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4th Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2016
Text copyright © Pretty Honest Ltd 2016
Cover credit © Heike Schussler
All photographs © Jake Walters 2016
Illustrations by Mel Elliott
The right of Sali Hughes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.
Design and Art Direction by BLOK
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008194536
Ebook Edition © June 2018 ISBN: 9780008194543
Version: 2018-06-12
For Marvin and Arthur
This was Mum’s Ferraris and Pokémon
Contents
Copyright
Introduction
Picture Credits
Index
Acknowledgements
About the Publisher
In my loft, there’s a red plastic B&Q toolbox filled with make-up no longer fit for purpose but that I’ll never, ever throw away. There’s a dried out, once-black Body Shop eyeliner pen that my mother put in my Christmas stocking circa 1989, which I wore with cut-off Levi’s and a lycra bodysuit to Cardiff’s Square Club. There’s a pot of Clinique face powder in a dreadfully unsuitable shade of pink, that I’d saved at least six weeks’ pocket money to buy before realising it made me look embalmed. The Rimmel lilac eye palette I was convinced made me appear 18, the apricot lip balm bought for me by fourth form squeeze Hywel White, a dry, cracked Kryolan professional concealer palette bought in haste less than a year later, when I heard I’d be making up the Pet Shop Boys, the half-used Prescriptives foundation given to me by my boss because I could never have afforded my own, and the Mary Quant eyeshadows I found in a dusty box in a discount chemist on South Molton Street, and thought I’d won the lottery. These aren’t just products. This isn’t just a toolbox. It’s a time capsule, and everything in it takes me back to a moment, a hope, a mistake, an achievement. These unassuming bits and pieces each have their own significance and collectively make something as potent and meaningful as any long-saved C90 compilation. They’re my beauty mixtape.
But like any true music lover, I always want to hear something new that excites me just as much. And so it is with beauty. Good job, because I’m sent around 2000 new beauty products a year, from designer fragrances and state of the art skincare, to supermarket shampoos and lipsticks costing less than a two pinter of milk – all of them promising something new and extraordinary. It’s an extremely fortunate and wonderful position to be in (teenage me is never far from memory, and believe me, she’s having kittens), but not one without some stress. Storage and eating surfaces aside, I worry constantly that I’ll miss something wonderful. A product so brilliant, so revolutionary and life-changing, that it will deserve to become a beauty icon, used by millions, remembered always, popped in someone’s future treasured toolbox.
But what makes an icon? Quality alone is neither enough nor strictly the point. The beauty products in this book aren’t always, in my view, the best – at least not for me personally. Very many of my all time favourites are not here (and as ever, everything in this book has been chosen by me and me alone, with absolutely no commercial consideration). I happen to prefer By Terry Touche Veloutée and Clinique Airbrush Concealer to the mighty YSL Touche Éclat pen, but in terms of influence, memorability and its creation of an entire beauty category, the latter wins by a country mile. Likewise, you may not love Chanel No 5. But the fact is, you will probably still have an opinion on what is, without question, the towering icon of perfumery. You might not find Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair ideal for your skin but in all likelihood, the serum you do love would not exist without it. These three items, in their own ways, changed how countless beauty products were designed and used thereafter. They are reference points, or the stars of a beauty ‘moment’, or
