Jack & Hill: A Beauty Blog - make-up, cosmetics, perfume, and the substance of style

A Botox-free face lift

As I said in email to Karri, who I've been friends with since high school, I am so sad that we're even at the age (29, with years of tanning under our belts) that we need to read this with interest.

I know that life does get better with age, as you learn more (including the fact that nobody knows anything) and shed cares about the unimportant things in life. But there is something incredibly morbid and heartbreaking about inching closer to the end of life, at least for me. Guess I need to enjoy it while I'm here.

Estee Lauder Advanced Night Repair Concentrate

I've been using this every morning, and it's great.  Me, I want to do my damage at night, my repair in the AM.  Great stuff.  Just don't ever visit their product-specific website, which is a total come-on.  Someone decided it was worth spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to annoy customers.  So they made the big, fat flash site that is impossible to load, impossible to see, and treats viewers like chattel. 

Estee Lauder had the opportunity, with the URL "www.littlebrownbottle.com" to create a branded event.  Instead they created a bland nowhere.

Both Jack and I are lifelong Estee Lauder fans.  The products continue to meet our expectations.  The marketing, well, it sucks. 

Biotherm Source Therapie Superactiv

I'm not very happy about this trend in cosmetics that has everything looking and sounding so medical.  Surgical chic is not my cup of tea, not since the time I got to watch over a Beverly Hills sawbones' shoulder as he redesigned some poor girl's nose with a hammer and chisel--took all of the glamour out of it right then and there. 

I prefer beauty products to be, well, beautiful.  Pretty packaging, nice smelling potions, hope in a jar, what have you.  You can keep your bio-medi-thera-derma-matrix-activisms.  I want Madame Couchette's Syrope des Miracles Intense, made from the tears of fireflies, ground up fire opals and hummingbird jism--or something like it.

Which is why I was startled this morning to find I'd used up my bottle of Biotherm Source Therapie Superactiv.  I haven't exactly noticed how much I like this product, it's so unassuming and sternly all-business.  But to put things in perspective, I never, ever finish anything.  Haven't in years. But this stuff is gone, gone, gone, and I'm sad about it.  I can give no higher recommendation. 

Cindy Crawford in plastic surgery shock!

Except I don't think many people will be shocked to learn that she's been relying on a plastic surgeon for 11 years. I'm more shocked that she's admitting it.

I'm not going to lie to myself: past a certain age, creams work on the texture of your skin but, in order to restore elasticity, all I can really count on is vitamin injections, Botox and collagen.

I have a very simple, healthy life, which works miracles. I drink a lot of water, watch what I eat and exercise. But I owe the quality of my skin to my cosmetic surgeon.

I wonder what she and Dr Jean-Louis Sebagh will have to say to all of the suckers who were gullible enough to shell out for the pair's Meaningful Beauty range. I'd suggest something along the lines of, "When we told you our products worked because of ingredients taken from a 'rare French melon,' and showed you a picture of a plain old cantaloupe as proof, you believed us? Really?"

Bad plastic surgery: Fergie

Is anyone - anyone at all - of the opinion that she looks better now than she did before she had God knows what done to her face?

Elemis, TimetoSpa.com, and a jubilant Jack

Last week, at a New Media Age event, Hillary and I were introduced to Melissa and Jo from TimetoSpa.com. (That's them, at left; aren't they pretty?) The website is the official online retailer for, amongst other brands, Elemis. Jo told me that, sometimes, she feels like a spokesmodel for the brand, as she can't help but gush, whenever she gets together with her friends, about the wonders of all of the Elemis products she relies upon. Hmm.

The wine was flowing freely, the conversation was good, and before long, we'd been talking so long that Hillary and I were running late for the Samizdata Summer Party. But I was definitely intrigued to try out some Elemis lotions and potions, if they were good enough to reduce a girl to pub time product promotion.

So you can imagine my delight when, this afternoon, I took delivery of a massive box full of Elemis products from Melissa and Jo. This smaller, gorgeous teal and aubergine box was tucked inside the larger one, and looked so perfect that I almost did not want to open it. (Of course I did, though; it contained a voucher for an Absolute Aroma Stone Ritual - a stone therapy massage followed by an anti-ageing Performance Facial - at the Elemis Day Spa in Mayfair, and a little bottle of bath milk. Score!)

We're all beauty junkies here, right? So you know that when I say I was having palpitations of joy over this bounty, I am only exaggerating a tiny bit. No matter how many free products I get - and believe me, I am only moved to write about a fraction of them - I am always excited to try new things. Melissa and Jo sent me a box of about 25 new things, so my usual sense of anticipation was rather heightened.

