Innehållsförteckning för April 2022 från Allure

MY PASSPORT HAS BEEN collecting dust for the last couple of years. Travel is something that has always given me the chance to look around and into the eyes of someone new, to begin to explore what other people experience as they move through the world So I was thrilled this holiday season to jet off to Accra, Ghana, with a group of friends. As soon as we arrived, I experienced something unique. I was in the Upside Down (or maybe the Right Side Up?), where I was no longer the minority. All around me there was brown skin, ranging from tones of latte to espresso. I was transported to a world with a new level of acceptance after only a 10-hour flight. It got me thinking about our Allure…

Going Places Tyler, the Creator, on Ferraris, cliff jumping, and his new brand, Golf Le Fleur. I live in the moment 98 percent of the time. The way I dress, a lot of people say, “Oh, you must have a special occasion.” I see every day of my life as a special occasion. We gotta like looking beautiful. Having a manicure is it. I like smelling good, so I’m gonna smell good. When I wear [my French Waltz (below right)] in five years, I’ll think of being in the Dominican Republic cliff jumping. I’ll think of driving a [Ferrari] Enzo. I’ll think of being in Paris at [my late friend] Virgil [Abloh]’s show. I’ll think of these last few months of my life because I’ve been wearing it, having those…

ALL TIED UP How do you turn a ribbon into more than a ribbon? Hairstylist Cyndia Harvey suggests you double up on them, like she did at Giambattista Valli’s spring 2022 show (1), and contrast their simplicity with richly textured hair. She used the ribbons to gather up cornrows, Afros, and slick styles. It’s also a perfect complement to oversized ruffles (2) on the runway. ULTRAVIOLET MIGHT This season, hundreds of brushes were dipped into hundreds of shades of periwinkle—Pantone’s color of the year. Those brushes made their way to lashes, lids, even bobs. The dye jobs at Valentino (3) had a particularly powerful Alice in Wonderland vibe. But if you want to keep the magic alive, ”use sulfate-free shampoo,” says hairstylist Brian O’Connor. Pastels fade easily. ONE AND DONE…

If you ask Íris Laxdal, the founder of Angan, where she sources the Icelandic sea salt in her brand’s signature bath soak, she’ll happily tell you. (Icelanders are friendly like that.) But revealing the secret location of the geothermal pool her family has been soaking in for generations is off the table. The bathing culture in Iceland is serious. Locals have been visiting their country’s mineral-rich waters—said to increase circulation and soften skin—since at least the 12th century. “As a kid, you’re not going to the playground, you’re going to the [geothermal] pool,” says Laxdal, who was raised in a suburb of the country’s largest city, Reykjavík. “You’re part of nature.” This connection underscores many aspects of Icelandic beauty practices, such as whipping up salves using native plants. Sóley Elíasdóttir…

So you’re saying facial oils don’t have to feel oily or be too much for my hormonal skin? Osea Essential Hydrating Oil has made me rethink the entire category. One pump helps calm my sensitive skin with a nongreasy blend of eight oils (including hydrating jojoba seed and soothing geranium). I press the fast-absorbing formula into my skin while giving my face and neck a gentle massage, resulting in hydrated and nonirritated skin. Then I smear any extra oil onto my lips to seal the deal. The April Allure Beauty Box includes Osea Essential Hydrating Oil along with six other products ($23 per month). Go to allure.com/beautyreporter to subscribe to the Allure Beauty Box and get this facial oil (while supplies last) and more delivered to your door.…

KAROL G IS FEELING ANYTHING but blue these days. The reggaeton artist, originally from Medellín, Colombia, recently exchanged the Latin music industry hub of Miami for Los Angeles to nurture a nascent acting career (first gig: a role in Netflix’s upcoming Griselda, starring Sofía Vergara). Today, Karol taps in to chat from her family home in Colombia, wearing her signature striking blue hair and an oversize pastel pink hoodie. She’s been reading the 1992 feminist classic Women Who Run With the Wolves, by Clarissa Pinkola Estés. “Women are wild by birth,” Karol says, based on the text at hand and her personal experience. “The woman who is wild and doesn’t care makes other people horribly uncomfortable because we were taught that it couldn’t be like that. So that’s why people…

