Her moisturiser (pounds 14.50 for 100ml) is, so far, the best I’ve ever used. It is deeply hydrating but “dries” to a matt finish that is almost like wearing make-up.TREAT YOURSELF…A total indulgence but a fantastic treat for your eyes, these Estee Lauder Stress Relief Eye Masks, 19.50 for ten (from dept stores), are little, gauze half moons that are impregnated with cooling lotion. You place them under your eyes for ten minutes (see the advantage over cucumber slices, you don’t have to keep your eyes closed) and they leave them refreshed and perky. Especially good if you keep them in the fridge (don’t mistake them for ice-cream wafers), but more useful kept in your top drawer to slap on after staring at the computer for too long or crying.The legendary Maybelline Great Lash Mascara comes over here on 20 October (from the Beauty Quest catalogue, 0541 505000).
It’s not the best mascara you will ever try – Zoe (tester-girl) says it can be “gloopy” – but it’s only pounds 5.95, has cheap and cheerful packaging in a US high-school way (green and pink) and is really very famous.L’Occitane Shaving Kit, pounds 64.95, is a classy bit of shaving kit. The shaving cream and after-shave cream come in base metal-coloured tubes which look gloriously old fashioned. Then there’s an after-shave lotion, froth up brush and a white stick that stops you bleeding. So posh you’ll have to book a trip on the Orient Express to use it (0171 629 6209 for stockists).STOP YOURSELFThis product so deserves to be slagged off I can’t believe it hasn’t been designed for just that purpose. Donna Karan’s cashmere body lotion, pounds 38, comes in a big, fancy, cream box. It looks nice, but open it up and the “bottle” inside is a pearlised, plastic thing that looks like a headless, puffy-chested duckie (the cologne is pictured here, but same shape).
It smells awful: top notes of “sweets on a necklace” that fade to bottom notes of cheap, cocoa-butter crap. The bumpf on the box (“Your skin makes no decisions, tells no lies, breaks no promises…”) sounds like propaganda for a Love-In religious movement Leave it!. AMERICAN RETRO on Old Compton Street in London’s Soho is a Do It All for urban trendies. For the man who has everything – including a Phillippe Starck toothbrush – Retro is the only shop where he is guaranteed to find the shock of the new
The name behind Retro is Sue Tahran. Wearing a Retro T-shirt and hipsters without looking as though she’s trying too hard, fortysomething Tahran works incognito on the shop floor, vigorously demonstrating the Atilla can crusher or modelling the latest inflatable flip-flops. “Keeping up with my customers is exhausting,” she says, puffing on a Silk Cut Extra Mild in a nearby patisserie. “They have such a high level of design and fashion awareness.
The demand is insatiable.”
For 11 years, Tahran has sourced the entire stock of Retro and ensured its survival through the chrome-and-black Eighties to the irreverent chic of the Nineties. “There is more humour in Nineties’ design – breaking rules and mocking conventions. But the bottom line for Retro is high-quality, modern design classics.”Tahran’s latest product, “Boyfriend in a Box”, could hardly be described as a design classic. “It’s for the woman who has everything but time for a serious relationship,” she giggles.
These pounds 9.99 “boyfriends” supply the customer with a complete biography of his or her imaginary friend plus greetings cards, memos and photos for diary and desk. “It is all about tapping into my customer’s sense of humour,” says Tahran, who happens to be unmarried herself. “But I’d have to sell an awful lot of Boyfriends to pay Soho rents – they aren’t my main source of income,” she adds with a wry smile.It is the homeware department, in the tiny basement space, and fashion on the ground floor that make Retro an essential in the Soho shopping landscape. “You know as well as I do that there are too many fashion and interiors shops in London already,” says Tahran. “I try to identify modern classics and be the first to stock them So, that means I take risks with young, untested designers.