Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2018 i Allure

A few months ago, a controversial story called “The Skincare Con” from The Outline made the rounds online. In it, the writer argued that skincare products are a waste of money and that humans survived for centuries without them, so why do we need them now? The story stoked a fiery debate, with skin-care lovers around the Internet jumping to the defense of their beloved cleansing oils and ampoules. I won’t dignify the story with too lengthy a rundown. But in a nutshell, the writer claimed that there’s little science behind skin care (not true), that it must be a scam because people who practice it sometimes get pimples (whaa?), and that it’s a worthless pursuit because you’ll never achieve the “perfect” skin you’ve been promised (um, OK). Needless to…

Back in the 1870s, there were two kinds of soaps: laundry soaps that you’d use with a washboard, and “toilet” soaps for the body. Most came in brown or white, and everyone just called them brown soap or white soap. Then James Gamble, a chemist, developed a white soap strong enough to clean clothes but gentle enough for skin. His cousin Harley Procter thought it could be huge. One day, Procter was in church and heard a Psalm that referenced clean-smelling clothes and ivory palaces. He thought, Let’s call our soap Ivory. Other soaps were cut at the store from large slabs, but he put theirs in a branded wrapper. For a year, the cousins sold white soap and Ivory soap—same price, same product—side by side. Ivory outsold white soap…

Antioxidants have perhaps the most abstract of skin-saving missions: neutralize rogue free radicals before they can corrupt DNA or maim collagen. Our bodies manufacture some antioxidants, but we can also shore up our supply by ingesting them and applying them to our skin. Since you’re reading Allure right now, there’s a good likelihood that you do the latter routinely. In this age of impatience, of seeing is believing, you put your faith in these formulas with no immediate payoff, dutifully smearing them on because the world’s best dermatologists (often in these pages) have told you to. Their statements usually go like this one: “Along with SPF and retinoids, antioxidants are the foundation for skin rejuvenation.” That’s from David McDaniel, an adjunct assistant professor of biological sciences at Old Dominion University…

“Probiotics” is now a household word—but we’re just beginning to discover the potential these bacterial cultures have to make our guts and our skin stronger and healthier. We asked Whitney Bowe, a professor of dermatology at Mount Sinai Medical Center and the author of The Beauty of Dirty Skin, to explain.…

The world is totally and hopelessly obsessed with face masks. Google says so. In a recent report on the top beauty-related searches around the globe, “face mask,” “masque visage,” and “feisumasuku” came out on top. South Korea has certainly been ground zero for the craze, but snail mucus and panda-face sheet masks are just a small part of the story. Women the world over have an urge to cover their faces in goop or powder or slime or cloth or a combination of all of the above, close their eyes, and by the grace of the gods and modern science, emerge brighter, cleaner, stronger, better. It’s a tradition that transcends borders. Women from Argentina and Morocco, India and the States—whether we’re building on ancestral traditions or embracing new technologies—we simply…

When smartphones have a nightly purification ritual—PhoneSoap and charge (it’s a whole thing)—one has to wonder: Has our collective cleansing obsession grown certifiable? “There’s a new level of mania around face washes and cleansing rituals,” says Laurel Geraghty, a dermatologist in Medford, Oregon. Maybe you hop on Reddit for a simple product recommendation, only to emerge hours (days?) later with a running list of acne-wash pH levels. Or you go for a casual scroll through Instagram, turning up sparkling bottles flanked by mint, echinacea—and oh! The raves! If a cleanser could blush… This fervor signals a 180 in our attitudes and appetites. Just three years ago, Glossier founder Emily Weiss created a cleanser because, she says, “no one on the team had a holy grail cleanser that they swore by.”…

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18TH Century when men and women wore mouches, velvet patches made to look like moles and cover up scars from smallpox, popularized by fashionable women like Queen Marie Casimire of Poland 8 Size in bits of Ms. Pac-Man’s beauty mark. $30–$80 Price range for a Marilyn Monroe piercing, a stud on the lower left cheek meant to imitate her signature mark. 10–40 Approximate number of moles a person has on her body by adulthood. ¼ The width in inches of a typical mole. (If it is bigger than a quarter inch, it should be examined by a dermatologist.) 21 Age at which Dita Von Teese tattooed a mole on her left cheek. 2012 Year Chanel sent models down the runway wearing black velvet “beauty mark” face stickers in the shape…

