Wealden Times | WT200 | October 2018 | Kitchen & Bathroom supplement inside

Beauty
Soak it up
Jo Malone
London
Lime Basil &
Mandarin
£32 for 250ml
Josephine Fairley wallows blissfully in bath
products which look as good as they smell
I
love a bathroom. The one room in a home where you
can legitimately lock the door without someone thinking
you’re throwing a strop (even if you are). Turn your back
on a frantic world and a busy day and reclaim some time for
yourself. I love designing bathrooms (I’ve done quite a few in
my time...), but the final touch, I always think, is the products
that you indulge in, within that space. Ideally, they’ll look as
good on the bathroom shelf as they make you feel – but just
because something isn’t presented in glam packaging, doesn’t
mean it won’t have a feelgood factor.
What I tend to do with baths is to create what Dayle
Haddon – a supermodel who’s now seventysomething and
looking fabber than ever – calls her ‘Magic Bath’. That means
blending a bit of this, a handful of that, a slurp of something
else, to come up with a custom bath prescription that differs
pretty much every time.
I tend to start with a large dollop of salts – salt and
magnesium flakes. Magnesium is absorbed through the skin
and helps induce relaxation, aiding sleep.
Tickled Pink
Yuzu, Pink Beets
and Watermelon
Body Scrub,
£20 for 250g
My newest bath salt love is Dead Sea Spa
MagikRSalted Activated Charcoal Salts, which is
perfect for the impending cold and flu season,
with its potent, nose-clearing, sense-awakening
blend of rosemary and eucalyptus.
This comes in seriously workaday packaging
– a shiny big sachet. So, while always being
aware that bathrooms and broken glass don’t go together
well, I like to decant less-than-gorgeous-looking products
like this into pressed and cut glass jars and bottles, which
I acquire in charity shops. If you’ve got a hardtiled
floor, that might not be sensible, but
mine is vinyl-that-looks-like-sisal and if I do
drop something, glass bottles almost bounce
off it. Although I still always keep the glass
containers away from the bath area itself.
Herbivore’s packaging, by contrast, is pure
mimimalist chic. They’re
a US brand which is a
huge cult success with
‘millennials’, now to be
found on this side of the
Atlantic at Space NK.
I’m a huge fan of
their Calm Bath
Salts, £16 for
Wild Rose
Body Salt Scrub,
£20 for 250g
“Restore your getup-and-go
when
it’s got-up-andwent”
227g at SpaceNK, featuring
an incredibly cocooning
and calming blend of ylang
ylang and vanilla, blended
into Himalayan pink salt crystals. They also offer
Herbivore Detox Bath Salts, featuring lavender and
eucalyptus alongside Cambrian blue clay, which will
help draw out impurities from skin.
On the oil front, I’ve some fab new finds. A long-term fan
of Aromatherapy Associates Bath & Shower Oils, these have been
joined next to my bath by two tall green bottles from Gaia
Spa (located at Boringdon Hall’s eco-spa, on the fringes of
Dartmoor).
If I’m frazzled, there’s the Calming Bath Oil option:
lavender, chamomile and orange blossom. But I also absolutely
adore the Awakening Bath Oil, which features Gaia Spa’s
signature blend of geranium, tangerine, petitgrain, grapefruit
and rosemary – one to restore your get-up-and-go when it’s
got-up-and-went. Both have matching body
products, for fragrant layering.
Another current wake-up-call-of-choice on
increasingly darker (*sob*) mornings is Le
Labo Mandarin Shower Oil, £22 for 250ml,
a fabulously uplifting blend of mandarin
and geranium. If you’re not sure what a
shower oil is, here’s the deal: you massage
into skin, and it transforms into a milky lather that
cleanses, but at the same time, nourishes the body (in
this case with a beautiful blend of coconut, argan and
sunflower oils).
If you’re a fan of Jo Malone London Lime
Basil & Mandarin, you’ll want to know that
this is now available as a Shower Oil, too;
utterly luxurious, giving a beautifully skinsoftening,
satiny lather. Shower oils are also
absolutely fabulous for leg shaving.
While soaking in that bath, meanwhile, is the
best possible time to do a little skin buffing and the
following products will also further infuse the water
with essential oils, adding to the fragrant magic.
An exciting new brand discovery for me is the Natural
Spa Factory, who offer a really impressively wide range
of salty, sandy, rice, coconut and bamboo scrub options, in
resealable pouches. I’m particularly taken with the Tickled Pink
Yuzu, Pink Beets and Watermelon Body Scrub, £20 for 250g
Aromatherapy
Associates
Light Relax
Bath & Shower
Oil 55ml
£48
139 wealdentimes.co.uk
Le Labo
Mandarin
Shower Oil,
£22 for 250ml