4 steps to tailor your beauty routine to your top needs
Why you shouldn’t settle for one-size-fits-all products
Why you shouldn’t settle for one-size-fits-all products
Whether it’s colour-matching, fragrance-blending or engraving, customised beauty is the ultimate luxury – and with so many options available, the time for tailor-made is now. Here are four ways you should be customising your routine.
1
Targeted skin care
Customised skin care has long been the sole domain of dermatological circles. However, recently Kiehl’s changed all that with the launch of its Apothecary Preparations range. “Our customers were looking for something that was really specific to them,” says Cammie Cannella, Vice President of Kiehl’s Global Education and Customer Experience. “A lot of our serums are targeted to specific concerns, but more and more we were hearing customers say ‘Oh, but I have two things, like dull skin and wrinkles’, so we’re offering something personalised in one product.” For Kiehl’s, it’s also a nod to its apothecary history – the brand custom-created formulas for its clients until the 1960s. The new service will be available at Kiehl’s stores. Your skin is analysed using the Skin Atlas and then, based on your two key concerns, a unique preparation (facial concentrate) is created, complete with your name printed on the bottle and box.
2
Customised colour
Over on the colourful side of beauty, Terry de Gunzburg, creator of By Terry, was well ahead of the custom curve. “I wanted to duplicate the same standards of luxury that were found in fashion,” she says. And so, she created her Haute Couleur range of foundations, concealer and colour products. A visit to the flagship store in Paris sees you fitted and measured as you would for a couture gown. A machine measures colour, tonality and luminosity of the skin. A few weeks later, you return for your foundation fitting. Then, samples are tested and go into production. And just like that, you have a year’s supply of your own custom colour. “Bespoke is not only giving you your own shade, it’s also fine-tuning the texture, the coverage and pigment,” says de Gunzburg. The service will cost you around $2000, but as your skin changes, you’re able to tweak your formula at no extra expense. A little closer to home, The Lip Lab is a custom-made lipstick service that can create the exact shade you want, including personalising the flavour and finish!
3
Formulated-for-you haircare
Hair is also getting in on the custom action, with the launch of Kérastase’s personalised in-salon ritual Fusio-Dose last year. The exclusive treatment combines haircare benefits with concern-specific boosters (containing active ingredients) to penetrate deeply and give immediate results. The formula is custom-blended by the stylist after an initial hair analysis using a diagnostic camera. Similarly, Goldwell and Wella also offer exclusive in-salon customised treatments, which are tailored to your hair’s specific needs.
4
Next-level signature scent
And then, of course, there’s fragrance and the eternal search for a unique signature scent. Jo Malone London created the ‘fragrance combining’ concept – whereby, you layer up to three scents to create a fragrance for you. “It was originally born from the idea that fragrance can be tailored to embrace a mood or occasion, or simply to express your individuality,” says Céline Roux, the brand’s Global Vice President of Product Development. Also dipping its toe in the bespoke pool is luxury fragrance house Atelier Cologne, which offers a complimentary engraving service on its 30mL travel perfumes, so your scent is literally yours.
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Main image credit: Getty
Sarah Tarca is a former neat handwriting champion whose skills involve applying lipstick without a mirror and artfully disguising 8-month regrowth. For the last 15 years she’s worked for the likes of Cosmopolitan, Girlfriend and Marie Claire as features writer, editor and beauty director, before leaving Oz for a professional vagabond life (“digital nomad”) in permanent euro summer. A beauty, travel and wellness obsessive, she currently writes for a bunch of digital and print titles both in Australia and abroad, and sometimes even posts on her blog ciaoamica.com (that is, when she’s not posting extremely belated travel pics on her instagram @tarca).
