my earliest memories is one of lying on a towel as a young toddler, fresh from the bath, toasty from the nearby coal fire, giggling hysterically as my grandmother ‘iced me like a birthday cake’ with Johnson’s Baby Lotion, squeezed direct from the bottle like a piping bag. Forty years on, it remains one of my favourite smells of all time. It’s the smell of comfort, of security, of uncomplicated and predictable times. One deep whiff is like being cosseted in a warm blanket and tucked tightly and cosily into a single bed. It’s a fragrance I always think of as smelling exactly how it looks – pink, mellow, delicate, old-fashioned, soft and sweet. It’s frankly no good on my dry skin (it works as a cleanser for light make-up at a push, and is a nice body lotion for normal skins), but I love the smell so much that I’m never without a bottle in the house. If I feel inexplicably sad or stressed out, I flip open the cap and inhale.
Clarins Beauty Flash Balm
I feel about Beauty Flash the way I feel about olives: I should like them, they’re very much my kind of thing, other people love them and I doggedly keep trying to join in, but I just can’t pull it off. This is a balm that goes over moisturiser to plump and blur lines, pep up tiredness and general haggishness, but on me – and apparently me alone – it has always peeled off in clumps as soon as I attempt to apply make-up over the top. No matter, because what is indisputable is Beauty Flash’s iconic status. This is the product, I think, that first tabled the notion of primer – a skincare/make-up hybrid to smooth and perfect the complexion in readiness for foundation. There was nothing else like it when I first tried it some twenty-six years ago, and while things may have since moved on considerably to include primers for every conceivable skin type and gripe, blur balms and light reflectors for instant de-ageing, and so on, Beauty Flash’s countless fans remain utterly devoted to the original. I almost envy them.
Guerlain Météorites Pearls
If beauty had a grande dame, an impossibly glamorous French nana, who turned up at parties in a great dress and smoked Sobranie cigarettes through a Bakelite holder, she would be Guerlain’s Météorites. These are multicoloured pastel pearls of face powder designed to be swirled together with a brush then buffed into the skin to brighten and illuminate. Launched in 1987, Météorites may have looked outwardly like an antique shop find, but was remarkably ahead of its time. For years, it was one of very few consumer powders designed to give the complexion a radiant, rather than matte, finish (the radiance trend didn’t really hit the mainstream until Revlon launched Skinlights over a decade later), and the first to introduce the concept of powder balls (or ‘pearls’), allowing several different colours or shades to be used simultaneously to give a multi-dimensional look, before technology could provide it in traditional pressed formulations. Météorites was prohibitively expensive for many, but hugely influential on the mass market. Body Shop, Boots and Avon soon made bronzer, blusher and face powder in pearls, taking them from inaccessible luxury to full-on beauty craze. Météorites remained aloof and became a beauty icon with a devoted cult following.
Nowadays, illuminating powders are ten a penny and I won’t pretend that Météorites is my own weapon of choice, but I’m not sure I’d have so many to choose from were it not for Guerlain’s trailblazing. The pearls come in a stained-panel pot not a million miles from a Tiffany lamp, which when opened, releases the delicious powdery fug of crushed Parma Violet sweets. The whole thing is bulky, breakable and wholly impractical for any manner of travel, and should be moored to some art nouveau dressing table next to a string of beads and a Dirty Martini. But Guerlain has made some concessions to modernity: there are now different colourways for more skin tones, pressed versions, travel containers and various seasonal limited editions. Each is as unfeasibly pretty as the next.
Carmex
There was a time in the late eighties/early nineties when a 79-cent pot of Carmex lip balm had as much cachet as an army surplus-store MA1 flight jacket and selvedge Levi’s – perhaps more, since it had to be scored in an American drugstore and flown home. The opaque glass jar topped with a bright yellow printed tin cap, almost entirely unchanged since its 1937 launch by cold-sore sufferer Alfred Woelbing, represented the kind of vintage Americana we Brits were already lapping up via Levi’s 501 commercials, Dax Wax and Athena airbrush prints of James Dean.
But those in the industry were ostensibly more concerned with its contents. Unlike Vaseline and Blistex, Carmex had a matte finish. It didn’t interfere with the shine-free lipsticks of the day, and didn’t cause lip pencils to lose friction and veer off-course. It was utilitarian, serious, slightly butch. All budding and actual make-up artists carried it in their kit and for many years the staple make-up look for all male models and musicians on shoots was ‘foundation, Kryolan concealer, powder, Guerlain bronzer, clear mascara, Carmex’ (I couldn’t tell you how many times I dutifully performed this routine). Off set and away from the industry, there was great snob-value in pulling a jar of Carmex from your mini backpack and so understandably, but somewhat disappointingly, Carmex saw their chance and soon the balm was available in UK pro-supply stores and fashion boutiques (including the original Space NK, which also sold juices, handbags and frocks) and later even Boots and Superdrug. It led the way for Smith’s Rosebud Salve – another nostalgically tin-packaged balm – and for Vaseline to repackage its petroleum jelly in a flat tin and rebrand it as ‘Lip Therapy’.
With the curse of accessibility and the benefit of perspective, Carmex lost its allure. Its shine-free finish is still useful, if no longer unique, but its lip-saving capabilities are bettered elsewhere. I find men still love the camphor smell, non-greasy feel and ungirlie packaging, which occasionally gets a limited edition makeover (the recent Peanuts/Snoopy and superheroes collaborations were a well-conceived delight). I rarely use it now, but always keep a pot in my kit to remind me of exciting times and endless possibilities, and for the occasional mentholated whiff of an industry that was to change my life for ever.
Nars Orgasm Blusher
One can almost chart British society’s increasing liberality through the growing confidence with which the average woman asks a Nars sales assistant for an Orgasm. As recently as 2010, the inclusion of this powder blusher in my Guardian Weekend beauty column prompted one reader to accuse me of wilfully setting up the women of Britain for humiliation. All I could say is that it’s worth a moment’s shame, because Nars Orgasm is a must. I can think of few other colour cosmetics – least of all, complexion products – that genuinely look pretty on every skin tone, from white to olive to brown to black. The clue is in the name. This is a blusher designed to mimic the flush of colour to the cheeks at sexual climax or, in less florid language, it makes you look just-shagged. A smart and attention-grabbing way to market a product, for sure. Orgasm launched in 1999 and its name certainly helped it get plenty of publicity and celebrity endorsement (Jennifer Lopez, at the height of her fame, was rarely seen without it), but it’s still absolutely true that just like a climactic rush of blood to the face, Nars Orgasm makes almost everyone look better.
The secret is Orgasm’s perfectly balanced mix of peach and pink pigments that both brightens pale or sallow complexions and neutralises rosy ones, and teams with red and pink lipstick as well as it matches apricots and peach. A subtle, shimmery gold fleck stops it ever looking ashy or chalky on dark skins. This universal quality is what makes Orgasm not only Nars’s biggest seller (120 are sold every hour of the day), but also the matriarch of an entire franchise including spin-offs like Super Orgasm (a hyper-glittery version of the