1 KEEP QUIETISH The earliest bathhouses were social centers, so light conversation is welcome in the hammams, onsens, and Russian banyas of today. But be respectful of those who are there to relax. 2 BYOB(ATH PRODUCTS) Shampoo and body wash may be provided; they may not be better than the stuff you have at home. (You’ll shower before your soak.) Towels—one bath-size, one washcloth to take into the water, where permitted—are usually available on site, but they’re just as easily mixed up with other patrons’, so perhaps bring your own. 3 BARE WHERE? Nudity rules vary across nations. Many Japanese onsen forbid swimwear of any kind. It keeps the water a few stitches purer. By contrast, at a hammam (including baths in Turkey, the Middle East, and North Africa) you…

284 A.D. A new emperor, Diocletian, ascends to the highest position in the Roman Empire. Under his reign, entrance to the baths costs but two denarii, the lowest denomination of bronze coins. 1644 Legend has it that Japanese onsens are used to treat illnesses and injuries until a shogun requests two barrels of hot spring water be carried to his castle daily. Citizens become curious, which leads to leisurely bathing, hot springs inns, and the slow birth of hot springs tourism. 1717 The English aristocrat and proto-beauty journalist Lady Mary Wortley Montagu visits the hammams of modern-day Sofia, Bulgaria, and gawks marvelously at the nudity: “All being in the state of nature, that is, in plain English, stark naked, without any beauty or defect concealed.” 1846 British Parliament passes the…

Growing up in Saddle Lake Cree Nation in Alberta, Canada, Tia Wood (who also has Salish ancestry) began dancing almost as soon as she learned to walk. She spent weekends performing at powwows wearing full Indigenous regalia, but at school she hid behind colored contacts, and edited her online photos to look “a lot lighter” than her natural skin tone. But in high school, she had a revelation: “‘Wait a minute! We don’t have to do this. We’re beautiful too,’” recalls Wood. “I started decolonizing beauty standards and doing things that highlighted all my Indigenous features, like my hair and my nose.” Around the same time, she began posting videos on TikTok educating others about her culture while showcasing her musical talent. Now, after moving to Los Angeles to pursue…

UPWARD SPIRALS David Koma dress. Norma Kamali one-piece. Demarson earrings. To create a similar makeup look: Hot Singles Eyeshadow in Heat and STFU, Epic Wear Liner Sticks in Blue Trip, Turquoise Storm, and Intense Tea, Epic Wear Metallic Liquid Liner in Brown Metal, and Epic Wear Liquid Liner in Stone Fox by Nyx Professional Makeup. FRESH PERSPECTIVES “Growing up in New Jersey, I was surrounded by girls who looked a lot different than me—they all had straight, silky hair. I started to straighten my big, poofy curls because I wanted to be just like them,” explains Sri Lankan American model Deseni Fernando. “But after seeing more people in the media and in my South Asian community embrace their curls, I started to see the beauty in that. I thought, Wow,…

JUST BEHIND OXFORD STREET—London’s shopping district—is a family-run deli with vintage Formica tables and a retro vibe. There is precisely zero pretense at Paul Rothe & Son, the 122-year-old sandwich shop where actor Charithra Chandran, who appears in the second season of Netflix’s Bridgerton (which premieres March 25), has suggested we meet. “It is a London institution,” she emails before our interview, and a girl’s gotta eat. “I love sandwiches. They have, like, 100 different mustards. I love mustard.” Chandran is a first-generation British South Indian and we’re here to talk about her London. But first things first: “I’m feeling Coronation Chicken today,” she says. That’s a British filling created for Queen Elizabeth II, and it’s a curious mix that includes roast chicken, mayonnaise, apricot jam, and curry powder. It…

