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For beauty addicts, the close of August isn’t about school shoes or sharp pencils. No, this is the time of year when the world’s beauty brands gear up to reveal their glossiest, most hard-hitting innovations ahead of the Christmas rush. Here’s my pick of the best to add to your basket now.
How I love hairdresser Sam McKnight and his genius product line. The latest gift to the people? A volumising styler-treatment hybrid that builds soft, swishy, touchable body that lasts.
Swedish make-up artist Susanne Manasi’s beautiful line feels of-the-moment, delivering performance skincare and pigment-rich make-up that is microbiome-friendly and packed with wild-harvested and certified organic ingredients. Its All Over Colour can be tapped quickly onto cheeks, lips and lids for dewy, fresh enhancement.
Perplexed by the size of your pores? Skinceuticals has barely been able to keep this clever new cream — which tackles deep-set wrinkles, pores and uneven texture — on shelves in the past few weeks since launch, such has been demand. I’ll see you at the checkout…
Another showstopper from Dries, this time delivering violet — but not the powdery, old-fashioned kind. Perfumer Gael Montero takes the greener, fresher violet leaf, pairing it with toasted sesame, vetiver and tonka. Oof it’s lovely.
Famous for its advanced skincare formulations, Allies of Skin turns its attention to lip gloss. Expect sheer, high-shine colour with tripeptides, goji androse cells to smooth and hydrate.
Uni’s Ischia Sunset-scented body serum is currently the only body treatment that I use daily, because it smells amazing and does marvellous things to parched limbs. Out next week is a new, equally irresistible scent — Rain — which bottles a summer storm, bringing with it a jolly good exfoliating body wash.
Hairspray has a reputation problem that Olaplex has decided to tackle head-on. Three years in the making, this clever silver can harnesses flexible polymers alongside panthenol, glycerin and encapsulated peptides to hold hair while leaving it swishy, soft and hydrated.
A balmy, brightening and blurring concealer that moves beautifully with your skin throughout the day. Out this week, it’s already graced the faces of Maya Jama, Jessie Ware, Aimee Lou Wood and more.
Rather than disguising eyes that look shadowed or hollow through fatigue or — ahem— the passing of time, Dermalogica has turned its attention to the quality and density of the delicate under-eye skin, using growth-factor technology to improve its function and resilience, so boosting lost volume.
From face-painter extraordinaire Gucci Westman, a foundation for those who don’t really like foundation. Why? Because it’s beautifully light, skincare-packed and silicone-free with biocompatible pigments that melt into skin rather than sitting atop it.
There are hundreds of LED masks out there, but this is from the people who really know their LEDs. Yep, Dermalux brings 14 years of clinical know-how home, with clever Off-the-Skin Technology positioning every LED at the optimum treatment distance to maximise coverage, precision and performance.
