Wealden Times | WT265 | June 2024 | Education Supplement inside

Beauty
Bath treats & shower stars
Bath or shower – or both? Whatever your bathing preference, Josephine Fairley explains that it’s all
about the layering when it comes to choosing soaks, creams and salts to enhance your ablutions
istockphoto.com/ BorisVasilenko
Are you a bath or a shower person?
More and more of us, I have
observed, are both. Nothing really
beats a bath for its therapeutic power, and
the excuse to shut out the world while we
sink beneath fragrant, sometimes mineralpowered
waters, harnessing the power of
hot water to relax our body and soothe
our mind. (Best temperature for winding
down? A neutral temperature, somewhere
akin to that of the human body, or
around 94-98°F, which offers the most
relaxing effect on the nervous system.)
Showers, though, offer a faff-free way
to wash our hair – and/or get clean, fast.
As summer approaches, too, an earlyevening
shower can be a great freshener
after getting home from work, before
we turn right round again and head out
the door to take advantage of the longer
days, with a glass of something chilled
in our hands, and maybe the aroma of
a barbecue in the air. (Though if you’re
looking to a shower to energise, always
keep it on the cool side. Or, if you’re
Liz Earle, take your showers completely
cold, the virtues of which she explains
in her bestselling wellbeing book, A
Better Second Half – which I’ve been
giving to ALL my female friends and
relations, because it’s honestly that good.)
Whether for bath or shower, though,
I confess to a rather crowded bathroom
shelf. Unlike skincare, with bath treats
you can mix and match bathing products
depending on your mood and/or how
you want to smell – and I take full
advantage of that. In fact, I often throw
several products at once
into the steaming
waters, a tip I learned from my model
friend Dayle Haddon, who likes to add a
slurp of oil, a shake of salts and probably
another slurp of something else entirely.
And so long as you stick with a ‘mood
theme’ – energising or relaxing – this
‘Magic Bath’ formula seems to work well.
Meanwhile, if you were to do
a ‘Through the Keyhole’ into my
own watery sanctuary, here’s what
you might find right now…
Shower power
Search on the Boots website and you’ll
find 340+ different shower options. Yikes!
That’s a lot of choices. And there are
definitely some great accessibly-priced
high street finds out there; my choices
are almost invariably shaped by fragrance,
and I love the ambery sensuality of
Sanctuary Spa Signature Collection
Shower Cream, £7.50 for 250ml, and
always come over all nostalgic at the scent
of Badedas 3 in 1 Revitalising Shower
Gel, Shampoo & Conditioner, £2.55
for 200ml, with its herby, woodsy, whisksme-to-my-childhood
scent. I’m also a fan
of Pears Body Wash Lemon Flower,
£2.90 for 250ml, which is a fresh spin on
another much-loved scent, and Goodness
Rose & Geranium Body Wash, £4.20
for 500ml – another ‘time travel’ aroma,
that one, which whisks me straight back
to my grandmother’s greenhouse.
But if you’d like to pimp your shower
experience, there are some truly fabulous
and more luxurious options. (I’ll be blunt,
though: if you share a bathroom, you
might want to keep them under lock
and key, because it can
be truly heartbreaking
to discover that your 14-year-old
has used up your entire stash of Jo Malone
in one long, gas-bill-accelerating shower.)
Some current favourites of mine include
just-launched Escentric Molecules Body
Washes, £38 for 200ml each, which have
been launched in five of this maverick
perfume house’s cult fragrances: Escentric
01, 02, 03, 04 and 05 – the latter my
chosen shower treat, which offers a warm,
nuzzleable note of Cashmeran, contrasted
against the freshness of bergamot, orange,
rosemary, fig and pine resin. Recently
unveiled, L’Occitane Almond Delicious
Shower Cream, £17.50 for 200ml, really
lives up to its ‘delicious’ name, with
that much-loved, slightly marzipan-y
fragrance, and a bunch of truly skincherishing
ingredients – including shea
butter – which honestly render the
need for body lotion redundant, after
you emerge from your drenching.
Happy days: the aforementioned
Jo Malone London now offer a wide
range of their bestselling fragrances as
luxe body washes, including Wood
Sage & Sea Salt, Pomegranate Noir,
Red Roses, and my all-time favourite,
the sultrily sexy Velvet Rose & Oudh,
£36 each for 250ml. If you REALLY
want to go all-out posh, even Dior are
now offering Liquid Hand & Body
Soaps in their ultra-spiffy La Collection
Privée – think: light, blossomy Sakura;
transporting Jasmin des Anges, and sultry
Ambre Nuit; there are nine fragrance
options so far. (And you’ll definitely
want to hide these, at £62 for 350ml.)
But in fact, whatever your favourite eau
de parfum or eau de toilette, you might
want to revisit that range and check out
their shower/body wash options, because
many, many leading brands – including
quite a few who’d previously discontinued
their bodycare lines
– are bringing
them back, as so
many of us seek
to elevate our
shower habits.
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