1. LilaNur Parfums Incarnation. The closest you can get to teleporting from the jasmine fields of India directly to the rose gardens of France is spritzing on this perfume that combines the scents of both—then unfolds into smoky patchouli. 2. Loewe Medium Ivy Candle in Light Pink. Come for the candy-colored vessel (the curved design was inspired by an ancient Greek mug), stay for the clean, herbaceous aroma of fresh-cut ivy. 3. Evolvetogether Havana Hydrating Hand Cream. This quick-to-absorb cream (we didn’t leave so much as a fingerprint on our phone screen) is so hydrating, you won’t feel the need to reapply it—unless you’re raving a whiff of its transportive, woody, cardamom scent. 4. Joaquina Botánica Calendula + Peptides Hydrating Essence. To honor her Colombian roots, Giovanna Campagna infuses her…

ON MYTH BUSTING: “I wanted to squash that whole narrative that Black people don’t need sunscreen. It’s not true at all. Like, we do. No one’s melanin is enough to protect them from the sun’s rays. Cay Skin is for everyone under the sun.” ON HERITAGE: “I love islands. I love to be in the heat. I love beaches. I’m Caribbean through and through. [Harlow was born and raised in Canada, but has Jamaican ancestry on both sides of her family.] It’s the music I listen to, the food I eat, it’s a part of my life. Cay Skin was named after the cays—or keys—which are little pockets of islands [in the Caribbean]. I wanted to package the Caribbean in a bottle. I wanted to make sure the ingredients spoke…

WHAT DO MEDICAL devices, semiconductors, and sheet masks have in common? All of them are regularly manufactured in Taiwan. After decades of churning out precise machines for tech and medical applications, Taiwan manufacturers have started to create advanced skin- and hair-care formulas too. “The manufacturing standards are very high [in terms of] automation used to keep things sanitary, make things consistent, and package things in the best way,” says Jude Chao, a Taiwanese American founder whose brand, Love, Jude, is manufactured in Taipei. We’re just starting to see more T-beauty brands coming to the U.S., but beauty has been a deeply ingrained part of the culture in Taiwan for decades. “Growing up, my Taiwanese mother would often make a ‘beauty soup’ dessert, which featured snow mushroom,” says Alice Lin Glover,…

IT’S LATE JANUARY IN SYDNEY. Even in the dark, Nur Sajat is resplendent, a sliver of Australian moonlight illuminating her skin as we connect over Zoom. She’s just made the three-hour drive back from Canberra, one of many stops on her way to rebuilding the beauty business she had to shutter in her home country more than a year ago. Her matte-plum lips are precisely lined, fawny lashes frame her dark eyes, and her skin is glowing against the same white sundress she twirled in on Instagram earlier that day to the delight of her more than 400K followers. Many of these followers live in Malaysia, where Sajat was born, raised, and, in 2021, forced to flee to escape the threat of up to three years in prison for dressing…

IN THE FRENCH COUNTRYSIDE, there’s a storybook main street—cobblestone road, charming storefronts, sheep down the way—in the medieval town of La Roche Posay. Just across from the pharmacie is a building that features “Thermes Saint-Roch” written in navy letters. The building’s thermal center belongs to La Roche-Posay, the skin-care brand, not the town, and every year some 7,500 people travel here from around the world, hoping to treat skin conditions such as eczema, psoriasis, burn wounds, and skin-related side effects after cancer treatment. The same water that flows through the town, from a thermal spring purportedly discovered in the 14th century, is piped into white-and-blue tiled shower stalls and baths inside the building. The water is rich in selenium, a mineral that is a known anti-inflammatory and antioxidant. “The waters…