Oh, happy day. There’s a wave of unfussy that’s washing over the beauty industry, and not to suggest that we’re lazy, but we couldn’t be more excited about it. If you have the skill set and energy level to raise your arm (and not even for a long time!), you now have the ability to take care of your skin and hair. The Yes to Grapefruit Vitamin C Glow-Boosting SnapMask Stick leaves a thin, even, quick-drying layer on damp or dry skin—it’s not picky. Just rinse it off after five minutes and your face will look less red and blotchy off the bat; it also brightens skin over time. Milk Makeup Watermelon Brightening Serum keeps clean skin soft and takes 18 seconds to run over your entire face. (In the…

Meet Urban Decay’s incoming class of Hi-Fi Shine lip glosses. The party kids: Goldmine, with a dangerously high dose of gold glitter, and Savage, a Pepto-on-acid pink just perfect for Nicki Minaj. The student council: Beso, a demure berry, and Fuel, a pink-beige with shimmer particles so small, you have to squint to see them. And the ones we vote most likely to succeed: Shadowheart, a latex chocolate that looks like a pretty raisin tint on lips; Dirty Talk, a soft brick with tiny flecks of shimmering rose; and SPL, a soft pink that shines green and purple. All 20 of them swipe on wet (not sticky), wear like balm, smell like peppermint ice cream, and look as pigmented as lipstick. (Really dewy lipstick.) High marks all around.…

Dermatologist David McDaniel recommends layering a “super potent” serum, like SkinCeuticals C E Ferulic or Vichy’s new LiftActiv vitamin C serum (which is especially good for sensitive skin, with no fragrance or parabens), beneath a broad-spectrum sunscreen with its own built-in antioxidants to “help protect against pollution, infrared rays, and visible light, which may not be intercepted by the SPF itself.” He thinks Elizabeth Arden Prevage City Smart and SkinMedica Total Defense + Repair are two of the best.…

Here’s a sobering fact: Since the 1980s, incidences of melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, have doubled. “The statistics are staggering—mortality rates for melanoma are increasing faster than those for all other common cancers after esophageal cancer,” says Elizabeth Hale, a dermatologist in New York City and a senior vice president of the Skin Cancer Foundation. “Skin cancer is such a unique cancer because we know exactly what causes it—the sun’s ultraviolet rays—and we can limit sun exposure,” says Hale. Yet over the last 30 years, more people have had skin cancer than all other cancers combined, a fact as confusing as it is scary. “It’s an epidemic among young women.” Skin cancer used to be incredibly rare for anyone in their 20s, 30s, or early 40s. “We thought…

If you happened to be in Madrid in the middle of the night, and you happened to sneak into the darkened Museo del Prado, you would wander past art-world giants like Dürer’s Adam and Eve, Raphael’s The Cardinal, and El Greco’s The Holy Trinity. But the only masterpiece you would be able to see in the dim after-hours lighting would be Peter Paul Rubens’s The Three Graces, depicting three nude mythological goddesses (beauty, mirth, and abundance), their supernatural skin practically glowing in the dark. “The flesh and the skin of these women feel so alive,” says Elizabeth Honig, a professor of art history at the University of California, Berkeley. “There are so many colors in human skin and so many crevices. One of the things that Rubens does best is…

Her job is to fix things. When Tina Alster was training as a dermatologist at Yale in the late ’80s, she met a woman who changed her trajectory in medicine. The woman was middle-aged, with a port-wine stain occupying the left side of her face and a full face of makeup concealing it. Her husband and son had never seen the stain. Alster had just read an article about laser treatments for vascular lesions and was inspired to learn more. Much more. A few years later, she would return to her hometown of Washington, D.C., and open the first freestanding laser center in the world, which would develop into the world’s destination for cosmetic laser treatment. As for the woman? Alster zapped her stain nearly clean off. “I changed her…

