Laura Craik on #FakeMelania and expensive skin

Laura Craik on no-glow areas, hot bobs and fright fatigue   
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Laura Craik26 October 2017

Recently the internet lost it over #FakeMelania after some wag decided that the woman by Trump’s side was not, in fact, his beloved wife, but an imposter.

I could see the internet’s point. The grainy freeze-frame did make Melania appear as though she had a strange new nose shape, but what seemed most altered was her skin. It looked porous. Less expensive. Less... glowy.

Beauty industry vocabulary is so limited that whoever first came up with harnessing the word ‘glow’ should get a medal and a lifetime’s worth of free facials. Glow, and how to get it, is now a market worth £1.11bn, according to Mintel, and growing all the time. Everybody wants expensive skin. It’s much cooler to look radiant like naturopath Rosemary Ferguson (right) than like a raddled old crone trying to mimic flawless Freja Beha Erichsen with an over-judicious use of filler.

If you want to get the glow, don’t get a puppy. News just in: they’re harder work than babies.

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At least you can put a nappy on a baby. At least you can watch The Apprentice at 9pm. A puppy needs not only a 9pm feed but a ‘vigorous play’ afterwards. When it cries in the night, you can’t just whop out a breast to make it quiet. Beauty sleep? Any sleep? Forget it. I have never looked so raddled in my life. I’m currently at Can’t Even Look In The Mirror phase, to which anyone who has ever had a newborn, a night shift or insomnia will relate. ‘When did I get so haggard?’ I wail, as the puppy defecates on another rug (always the shaggy rugs. Never the floorboards).

It’s no accident that we’re all obsessed with radiant skin at a time when people are getting less sleep than ever. You can’t buy eight blissful hours of rest in a bottle, but you can do the next best thing: find a moisturiser / primer / highlighter that works for you, slather it all over and never, under any circumstances, get a puppy.

FRINGE BENEFITS

Every time I have a fringe cut I regret it, and immediately start growing it out. Maybe it’s my hair type, maybe it’s my moisturiser, but it always starts to look claggy and lank. Which has done nothing to prevent me from being seduced by The Leon, so-called (by me, anyway) because its two components ­ ­— a jaw-length bob and heavy fringe — are a dead ringer for Natalie Portman’s in Luc Besson’s cult 1994 film.

Alamy Stock Photo

The Leon works especially well on dark hair (google Vogue staffer Olivia Singer for tips — very Eighties era Anna Wintour) but upcoming model Fran Summers (bottom left) also nails the look. I like the Leon because it’s a clean, decisive move away from all the beach waves and sun-kissed balayage that have lingered for so long. See you down the hairdresser. Or not.

SIPA USA/PA Images

ALL TRICK, NO TREAT

This ‘Halloween is the new Christmas’ stuff is getting ridic. Halloween can never be the new Christmas because you don’t get to lie around drinking wine, watching Elf and finishing off the brie the next day, however many spiced pumpkin Martinis (yes, actually A Thing) you manage to neck while your kids are trick or treating. According to search platform Lyst, searches for pumpkin-related fashion items are up almost a third since last year. Get a grip, everyone. I’m no eco warrior, but when you think of all the plastic lights, masks, straws, lanterns, skeletons and buckets being sold, then used for 24 hours before being binned, it’s hard not to ponder whether the spookiest thing about Halloween is how environmentally unfriendly it has become. Just sayin’.

Alamy Stock Photo

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