Beauty Top Ten

After three years being holed up in various Conde Nast fashion cupboards - unpaid - I decided to call it a day. Enough was enough and I made the decision to leap from the World of fashion into beauty.

I didn't have to travel far and landed an internship in the Tatler Beauty department. Unlike the huge fashion department's I'd worked in, 'Beauty' was tiny. There were just three of us. This meant that I was allowed to do something other than repetitious 'returns' for once.

I was assigned two of their existing monthly columns; Tales from the Powder Room and New Best Friend. Definitely my career highlight to date, my first published work!

I'd never been that into beauty. My first piece of makeup, a clear mascara from Avon, had been a resident in my make up bag since I waseleven years old.

However, there was one time that I can still feel the excitement as if was yesterday. One Christmas when I was nine years old, some family friends gave me a hamper from the Body shop, full - so full it couldn't close - of every product imaginable from their teenage range. My friends and I were obsessed with the Dewberry, White Musk, Ananya and Satusma ranges and now, I had the whole lot. The soaps, scents, scrubs, flannels, oils...everything.

I'm actually getting butterflies remembering it now.

But apart from the Avon mascara and the hamper, beauty products had never really been my thing. Until my first day in the Tatler beauty department, that was. I'm not really sure at which moment I flipped from wanting to fritter my money away on a pair of Chanel clogs to happily shelling out a weeks wages on organic rose serum, but I was hooked.

Suddenly, I was having hamper moments every day. I would arrive at work and couldn't sit down for all the new potions and lotions waiting to be sampled.

I quickly learnt which products were a total waste of time. Most creams that promise youthful beauty and wrinkle reductions do bugger all. They just sit around on the top of our skin as the mollecules are too big to be absorbed into the dermis. ie total waste of money.

My placement there was quick - seven months - but it fueled my love and interest in all things beauty.

Im on the constant look out for revolutionary new products that actually work; state of the art spas, the best beauty therapists, waxers that leave you in-growing-hair-free and the longest lasting nail polish.

I hope that my finds make you as happy as they do me!

According to a renowned Harley Street dermatologist, some of the best products on the market today are Skinceuticals. For dry skin the B5 Hydrating gel really does makes skin softer and the fine lines much finer.

http://www.skinceuticals.com/_us/_en/catalog/moisturize/Hydrating-B5-Gel.htm

Smelling of Roses

My current fixation is from organic brand ILA. I'm a huge devotee of all their products so am not that surprised by the gorgeousness of my latest find. Ila hydrolat toner is a divine smelling, moisturising toner made with distilled water from organic Damascena rose petals.

Another similar and equally as gorgeous creation is Chantecaille's pure rosewater spray. There's something very luxurious about the simple yet solid glass bottle that manages to make me cough up the extortionate £40 each time I stumble upon it.

Ila and Chantecaille rose toners. £28 and £40 respectively