ASOS Today

Beauty Philosophy by Bethan Cole

Today's Topic: Beautifully Gifted

Traditionally I've never been a fan of beauty gift sets. In the trade they're known as 'coffrets' one of those ersatz continental terms, like coiffure, that suggests a level of glamour and sophistication that often tragically isn't there.

I guess the reason I didn't like them was mainly because they seemed like a gift idea that lacked imagination. The last resort of desperate male buyers grabbing at something that looked expensive. I always preferred the idea of custom making your own gift sets: selecting two or three nice items and a special box or receptacle to package them in and tying the whole lot up with jewel coloured ribbons. Those readymade plastic boxes with a couple of co-ordinating products inside seemed like a rather lazy and not especially alluring prospect.

And yet, during these straightened times, I'm kinda warming to a well-chosen gift set. Primarily because they are often excellent value. Secondly because they can be a useful introduction to an interesting new brand or a way of restocking a relative or friend's bathroom if they are running a bit low.

The gift sets I am most strongly seduced by are those where the company has dispensed with the plastic box and created quirky or useful packaging. Benefit's Beauty Cravings Gift Tin is a great example – you get a retro-styled canister that's both lovable and that might potentially serve some future storage purpose in your home – with a Bad Gal mascara, Some Kinda Gorgeous foundation and Dallas face powder inside.

Elemis' Dream Journey Traveller is another covetable gift set that comes in a lovely case that you might well re-use. It contains ten items, including Pro Collagen Marine Cream and Bright Eyes Recovery Gel, which are not only great for flights but a useful introduction to the brand. I would choose it for someone who travels often or a woman with more mature skin. Another nicely packaged set is Cowshed's Pampering Gift Set which comes in a pleasantly glossy square box. What's more you can't really go wrong with the unguents that nestle within – deliciously herbal bath oil, body lotion, shower gels and scented candles are a pretty welcome present for women of all ages.

Whilst some people might view shower gel or shampoo as a rather dull or prosaic or unimaginative gift, I rather like the idea of giving people pleasurable, practicable and useful things for their bathrooms - especially   if you upgrade them from their usual budget brand to something a little more stylish and alluring. There's something universally give-able about Korres' Sugar and Spice shower gels, I'm really fond of these as they come in recherche, whimsical scents that you don't usually find in the bathroom. And for skincare enthusiasts you really can't get any better than Ole Henriksen's Three Little Wonders Kit or Red Tea Trio. His products are uniformly excellent for any gender or any age. They really do work.

Teenagers and women who like to indulge in colourful experiments: and that means most fashion-conscious women under 40 will adore Urban Decay's delightful Book Of Shadows, a rainbow of eye colour at a very reasonable price. And stocking fillers don't get much more winsome than Elizabeth Arden's Limited Edition Vintage 8 Hour Lip Protectant or Paul and Joe's Disney Hand Cream. I can't imagine any woman, young or old, who wouldn't appreciate these.

Beauty Philosophy by Bethan Cole

Today's Topic: The Full Package

To paraphrase William Morris, dressing table products should not only be functional, they should be beautiful too. Beauty products should ideally be small objects of desire that bring art into our lives in terms of their form as well as function. But so often they aren't. A lot of high street make up and toiletries are still hideously ugly, commercial and cheap looking. The market is still very much evolving when it come to design. When beauty companies bother to get an interesting graphic or designer to mastermind their ranges it pays dividends. Just look at the work of Fabien Baron, who, from the 1990s to this day has revolutionised the way cosmetics and perfume look and feel. He has been the king of minimalism, interesting fonts with a rare clarity to them and rubberised black packaging. Of course this is nothing new, back in the 1930s Helena Rubenstein got Salvador Dali and Brancusi to design compacts and make up products for her.

Cosmetics brands that combine interesting and innovative packaging with brilliant formulations are, for me, still the holy grail. During the nineties, we saw a preponderance of matt black make up brands launch. Some, such as those designed by Baron, were interesting, but it became something of a cliché. A lot of brands followed suit and launched with black packaging because it was aspirational and aped Chanel (which looked expensive) and it was also proven to sell.

Yet now, I must concur, this aesthetic has become somewhat boring, ubiquitous and homogenous and I'm longing for something different. I wonder why a lot of beauty companies don't pay more attention to product design. Why, for example hasn't someone drafted in Marc Newson to design a make up range, or even Peter Saville?