The package also contained a beautifully handwritten letter from Melissa, covering two sides of an A4 sized sheet of paper, giving me explicit directions on a relaxing nighttime routine using no fewer than six of the products. I wasted no time in high-tailing it to the bathroom, my arms overflowing with Elemis. I added another two products to the mix for good measure. Here's the lineup:

1. Cleanse with Elemis Rehydrating Rose Petal Cleanser

2. Follow with Elemis Rehydrating Ginseng Toner (Smells fab, and you mist it onto your face before wiping with a cotton pad; I was wary of trying this, as my skincare routine has been toner-free for a few months now - with excellent results - but this toner is so mild that I could use it to wipe off my eye makeup. Freshness without stinging? My kind of toner.)

3. Apply Elemis Papaya Enzyme Peel (I'd rather use this than eat an actual papaya; again, no stinging)

4. Rinse off the peel after 15 minutes, smooth on Elemis Exotic Cream Moisturising Mask

5. Remove mask; massage Elemis Cellular Recovery Skin Bliss Capsule (lavender capsule at night, pink in the morning) into face and neck (This is rich with moringa oil, but absorbs quickly and completely - no environmental disaster of an oil spill left behind.)

6. After a few minutes, apply a layer of Elemis Pro-Collagen Marine Cream to the face and neck (This, their best-selling anti-ageing moisturiser, smells amazing - like the ocean if it didn't stink of fish corpses.)

I completed steps 1 through 4 while soaking in a bath containing five capfuls of Elemis Skin Nourishing Milk Bath; this can be massaged into very dry skin as a cream, and I think I will buy a bottle of it for my step-mother (who suffers from skin so dry that she sometimes uses Vaseline as moisturiser). The scent is floral without being grandmotherly - same goes for the Elemis Exotic Island Flower Body Balm that I rubbed in post-bath. These two would make a great gift for a woman with severely dry skin, and the latter absorbs quite quickly into a damp dermis.

Truth be told, I am now far too relaxed to be sitting upright, let alone typing this. But I jumped online to do just that, so thrilled was I with both the gesture from Melissa and Jo and the effects of tonight's routine. Watch this space for updates on how regular use of these products pans out, as well as reviews of the other products they sent me. Thanks, TimetoSpa team!

Nicky Hambleton-Jones is a simp

Contrary to what you may have heard elsewhere, if you go to sleep with your make-up on, you will not have aged eight days instead of one.

Hat tip: Patrick Crozier

Earned laugh lines better than a lumpy face

Lately, I have noticed that even when I'm not smiling, I've got visible lines between my nose and the corners of my mouth. I'm 28, so either my adolescent tanning has come back to haunt me, or this is the consequence of being so darned happy all the time. More realistically, it's just something that happens.

My boyfriend, who's the international editor of a weekly pharmaceuticals magazine, sent me a link to a story about a permanent facial line filler injection which is up for FDA approval. Although I often contemplate what I'd have done if I were to go under the needle or knife...I'm thinking this isn't it. Thanks for the huge hint, though, honey. (Just kidding. It's not that big a hint.)

The flaw that broke the camel's back

I haven't used a beauty product other than Crest in so long it's disgusting. But I've now had plenty of time to digest my Thanksgiving dinner, and want to report on it.  My son was with his dad, so I took myself off to Rob and Phillip's, where I've spent many Thanksgivings past. While there, I took a picture of a painting that fascinates me. It's a thrift-store gem, made whole by the fact that it has giant rends in its carefully Surat-ly pixillated surface. A boring painting made interesting by pain and experience and the mysterious un-knowability of where, when, how and why the damage occurred.  Just like all the people I love. 

Made me think about the tendency to fix or camouflage scars and the evidence of age. One of the dinner guests was an absolutely gorgeous young man who was in the process of reading all of Heinlein's books.  My son and I had listened to Stranger in a Strange Land while driving to Canada this summer, and I immediately thought of "Mike's" observation that young faces were blank and uninteresting, while signs of age constitute beauty.

Age belongs before beauty, I think.

Then, added to this equation, is Rob, who has always been a gorgeous creature, one of those people who walks down the street leaving a wake of chaotic fascination.  Rob recently survived lymphoma... and came out of it more beautiful than he's ever been.  He told me jokingly recently that when he has sex, people ask him, "Oh my god, your body is amazing, what do you do?" and he casually replies, "chemotherapy."  He is alive, and on fire.

So, it's not about making excuses for one's ugliness by saying that signs of age are beautiful. The answer to the cult of youth isn't an endless apologia. There's more alchemy to it than that.  It's about one's personal heroism against the ravages of life showing on one's face and body. And being actually, physically, more beautiful for it. I firmly believe that only cowardice makes us ugly as time passes. No more, no less.

The government's nose: It's in your beach bag, too

Won't we all sleep easier knowing that the FDA is stopping people from buying and selling sunblock that works? Nope, me neither.