyingly inane it is, and how less intelligent we are becoming by the second when Kendra says "Now that I have my grill I definitely feel more like gangsta," or when we notice they all wear pink tracksuits, all the time.

It's the week of love, so here are some products I love.

Ah, love. Love, love, love, love, love, love, as Ben Stiller said in The Heartbreak Kid, in the only funny line of the film.

Anyway! Here are just some of the many, many products I currently love. (Or "love" as they say in New Zealand.)

Prevage anti-aging night cream.

Ah yes, that synthetic antioxidant show-off, Idebenone, making us all stay looking younger by fighting off free radicals in the kind of kickass way nature simply can't match. This night cream version of the treatment is possibly even better than the 'serum', original for me, cause it has an even more concentrated dose of the good stuff and contains Vitamin A for better skin repair through the night. In a nutshelly version: My skin feels lovely and soft and plump in the morning, and I especially love that I can wack it on after cleansing at night, and skip using a serum cause it's that potent. After all, wasn't it... someone... important, possibly religious, who said easiness is next to excellenceless? Yes. It totally was.

Radness factor: Stratospheric.

Bobbi Brown Luminous Foundation.

How much do i love makeup that includes skincare ingredients: Probably more than the paparazzi love Britney. This particular baby has collagen boosting hexapeptides and milk thistle extract, which is probably why my skin looks so lovely and luminous all day when I wear it. I especially love it for night. It's a medium coverage, radiant without shimmer - easily buildable if you need to cover blemishes or pigmentation, though. Oh gosh. This is all sounding well familiar. Have I spoken about this baby before? If I have, pardon, pardon. If i haven't, it's uh, real nice and I like it.

Awesomeness rating: As high as this. (My arm is up as high as I can hold it, and I'm standing on the lounge.)

Lancome Virtuose mascara.

I think I may have discussed my love for Other Mascaras once or 56 times before, but I have yet to talked up the splendour and long lashiness and curviness of this mascara. A long time volume lover, I made the switch to curl and length only out of necessity: I'd run out of my other current mascara obsession, Hypnose. But oh, the magic that awaited my little lash curtains. The brush, is curved, you see, but more than that, it actually grips your lashes and coats them as sweeps up and out. Clever, so clever. And the curl! The length! Happily, there's still even some volume. In all, a wild little adventure in coating and curling lashes. No eyelash curler required. Seriously.

Genius factor: Einstein-esque.

xoxo
Beauty Girl

Fruitybeauty. Literally.

This is Ella.

She's a ginormous nude, peachy woman created by Ella Bache. She's seductively perched down at Sydney's Circular Quay, (where she can keep a eye on all the ferries  and make sure buskers have their proper council permits) and is made up of almost 25, 000 peaches. (The Presidents of The United States of America would wet their corduroy pants at the sight of Ella's incredible peachiness.)

The point in all of this, of course, is that Ella Bache's tagline is Stone Fruits Are Better Than Lego When it Comes To Building Giant Structures, (And Taste Better Too Although Some Two-Year Olds May Disagree.)

Hang on. That's not right.

Ah yes. Skin Good Enough To Eat. Yes, that's it.

Whatevs. Ella is unreal.  (And by the looks of it, a C cup and a regular Spin class attendee.) 

She's also a PERFECTLY accurate visual representation of "fruitybeauty", which happens to be the name of a blog I own. (You should visit it one time. It's totally awesome.)

A "handy" little post indeed

It’s called Accidental Allure, I’ve decided. Those things that you probably don’t even realise are beautiful, and sexy and make men (or women) melt like an icy pole on hot asphalt.

Examples:

Having really smooooooth skin

Having nice feet that are well-looked after

Having hair that smells really awesome (cue Herbal Essences)

Having a graceful, elegant neck and playing it up by wearing your hair pulled back

Having incredibly soft hands

Having a yacht

Sunscreen strata and one splendid suncare stick

My friend, code name Bernie, text me about this while I was splashing about in the sideways rain at Byron bay over my New Years break. Thanks for that, cyclone. You're awesome.

She was a little confused, you see, about which order summer skin care goes. Does the sunscreen or sunblock go under your face cream, or over? And I thought what a great question, Bernie, that deserves fruitification.

The answer of course fruits, is on top of your face cream. Sun protection, (30 plus and protecting you against both UVA [ageing] and UVB [burning], please) should be the last thing you put on your face (before makeup, of course.)

So, ideally you would apply your serum (treatment product), your moisturiser (hydration, antioxidants etc), your sunblock/sunscreen/zinc, and then (your primer if you wear one) and then your makeup.

Of course, you could make life easy and combine your daily moisturiser with your high protection sunblock, which Kit, Mecca, Ultraceuticals, True Solutions, Skincueticals, Invisible Zinc, Clinique and a whole host of other skincare brands will happily allow you to do, provided you hand over some clams for their goodies.

Another way to simplify in summer, (and my GOD I love this product, it's my summer staple three years running and is so teeny you can take it everywhere, even in that silly coin purse thing you use over summer because your work handbag is monstrously oversized) is to combine your high protection with your foundation, as per Shiseido's sun protection stick foundation. (Shiseido are renown for their excellence in sun care.)

It's this teeny little foundation stick full of 30 plusness and broad spectrumness that is waterproof, sweat proof and gives awesome, natural dewy coverage (you just draw on some lines then blend in with fingers), conceals spots (even red, fresh or naughtily picked-at ones) and undereye circles better than pretty much any concealer I've tried and is just superb for the beach or the bar or bowling or bungee jumping.

There are a few different shades (I use Ochre) and look, I could go on but the point is that I. Love. It. Much and you might too.

Orange is a fruit. Not a skin colour.

I know I am always saying 'This self tanner is the best' or 'This gradual tanner is the best' or 'My back hurts when I wear that fricken strapless bra' but when I was asked at a Hen's the other night (if anyone was unsure of how to get spectacularly drunk, I think I may have figured it out) 'Which is the best self tan?,' which is one of the questions I am asked most, the fact that I did not even think twice tells me I may have finally figured out the self tanner I believe to be the best. (At this point in time anyway... maybe we have a new answer next week.)

It's Ella Bache Great Tan Without Sun!

*Applause*

It goes on a lovely natural looking brown, (so you have this lovely, genuine-y colour immediately) dries a lovely natural looking brown and the closest you'll get to orange with this stuff is if you decide to eat some paw paw as you wait for it to dry.