For now, some of the most exciting, winsome and delectable new products come in retro styled packaging. The trend for beauty companies trawling their archives and reissuing old designs is gathering some pace. It's not a surprise when you consider the burgeoning market for vintage perfume bottle and make up on ebay. Perfumista Roja Dove has got a vast collection of antique perfume bottles and fashion designer Emma Cook buys up 1970s Avon products on ebay.

Some of the reproduction retro products are covetable too: Elizabeth Arden's Limited Edition  Vintage 8 Hour Skin Protectant and Lip Protectant are not only gorgeous emollient old fashioned unguents great for protecting skin against winter cold and wind, but they come in cute 1950s pots and tubes: you can just imagine a couture model of the era like Dovima dipping a manicured finger into them.

Bourjois's Limited Edition Vintage Colour pots (exclusive to asos) are also rather divine – I fancy the designs look a little Victorianate or 1920s or 30s, and of course the product inside is good quality too; urban myth has it that Bourjois is manufactured in the same factory as Chanel.

Rose and Co's Beauty Salve collection is a great handbag basic for any girl. And I've been charmed to discover the vintage looking perfumes by French jewellery company Les Néréides, not only for their antique stylings but for their recherché smells: Patchouli Antique and Oriental Lumpur are especially recommended.

Beauty Philosophy by Bethan Cole

Today's Topic: Think Pink

How to radicalise pink? I've been thinking about this issue for the last few weeks. Mainly because there is a dearth of colour this season and most of the clothes I like are in black and grey. So I'm desperate to find a way of pepping up my monochrome wardrobe. And a dash of pink, in make-up or accessories, seems to be a piquant way of doing it. Pink was on the catwalk this winter and next spring, at Marni for both seasons and Luella for next.

But oh, pink is deeply problematic for me. The issue is it is more than a colour; it is an ideologue of traditional femininity. I am a feminist, albeit one riddled with contradictions including my love of make-up. Pink throws up images of many things which are the antithesis of my feminist stance: Barbara Cartland, Katie Price and Barbie to name but three. Pink is the colour of little girls being indoctrinated into a life of simpering subservience and household drudgery. Germaine Greer railed against it in a diatribe in The Guardian last year.

So I'm trying to find ways of wearing it which lend it a punkier, more subversive, vital edge. I think the first step is to alight on an appropriate hue. The pinks that appeal to me most at the moment are robust, acidic, full bodied and bodacious shades: fuchsias, magentas, cyclamens and geraniums. Pinks that are bleeding into reds or purples. I'm editing out anything blanched, pale and dilute. Ditto Pepto Bismol bubblegum hues – they are simply too cartoonish and kitsch. The pinks that are best have a soupcon of strangeness about them, a hint of the vitriol of purple or the voluptuous promise of red. This is where Pop's Lip Lust Balmy Lipstick in Flirty Fuchsia is spot on - it delivers a shot of really violent magenta to lips - or Becca's Glossy Lip Tint in Fuchsia Crush.

For me, the way to lend pink lipstick a really impactful, darker edge is to team with a graphic black eye – the sort executed by Pat McGrath at Lanvin for Autumn Winter 08. This recontextualises the pink away from playful, naive girlishness and into a more modern, grown up, serious and arch place. Barry M's Liquid Eyeliner in Black is great for painting a thick graphic swathe of black on the eyelid to play off against Schiaparelli pink lips.

Blush pinks are another manifestation of the hue I can tolerate, probably because they put me in mind of Watteau and Fragonard and rococo ladies with pallid skin and suggestively flushed cheeks. The sort of women to be found gallivanting and frolicking in London's fabulous Wallace Collection art gallery - a favourite haunt of Vivienne Westwood. To replicate this kind of look, a sort of modern romantic, keep the face bare save for a bloom of Benefit's naturalistic Posie Tint, on cheeks and on lips. This will lend you the allure of a costume drama heroine:  a highbrow comeliness without a hint of the saccharine, sucrose, candied, contrite and supine connotations pink, at its worst, can inspire.