THE BAKER HOTEL in Mineral Wells, Texas once drew legions of pilgrims to its healing waters, including Judy Garland, Ronald Reagan, and, allegedly, Bonnie and Clyde. The hotel opened in 1929, during a time when the town’s waters—which, we now know, contained more than trace amounts of lithium—were being piped into local drinking pavilions and bathhouses. The Baker Hotel’s entire second floor was one enormous, ornate bathhouse and spa and the building itself was plumbed directly to local mineral wells. Though it survived the Great Depression—cattle barons kept on coming—it has sat closed and abandoned since 1972. “One day, there was a For Sale sign up,” says Chad Patton, a principal on the new Baker Hotel and Spa project, involving a $73 million renovation. “All that plumbing to local wells…

IT’S EASY TO FIND the downsides of social media, but rolling your eyes at vacation selfies—another sunset?—is only part of the virtual experience. If you haven’t always been comfortable expressing yourself however you want, in front of whatever sunset you want, Instagram and TikTok provide creative escapes that can lift a low mood, or even change everything. Let’s say you live someplace where one particular kind of cultural beauty look is idolized—it happens all over the world, to various extents. “Pakistan’s beauty standards are primarily rooted in its colonial history, defined by Western ideals: fair skin; long, silky hair; almond eyes; and thin figures,” says Anaa Saber, a New York City-based Pakistani American model who’s made annual trips to Pakistan since childhood. “But access to social media and beauty ideals…

NEW YORK CITY didn’t know what to do with Grace Jones in 1975. Her androgyny, her fierce beauty, her regal Blackness: None of it fit into the era’s typecasting. So the Jamaica-born model made a beeline for Paris, where her career took off. She began modeling for Yves Saint Laurent and Kenzo and soon became a phenomenon—as a musician, an actor, and a beauty innovator. When Jones got a flattop—an impromptu middle-of-the-night cut by her neighbor, famed hairstylist Christiaan—women and men around the world followed suit. When she brushed metallic pinks and purples over her cheekbones, Technicolor highlighter became a trend years before highlighter was even a makeup category. Jones raised nonconformity to an art form, blazing a trail for many to follow. Her stated philosophy is simple: “I’m not…

“THE BEACH IN GHANA WAS BUSY WITH FISHING & I FEASTED ON TILAPIA STRAIGHT FROM THE OCEAN.”…

IF YOU SCROLL through Australian artist Tara Chandra’s content, you’ll see her smiling big in the funkiest of sunglasses, taking selfies in grassy fields…and boldly sharing the journey of her most debilitating eczema flare-ups. “Never be ashamed of your [skin] doing its natural thing,” Chandra says. The images of her bright red neck have created a judgment-free forum to share advice and support among her followers around the world. Here, Chandra’s top tips, which she’s learned through experience—and her very international comments sections. CLEAN ACT Showering may be painful, especially during active flare-ups, but for Chandra, washing her skin and hair daily can prevent product, dirt, and oil buildup. “I moisturize immediately after showering to rehydrate my skin,” she says. Consider doing some housekeeping too: Because dust mites are a…

TURNING OCEAN PLASTIC into athleisure, or leather-bound books into a luxe armchair: This transformative process of repurposing by-products or waste is called upcycling. Now there’s a growing (and long-overdue) push to use agricultural by-products and food waste in beauty products in order to optimize the cosmetics and food industries’ shared supply chains. Each year, as much as 20 percent of the world’s banana production may be discarded due to damage or imperfection, according to one estimate. (That’s about 24 million tons of bananas that go straight to the garbage!) Kadalys, a Martinique-based brand, repurposes some of these banana peels and pulp to produce omega-packed extracts used in its skin care. “Bananas have healing and antimicrobial properties,” says cosmetic chemist Ginger King. “There are even [brands making] preservatives from banana leaves.”…

