in muslin weave. I tried not to listen, I tried not to be influenced, but it left me with a healthy dose of scepticism.
I know that nothing is going to reverse time. Apart from a deal with the devil, of course, and at the moment he’s refusing to return my calls.
But, at worst, using so much night cream that I slide off my pillow, can’t do me any harm. And if it’s not doing me any good, it doesn’t matter because I never use anything for more than a few months. Unlike po-faced French women who use the same brand from the age of fourteen until their deathbed, I’m a product slut. I love them all. If face creams were husbands, then I am Elizabeth Taylor.
The thing is that I’ll try each product on its merits and I’ll draw my own conclusions, and there are some products that I
know
make a difference. I’ve seen it with my own two (kohl-rimmed, mascara’d) eyes. It’s probably not fair to single out a special few for mention when there are so many good brands, but I’m going to anyway.
Example: after using Crème de la Mer for a month, I was looking so well that I was accused of having had botox.
Example: if I have a late night and use Jo Malone’s protein serum before going to sleep, instead of waking up with a face like a pair of greying, saggy y-fronts, I look like I’ve had my full sixteen hours.
Example: if I’ve been hitting the chocolate hard and look spotty and sluggish, a go of Elizabeth Arden’s Peel and Reveal will sort me out.
As the whole area of beauty becomes more high-tech and sophisticated, innovative products keep appearing. New areas of the face and body come under scrutiny and suddenly a new special cream is required for them. And sometimes a cream on its own isn’t enough. Sometimes you need serums too. Or finishing gear. And there are times when a little voice inside me asks: do you
really
need this inner-arm super-serum, to be worn under the ordinary serum and over the day cream? And I think: feck it! Who cares? I love it!
Which brings me to my spirited defence.
Spirited defence: yes, I admit to a certain amount of guilt, but loving beauty products is not the worst thing in the world. It’s not like I’m doing cocaine, or collecting Swatch watches or shooting quails or invading Iraq.
Everyone has to have a hobby.
Previously unpublished
.
Hand Upgrade
Until recently, I never took any interest in nail care, on account of never having any nails to care for – I wasn’t a smoker so I had to develop
some
way of coping with stress.
Not that I didn’t occasionally make the effort to grow my nails. When I was in school, the myth circulated that if you ate a cube of jelly a day you’d have fabulous long strong nails, but once I started into the jelly I could never stop at one cube; I’d always eat the entire packet, then have to face the wrath of my mammy when she went to make something to go with the custard and found I’d eaten it all.
Then the summer I was fourteen – and I don’t know how it happened – all of a sudden I had a prize nail, a gorgeous elongated shapely creature on my ring finger, left hand, which I guarded and displayed like it was a Fabergé egg. I almost kept my hand in a glass case for the entire summer and charged people to look. But then September arrived and the prize nail broke and that was the end of that.
I just wasn’t a nail person. All my life I’ve hated my hands; I’m prone to short limbs anyway and nowhere is it more pronounced than my fingers – short fingers, short, bitten, strangely shaped nails. That was just the way it was. No point wishing for things to be different.
Then, a couple of years back, I had to go to New Yorkfor work and a ‘well wisher’ took me aside and told me that unless I got my nails sorted out my career in the States was so OVER. She put the fear of God into me – I mean, what the hell could I do about my bloody nails? Fake it, she advised; thanks to the miracle of science, I could get my pitiful little
I know that nothing is going to reverse time. Apart from a deal with the devil, of course, and at the moment he’s refusing to return my calls.
But, at worst, using so much night cream that I slide off my pillow, can’t do me any harm. And if it’s not doing me any good, it doesn’t matter because I never use anything for more than a few months. Unlike po-faced French women who use the same brand from the age of fourteen until their deathbed, I’m a product slut. I love them all. If face creams were husbands, then I am Elizabeth Taylor.
The thing is that I’ll try each product on its merits and I’ll draw my own conclusions, and there are some products that I
know
make a difference. I’ve seen it with my own two (kohl-rimmed, mascara’d) eyes. It’s probably not fair to single out a special few for mention when there are so many good brands, but I’m going to anyway.
Example: after using Crème de la Mer for a month, I was looking so well that I was accused of having had botox.
Example: if I have a late night and use Jo Malone’s protein serum before going to sleep, instead of waking up with a face like a pair of greying, saggy y-fronts, I look like I’ve had my full sixteen hours.
Example: if I’ve been hitting the chocolate hard and look spotty and sluggish, a go of Elizabeth Arden’s Peel and Reveal will sort me out.
As the whole area of beauty becomes more high-tech and sophisticated, innovative products keep appearing. New areas of the face and body come under scrutiny and suddenly a new special cream is required for them. And sometimes a cream on its own isn’t enough. Sometimes you need serums too. Or finishing gear. And there are times when a little voice inside me asks: do you
really
need this inner-arm super-serum, to be worn under the ordinary serum and over the day cream? And I think: feck it! Who cares? I love it!
Which brings me to my spirited defence.
Spirited defence: yes, I admit to a certain amount of guilt, but loving beauty products is not the worst thing in the world. It’s not like I’m doing cocaine, or collecting Swatch watches or shooting quails or invading Iraq.
Everyone has to have a hobby.
Previously unpublished
.
Hand Upgrade
Until recently, I never took any interest in nail care, on account of never having any nails to care for – I wasn’t a smoker so I had to develop
some
way of coping with stress.
Not that I didn’t occasionally make the effort to grow my nails. When I was in school, the myth circulated that if you ate a cube of jelly a day you’d have fabulous long strong nails, but once I started into the jelly I could never stop at one cube; I’d always eat the entire packet, then have to face the wrath of my mammy when she went to make something to go with the custard and found I’d eaten it all.
Then the summer I was fourteen – and I don’t know how it happened – all of a sudden I had a prize nail, a gorgeous elongated shapely creature on my ring finger, left hand, which I guarded and displayed like it was a Fabergé egg. I almost kept my hand in a glass case for the entire summer and charged people to look. But then September arrived and the prize nail broke and that was the end of that.
I just wasn’t a nail person. All my life I’ve hated my hands; I’m prone to short limbs anyway and nowhere is it more pronounced than my fingers – short fingers, short, bitten, strangely shaped nails. That was just the way it was. No point wishing for things to be different.
Then, a couple of years back, I had to go to New Yorkfor work and a ‘well wisher’ took me aside and told me that unless I got my nails sorted out my career in the States was so OVER. She put the fear of God into me – I mean, what the hell could I do about my bloody nails? Fake it, she advised; thanks to the miracle of science, I could get my pitiful little
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