Beauty Philosophy by Bethan Cole

Today's Topic - Beauty Benefits

Several weeks ago I was walking across Victoria Park in East London, with my friend, Kodwo, a conceptual artist, having a heated debate about whether burlesque and rockabilly style for girls was over. He maintained it was finished. I was arguing that, despite the advent of sixties beehives, the forties and fifties look was still strong, with all sorts of Ava Gardner and Marilyn Monroe references in the hair and make up of Autumn Winter catwalk shows such as Roland Mouret and Roksanda Ilincic.

Sure, the look has been around for most of the noughties,  but Gwen Stefani and Dita Von Teese, its main celebrity protagonists, still look alluring. And, I attest, liquid eyeliner, postbox red lips and Veronica Lake waved hair haven't lost their charm just yet.

I think my over-attachment to this aesthetic must stem from the fact that I styled myself like this as a teenager. Back in the mid to late eighties we were obsessed with the fifties. This retro fixation manifested itself in the mainstream (those iconic 501s ads with Nick Kamen & execrable boy band Bros's quiffs) and also on the underground (Vivienne Westwood muse Sarah Stockbridge's cherry lipped picture postcard sauciness). It was my formative style between the ages of fifteen and eighteen, and a fondness for it has stayed with me ever since.

So I guess any kind of style psychoanalyst would tell me that my teenage attachment to fifties retro was somehow driving me to want to hang on to and prolong the style's relevance in fashion and beauty today. They would probably be right!

It would also explain my fondness for the beauty brand Benefit, whose styling also borrows heavily from fifties kitsch. Benefit offers quirky, kooky, nostalgia fuelled products, some of which are perfect for creating a winsome fifties face. Benetint is a dinky little retro liquid blush. It's more forties than fifties on the cheeks - the fifties look wasn't really about blusher. But it creates a nice rosy glow that's subtle and youthful. I use it on my lips when I'm not in the mood for full on red lipstick and it creates a lovely low key stain. Great for daytime or moments when you don't feel psyched up to sport a full red lip.

I also love a bit of High Beam, their silky white illuminator. It’s not strictly fifties retro in all honesty, more of a noughties trend to get that J Lo glow. But adding a little here and there is actually a great way of updating and modernising a very classic forties or fifties face, and I've even noticed Dita Von Teese sporting a little dazzling  highlighter like this. Stroke a little on cheekbones and brow bones for a healthy luminescence. I guess the cornerstones of the fifties look are poppy red lips and very elegant arched brows. Brows that exude a couture hauteur. To achieve them I use Browzings, a handy little powder duo and brush set that, used judiciously, will give you beautifully groomed and precise eyebrows. Add a little lick of liquid eyeliner and your fifties styling is complete. I still think it looks relevant, even if my friend has consigned it to the 'over' scrap heap.

Beauty Philosophy by Bethan Cole

Today's Topic: Burning the Candle

If you've read Jean Godfrey June's memoir of being a prominent US Beauty Editor, Free Gift With Purchase (not an fantastically gripping read it has to be said but occasionally insightful), you'll know that one of the few things she took home, kept and treasured from the deluge of things that were sent to her office, was scented candles. Now, I became extremely minimal in my former life as a beauty editrix at Sunday Times Style, but, like June, one of the things I became fanatical about collecting was beautiful perfumed candles. You can keep your eye creams, neck creams, serums, body lotions, foot sprays and hair volumisers: I have no need for these things. Give me a really high quality candle any day, preferably with 12 % or more essential perfume oil in the formulation and I will be unutterably content.

I can't quite pinpoint the reason I like them so much. I think it’s an extension of the fact that I've got a major predilection for perfume. Perfume, essentially is one of the reasons I became a beauty journalist. I'm fixated with it. And obviously candles are a way of perfuming the air. I'm also keen on creating a euphonious atmosphere in my flat. I live in a tiny one bedroom place in the wilds of East London which is littered with a hodgepodge of books and shoes. I convince myself that, if I create the illusion of serenity via olfactive means, my flat will seem cleaner, lighter, more minimal and somehow chic. So that's my candle thing dissected I suppose.

I am currently burning Grumpy Cow Uplifting Room Candle by Cowshed which slowly disperses oils of mandarin red, petitgrain and grapefruit into the air. It's great for mornings and I love the contumelious odour of citrus suffusing the small space of my living room. I guess if you were incredibly chic and co-ordinated you might purchase a raft of matching Cowshed products for your bathroom and burn the Grumpy Cow candle whilst wallowing in a bath laced with Grumpy Cow Uplifting Bath and Massage Oil and cleansing your body with Grumpy Cow Bath and Shower Gel or soap. Such a sunny zesty, cleanly fragrance is perfect for summer or those sharp and bright winter mornings when you need an odorific jolt to get moving.