Which we could also just call: shaving your face. Because this treatment involves gently pulling a blade along your skin. But! Dermaplaning, unlike traditional shaving, uses a smaller blade to slough off dead skin cells in addition to removing wispy facial hair, so skin is more even in tone and texture. It’s superficial (there will not be blood) and strangely reminiscent of a cat lick (tickly, sandpapery). It makes makeup go on smoother, too. Makeup artist Vincent Oquendo uses it to get celebrities like Lily Collins and Hailee Steinfeld ready for high-definition cameras. And unless you have pustular acne, eczema, rosacea, or cold sores, you can safely DIY. Here’s how: 1. Prep skin. Even though you’re not piercing the skin, it’s important to make sure your face is clean so…

Anytime we open a new bottle or tube that gets our skin any closer to approximating radiance, it’s a good day. But anytime we open four? Jack. Pot. Charlotte Tilbury’s new skin tint has this insane luminous finish—layer it with foundation or wear it alone (for sheer coverage). The refined shimmer in Armani’s pressed-powder foundation perks everything up, and Laura Mercier’s top-notch concealer lineup now includes a creamy formula that melts into skin, where it stealthily reflects light. And to make shiny spots less glare-y without mattifying, there’s Supergoop’s setting spray with sunscreen (and a cute Milly design).…

NEW YORK CITY DERMATOLOGIST Amy Wechsler. The dermatologist you would pick if you could pick any dermatologist in Manhattan. 45 E. 85th St. 212-396-2500. PLASTIC SURGEON Haideh Hirmand. Hirmand doesn’t just offer safe eye-area injections—she pioneered them. 1040 Park Ave. 212-744-4400. FACIAL Bamford Haybarn Spa at 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge, Christina Hardial. Palo santo, reflexology, and lymphatic drainage (ask for the Signature Facial) relax you into oblivion. $235. 60 Furman St., Brooklyn. 347-696-2530. Ildi Pekar Skin Care, Ildi Pekar. Book the Refine Microcurrent Facial. Tell us how insanely sculpted your face looks afterward. $485. 20 E. 49th St. 212-682-6080. Joanna Vargas Salon, Sarah Karaolides. Where beautiful people (Maggie Gyllenhaal, Mandy Moore) go to stay that way. $300 and up. 501 Fifth Ave. 212-949-2350. Mzia Shiman Spa, Mzia Shiman. She’ll extract…

ANAIRAM “Emotion is our body’s translation of what’s inside when we are out of words. This image represents the early stage of love.” COLIN LEAMAN “I used onions as a metaphor for skin. I wanted the skin of the onions to show depth, beauty, complexity, and luster. While the onions are the main focus of the photograph, the light and shadow illuminate the different surfaces of the onions, the fabric.” DAVID BRANDON GEETING “Similar to skin, leather has unique markings but also the surface around them for more details. This leather will carry the weight of whatever is placed upon it, from successful experiments to mindless meandering. It is wet with ideas that have yet to be fully formed.”…

“I HAVE TO SNEAK AROUND HUSBANDS’ SCHEDULES…. I’M ALL ABOUT DISCRETION.” “You’d be amazed how many times I have to sneak around husbands’ schedules,” says Sal Nadkarni. “I’m all about discretion.” Nadkarni, a cosmetic physician in Beverly Hills, isn’t being discreet for the reasons you might think. It’s because he makes house calls to administer Botox and fillers to housewives, reality-TV stars, and celebrities. The thing is, a cosmetic physician isn’t necessarily a dermatologist. Nadkarni is a primary-care physician. And he doesn’t administer injectables in a doctor’s office. In fact, he doesn’t have an office. “Cosmetic physician isn’t a residency training program, so you can’t know how much training a physician has,” he admits. “I’ve injected Botox thousands of times and am familiar with the musculature of the face, but…

TATA HARPER Founder of Tata Harper Skincare A farm may not always be synonymous with luxury, but then again most farms aren’t Harper’s bucolic Vermont property, where she and her team bottle potent formulas laced with precious botanicals. Her best-selling line, founded in 2010, was early evidence that natural skin care could be as chic as it is effective. Harper took the crunchy out of clean. How I define “natural”: “Every ingredient in the formula is totally free of synthetics.” My beauty aha moment: “After my stepfather was diagnosed with cancer, I started paying attention to everything I put in and on my body. I saw that the products I was using—from food to household cleaners—were full of potentially dangerous chemicals, like propylene glycol, something that’s also found in automobile…