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Published: Oct 2, 2011
Category: Beyond Classification
My wife has her beauty regimen down to a streamlined, highly effective routine. Retin-A. Vitamin C serum. A daily session with the Clarisonic.
You’ll note: No commercial products.
Recently, I spotted two new products in her arsenal.
With brand names, even.
Naturally, I wondered how she came to buy them.
“A salesclerk told me that all the celebrity make-up artists use Clarins Beauty Flash Balm,” she said.
It immediately moved into almost daily use.
“At the end of a long day at work or, later at night, when your makeup begins to settle, you rub a little of this cream in your hand, then press it on your face,” my wife explained. “Very quickly, your skin looks dewy --- it’s almost an instant glow.”
Or, as someone noted on a message board, “It’s like eight hours of sleep in a tube.” (To buy Clarins Baume Beauté Éclair --- Beauty Flash Balm --- from Amazon, click here.)
I read the manufacturer’s explanation of ingredients that tighten the skin and reduce wrinkles, but the technical reasons that Beauty Flash Balm works are beyond my understanding. I did note the emphasis on not rubbing it in. And, elsewhere, I saw testimonial after testimonial for its use as a base for makeup and as a home facial (apply, let sit 10-15 minutes, rinse or tissue off.)
I return to the observable truth: my wife never looks tired.
The Clarins cream is a necessity. Prada L'Eau Ambree Body Powder, which comes in a typically gorgeous Prada package and contains, along with a powder that delivers the faintest of amber scent, a big, old-fashioned powder puff --- that, my wife said, is luxury.
“Perfume is a necessity,” my wife explained. “I bought this because I felt I needed a luxury.”
Luxury, in beauty, is very much a 1930s fantasy. The dressing table. The rows of cosmetics. The session in the mirror with a drink handy or a cigarette burning.
Or, now, a small thing that delivers a huge amount of pampering. Over and over I read this: No beauty treatment is more sensual than a powder puff after a bath or shower. My wife goes further: “I use it on the pillows. I shake the puff in the air. For me, it’s a kind of aromatherapy.”
At $62? No way! But that’s the price at Neiman-Marcus. At Amazon, it’s a giveaway $16.25. Much better. (To buy Prada L'Eau Ambree Body Powder with Puff from Amazon, click here.)
Like my wife, I see the Prada body powder as a gift --- only next time I'll be the one buying it.