So, some Cowshed candles are certainly being added to my vast scented candle cache. I have designated Knackered Cow, a herbaceous blend of lavender and eucalyptus, for evening baths. It's a real lie back and drift recipe for woozy, fresh linen reminiscent air that gently prepares you for a somnolent night.

Horny Cow is deeply seductive and romantic and ideal for wooing a date back to your place and  making them fall under your spell. I'm a huge cinnamon freak and this has its wonderfully cosseting, blanketing odour in the mix along with patchouli and rose absolute.

Finally, Lazy Cow is another winter’s evening depth charged scent, a pervasive woody, oriental amalgam of chamomile, jasmine and sandalwood, just the thing to burn whilst you’re sipping your hot chocolate, on a dark and inclement October evening.

Beauty Philosophy by Bethan Cole

Today's Topic: Teen Beauty

As a mid thirtysomething, I seem to have plenty of nostalgic musings on my teenage years. I almost wonder if this is because the emotional turmoil and trauma of them is far enough away to have dissipated from my memory. Or perhaps indeed they were truly wonderful times.

Whatever, I'm sure they were indeed 'the best of times and the worst of times'. The best because I didn't have any of life's adult issues to deal with: the working day, bills, marriage, babies and office politics. You've got your whole life stretching ahead of you in seeming infinity. But they are also riven with strife: spots, unrequited love, the pain of growing up and the claustrophobia of living under the microscope of your parents.

Your teenage years are when you fall in love with fashion and beauty and discover all the joy they can bring. The bitter irony is that you're going to look the best you're ever going to look in clothes and make up, but most of it you can't yet afford. I remember spending all my hard earned Saturday job money on outfits from Hyper Hyper, which was, in the late 80s, the trendy Kensington place to shop.

Beauty was easier. I was introduced to a few luxury brands by a generous and bountiful Welsh Aunty, who had cupboards stuffed full of samples and drawers of designer perfume. And when I was around 13 or 14 I decided to start seriously looking after my skin.

It was difficult back then in the eighties as there wasn’t much available for teenagers. I suffered with the occasional spot and congested pores but found the regular antibacterial acne treatments on the shelves in chemists far too harsh. They seemed to strip my skin of moisture and then make it far oilier. I eventually alighted on a long since disappeared brand called Moncler Derma, which seemed to do a decent gel face wash. But it was not stocked everywhere and not always easy to find. 

And so it was with great delight that, a few years ago, a couple of products from Face Boutique tumbled onto my desk. Here was a brand that, as a teen, I would have loved to have owned. The packaging reminded me of Julie Verhoeven's hip illustrations, colourful little drawings that look great on a bathroom shelf. What's more, the prices are affordable, with many products around £10, crucial for teenagers with pocket money budgets.

Anyway I started testing them out and found the formulations gentle and pleasing – plus I like  their ethics, no harsh chemicals and no animal testing – their heart's in the right place. I know I'm probably twenty years too old for it but Peachy Clean Foaming Facial Wash has got me hooked. It's a clear liquid gel with an ever-so-gentle fragrance; I've been using it day and night to keep my skin feeling fresh. Sweep Clean Wipes are my evening staple to whisk off make up and water baby bath soak makes bath water gently froth. Face Boutique is the best teen and twentysomething skincare range I've seen in a long time. This long-in-the-tooth thirtysomething is an addict for now.

Beauty Philosophy by Bethan Cole

Today's Topic: The Lipstick Wardrobe

Years ago, women would have one sole signature scent in their retinue. Or they would buy one perfume every couple of years and be loyal to it alone. But in recent years particularly, with the massive boom in perfume launches and consumption, that has all changed. Now we all have a perfume wardrobe. We are capricious and disloyal where perfume is concerned, leaping from one to another from one day to the next. We have different perfumes for different seasons, different moods and different outfits. Perfume plurality is the order of the day.