Think about how many different lipsticks are tucked into makeup bags, rolling around the bottom of purses, and waiting to be rediscovered in random kitchen drawers (just us?) around the world. Yet, somehow, the same shade of red—not just any red, but a very specific brick red—is currently a favorite in 19 countries. Last year, people on the planet Earth bought 2.4 million bullets of MAC Chili, an intense red with warm orange undertones. (That’s nearly five lipsticks sold every minute.) According to MAC, it’s a top-seller in Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, China, Vietnam…still with us? The U.S., Canada, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Taiwan (almost there!), Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Ghana. “It’s brought the ‘brick-color boom’ to Korean beauty,” says Jae-Hyun Park from KakaoTalk Gift…

BY THE 1ST CENTURY B.C. bathhouses were operating in Rome. They were community centers of hygiene, exercise, relaxation, and other activities that exist today under the greater wellness umbrella—and some rather less G-rated ones that do not. Admission was superlatively cheap. Wealthy patrons looking to purchase public favor (or perhaps out of the kindness of their solid-gold hearts!) would often pay to waive entry fees, effectively washing the masses. Centuries later, the public bath is less popular than it has ever been, even in societies where communal bathing is still culturally significant. Tokyo has seen a trickling decline in the use of sentos (community bathhouses) and attempts to revive the industry with flashier amenities—in-bath movie screenings, beer taps, a dozen cats (in one bathhouse’s lobby, not the actual bath)—may not…

If you are willing to forgo the communal sense of wellness endemic to the bathhouse setting, it is possible to replicate the experience in the comfort and solitude of your own home. First, take between $5 and $10 out of your wallet and place it out of sight. This is a thought experiment intended to see if paying for a bath makes it feel more luxurious. Undress, and turn on the shower, but do not enter it yet. Let the steam fill your pores and bathroom. Run a moisturizing bar—Kate McLeod’s Naked Stone, which wraps skin in a pillowy layer of cocoa butter—over your skin. Then, in the shower, take a cloth and vigorously rinse, shedding the top layer of your skin as you go. We like Salux cloths, which are…

KINOSAKI ONSEN Tucked where river meets mountain, some inns in Japan’s Kinosaki Onsen resort town offer guests a hairihodai (all-you-can-soak) package deal: a village of Japanese spas with the price of an overnight stay. The town’s seven “mystic” onsen, each promising a different spiritual benefit or river view or marvel of natural plumbing, unfurl conveniently through this walkable historic town. CAGALOGLU, ISTANBUL Constructed in 1741, Cagaloglu is one of Istanbul’s great hammams. Magnificent marble colonnades and domed ceilings give bathers the powerful impression that they are supporting actors in a sultan’s dream. Yet, a tip-to-toe treatment, where the body is vigorously scrubbed and then bathed in bubbles, costs about as much as a 45-minute massage at a mid-market Hilton. BANYA ZHIVICA, MOSCOW The Siberian banya imbues bathing with a certain…

“This project took me back. I’d always enjoyed painting on face charts, then life got too busy. Now I’m thinking of creating a face chart for every single bride I work with. [For this one], I wanted to create an unforgettable engagementparty look. I’d fallen in love with the muted greens in an eye shadow palette and it was an excuse to pile them on. I always love to add color on the lower eyelids. Greens, blues, purple… they turn the eyes magical. Ombré lips are one of the things clients [here in Nigeria] have told me they love about my makeup over the years. To create a perfect ombré, trace lips with a liner and then apply lipstick over it. Use a lip brush to blend the colors, then…

WHEN I WAS 13 YEARS OLD, I STOOD IN FRONT OF THE MIRROR and traced a rich black liner around the inner rims of my eyes. Before that moment I’d only been allowed to wear makeup for special occasions and parties, with my mother as the makeup artist, dabbing my eyes with kohl. They would quickly start to water and, as I blinked, the liner silhouetted my eyes with its deep, intense magic At 13, I was old enough to wield my own kohl eyeliner, Hashmi Kajal (kajal is the Hindustani word for kohl). The jet-black cream came in a red-and-black tube with a flashy gold applicator. If Pakistan had a national eyeliner, it would be Hashmi Kajal. In fact, it tends to be used by South Asians wherever they…