And so it is with lipstick too. During the last two or three years I have seriously got back into wearing lipstick. Inspired by the cherry lipped pouts of stars like Dita Von Teese and Gwen Stefani (what is so fabulous is that both these women are rarely seen without lipstick – even just strolling to their local shops), I have embraced wearing it with renewed zeal. And not just one shade but a host of different shades. I like to switch lipstick colours according to my mood and my outfit. I have worn black, blue, green and ultra dark purple as well as more conventional red and Schiaparelli pink. Lipstick is like perfume in that it is a very effective mood brightener: a quick slash of colour across the lips can lift you out of the doldrums in lightning speed. It is like the icing on the cake when it comes to pepping up an outfit. For me at least, a generous smear of bright lip colour goes a very long way.

I believe every woman needs a capsule lipstick wardrobe with which to accessorise her day-to-day wardrobe. The best place to start is with a red. Red lipstick is still very much au courant thanks to Dita and Gwen and, crucially the autumn/winter catwalks. At Marc by Marc Jacobs models sported a perky, Lolita-esque geranium pinky red, and at Derek Lam lips took on a reddish-burgundy hue. Further proof that red is here to stay. Bourjois So Rouge lipstick in Trendy Red lends a lovely satiny pigment to the mouth and is perfect for creating a retro 40s or 50s burlesque look along with a lick of liquid liner on the top eyelid.

Purple is set to be another major colour for the coming months; designers as diverse as Felder Felder and Stella McCartney included it in their collections, and Korres Colour Mango Butter lipstick in Purple is a chic and wearable take on the shade that doesn't look too extreme if you are wary of wearing something very dark.

Pink is another good shade to have in your lipstick arsenal, and Liparazzi's All Access is a raspberry meets cyclamen shade that's more powerful than a simpering pastel. You need to be careful wearing pink lipstick over 20; I tend to team it with punkier black smudgy eye make up to give it a bit of an edge. Otherwise pink can have those Stepford or Barbie connotations and be too saccharine. Beauty industry insiders tend to talk about 'housewife pinks' in disparaging tones.

Lastly a beige or dark nude is the final essential in your lipstick wardrobe –   try Rimmel's Rich Moisture Cream Lipstick in Paradise or Dreamy. A nude is a great shade to accompany this season's tailoring or if you're a resolute avant gardist staging your own nineties revival and dreaming of bringing back the 'greige' make up of grunge, Belgian designers and golden age Helmut Lang.

Lipstick is a wonderful way of incrementally altering your look. Indulge in multiple shades and an irresistible amount of fashion mutations can be yours.

Beauty Philosophy by Bethan Cole

Today's Topic: Organic and Natural

I have to admit to being something of a late adopter when it comes to green issues. But there are reasons for that. I tend to come over all contrarian when a trend hits critical mass and am usually deeply suspicious of any kind of consensus, in the media or fashion or beauty. My main problem with the green thing was the hypocrisy involved; you'd get celebrities with private jets eulogising the benefits of organic face creams. There seemed to be a disjuncture and miscomprehension in the way people were approaching environmentalism.

Yet, grudgingly, I've had to admit that attempting to be green is undoubtedly a good thing. Provided you tackle the big issues like flying and car use first, rather than see it as a mere fashionable shopping option. I've made various concessions to it in my lifestyle. I've cut down the amount I fly from 10-12 times a year to once or twice a year. I use my bike or walk local journeys. I recycle as much of my household waste as is possible. And crucially I try to consume less: where in my twenties I would happily traipse up and down Oxford Street each and every Saturday, now, ten years on, I hit the shops once every six months and limit myself to three or four outfits for each new season.

I've adopted the same stringent and edited attitude towards beauty products. Where before I would buy and stockpile beauty 'treats' whenever I hit a shop, now I have identified my staples and make targeted purchases when each item runs out. When I interviewed an ultra hip New York perfume maker, in summer 2007, he said some very wise words to me: 'The more you know the less you need.' This has now become my mantra. It is my philosophy to be as informed as possible about all the shopping options then limit my purchases to the bare minimum and the most epicurean products.

Which is where Jo Wood comes in. The one area where I'm somewhat lax on the green front is my predilection for daily baths. I know it is wasteful of water but I'm addicted to the ritual of wallowing. Thus many of my bathroom essentials are related to bathing. I've tried a lot of bathing products and I have to say that Jo Wood's Amka Organic Bath Oil is one of the most delectable, sybaritic, idyllic unguents out there. The scent of Persian rose otto, jasmine, neroli and bergamot hovers, vaporous and dense over a hot bath, and is the ultimate invitation to bathe. The oil leaves skin wondrously supple and silken. The whole experience is a sublime sensual seduction.

I've also fallen in love with her new Everyday range, which is Ecocert  (the French organic regulatory board) certified and comprises three products, all of which are essentials. I've got Tula Cleansing Body Mousse, Tula Exfoliating Salt Scrub and Tula Nourishing Body Cream in my shower right now. Not only are they great value during these credit crunch stricken times, they're the three things I cannot live without when I am taking a shower. These are wonderfully luxurious essentials that make your daily ablutions a sweet scented delight. The added bonus is they are organic, recyclable and not stuffed with horrible chemicals. In this case being green is an easy option.

Beauty Philosophy by Bethan Cole

Today's Topic: Purple Haze

Just a flash of purple has the power to transport me back to teenage bedrooms in the mid eighties. The smell of joss sticks and patchouli oil, the sound of Gene Loves Jezebel or Southern Death Cult and the vision of waify girls with long, thick crimped black hair wearing jewel-hued purple tassel skirts characterised my tormented adolescence in suburban, provincial England. For many people purple has regal connotations, but for me it was the colour of subcultural dissent, having previously been popular in the late sixties and early 70s as the hue (along with orange) of psychedelia. And there it was again in the early to mid eighties, a signifier of brooding, melancholic, introspective gothdom. More than a colour, a way of life.

It's come back, like Gothic style, this summer and autumn, a piquant, pungent riposte to the domination of upbeat primaries of post new rave. Cast aside Kelly green and lemon yellow and dive into purple, as much a mood of somnolent, woozy, plush and lush contemplation as it is a colour. A tone of whirling, mystical, ethereal transcendence, that looks as deep and sensuous as crushed velvet feels.

Purple keeps popping into my line of vision with more and more frequency. On one mid summer's day, walking through Bethnal Green, I spotted a total of three twenty-something girls, casually sporting sharp blue-y purple t-shirting or halter tops. Then there was Keira Knightley wearing a strapless silk Erdem prom dress on the red carpet, bursting at the breast with 3D flowers and ruffles. And of course Carla Bruni has worn a demure 1950s style purple Christian Dior suit and a Christian Dior coat in the last six months of being France's first lady.

With vast swathes of the hue on the autumn winter catwalks, purple looks set to be au courant well into 2009. Stella McCartney, Chloe and Miu Miu have all included jewelled shades of garnet and damson and some even quite acidic violets in their collections.

The critical question is: do you match your make up to your purple clothes or do you use it as an accent, an accessory, if you like, when you are wearing black or grey? I'd personally be tempted to do the latter – an all over purple freak-out might leave you looking a bit overly-themed. A tart berry shade painted carefully on squared off short fingernails could look chic – try Butter London's 3 Free Nail Lacquer in HRH . It comes in a nice brick of a bottle and lends an occultish hue to the fingertips.

Alternatively use your eyes as the starting point for a purple odyssey. An Amy Winehouse-style winged eye can look simultaneously dramatic and offbeat in purple. Draw it on with Pop Beauty's eyeliner pencil in aubergine, which is on the reddish side of the purple spectrum, or wet some Bourjois Eyeshadow in midnight purple, use a brush and paint a flick at the side of the eye. A purple smoky eye is powerful for evening, and glitter gives it a very on-trend jewel strewn look: Barry M's Glitter dust no 8 is velvety soft and blends easily for that gentle cloud of stormy colour around the eye. Finally Urban Decay's Big Fatty Mascara in Purple Haze will lend a kind of playful 1980s   definition to eyes. Use it to augment a purple eyeshadow, or on its own for a subtle hint you are on the trend.

I like quite dark uncompromising violent purple lipstick myself, but for anyone wanting to dip into purple in the most incremental and timid of ways then Korres' Colour Mango Butter Lipstick in Purple is a very gentle, raspberry-ish approximation of the tone, that hints towards darkness without the harshness some purples can effect. Personally, I like purples to be as bold as possible; it's a divinely decadent and otherworldly tone that ignites the imagination as well as the eyes. Wearing purple is like a mantra, for being alternative and different. Anoint your body with it and deviate from the norm.