Okay. You are going to think that I have lost my mind when you see what I’ve got for you today but I haven’t, I promise. Or maybe I have. (And if I have, it would explain a lot.)
First is a silk sleep turban. Yes. You have probably seen these around and about the place, especially if you read The Times Magazine on a Saturday because the beauty editor Lesley Thomas is a big fan. If you are new to this, then a silk sleep turban is a turban made of silk, (still with me?), that you wear at night in order to not get bedhead.
The implications of this are that it will preserve a blow-dry for days.
I was drawn to this item after my silk pillowcases from Slip, which were a gift from the company years ago, fell apart literally to rags from overuse.
“Oh well,” I thought to myself, and went back to sleeping on cotton pillowcases. And was immediately aghast at what this does to my hair. Unless trussed up in a topknot or firmly plaited, my hair is a horror show in the morning and I do not have time to waste wetting it and drying it or otherwise trying to make sense of the catastrophe.
I don’t get a regular professional blow-dry, you understand, I’m just not like that (although I endlessly admire women who are). What I do instead, which I call the “Kentish Town blow-dry”, is to have a bath in the evening, wash and dry my hair and then sleep on it. This worked very well when I had a silk pillowcase but now they are worn away to nothing I need to think again.
I have enjoyed my Slip silk pillowcases but they are rather a bore in a way, so I went for it and purchased a SILKE silk sleep turban from Cult Beauty, which had the best rating – better than Slip’s own offering. My SILKE turban is purple and orange and fully ludicrous but it absolutely, 100% works. I had a bath at around 7pm last night, I washed and conditioned my hair, leaving the conditioner in for the proper amount of time, then dried my hair carefully in a pleasing shape with a boar-bristle brush and then coiled it up at the nape of my neck and applied the turban.
“Woah,” said Kitty who was observing me from the bed, (my husband is away, so she has moved in). “You look like a… a…. I don’t know what you look like!” Kitty is now ten and has a hatful of very spirited one-liners and “burns” so for her to be lost for words is quite the accolade.
The turban does not look good. And I have a long-running joke with friend-of-the-Spike Annie Kelly about glamorous women who are not us, who wear turbans to parties and look fantastic in them. Anyway I look as bad in this turban as all the wearing-a-turban skits Annie and I have ever performed indicated either of us might, but it is perfectly comfy once you get over the initial weirdness and it stays put all night.
In the morning, I whipped off the turban thinking “I bet this doesn’t work,” but it did. My hair fell in pleasing coils, there was no frizz or static. If the reviews on Cult Beauty are to be believed, this will work on all hair types.
I’m not sure what I will do when my husband comes home. I’m not bothered that he might find me unattractive in my turban, but, unlike his daughter, my husband is never lost for a solid burn and I’m not sure I can stand the ribbing.
From hair to face. A few years ago I was sent a bottle of “Make Up Setting Spray” by Cover FX. This feels as mad, precious and clenched as the turban, like something that a young person might shellac their face with after applying a lot of contouring make-up. But the fact is that the older you get, the more you need your make-up to be preserved throughout the day. I don’t wear much make-up but the stuff I wear needs to STAY ON, precisely because there is so little of it.
The Cover FX setting spray was fun to apply but didn’t seem to do terribly much. So I invested in one by Nyx and also the current bestseller, All Nighter from Urban Decay. Another one that gets rave review is by e.l.f. cosmetics but it’s very hard to track down. In a sort of Good Housekeeping-type experiment I sprayed one half of my face with Nyx and the other half with Urban Decay. Then I went about my Sunday, with its unpleasant combination of cooking, doing my children’s homework for them, brushing the cats and taking out the bins – all in hot September sunshine – to find that by end of play one side of my face had definitely held up better than the other and that side of my face was sprayed with… All Nighter from Urban Decay!
So if you’re considering a make-up setting spray, the All Nighter hype is real. Has anyone managed to get their hands on the one from e.l.f.?
Also, I must say thank you to the reader who said hello to me at UCS last Friday evening as I was rescuing Sam’s football from rolling onto Frognal. I live for that shit.
As someone (that autocorrect changed to “something” possibly more correctly) with excessively oily skin I’ve been experimenting with setting sprays for a couple of years. I can highly recommend Benefits Porefessional Setting Spray *under setting powder* if you use it and then Revolution Super Hold (cheap, huge and effective) over your completed face for ultimate staying power. My makeup holds up at work under a mask all day with minimal transfer. Without a mask I have committed the ultimate sin of going to bed in full face and woken up with make up so intact I did the school run in it before coming home to shower (very hungover please don’t judge).
Without a mask I have committed the ultimate sin of going to bed in full face and woken up with make up so intact I did the school run in it before coming home to shower
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Sally, surely this is the ultimate in time management, not a sin? I dream of being that efficient!
a terrific accidental science experiment that has benefitted all of us! hooray for being too drunk to take off make up
I haven’t tried that spray but I have just started using some elf skincare stuff as I have something of the deflated soufflé about me after months of neglect and I’m not sure what I think about it. I think I might feel drier. Maybe Kitty was searching for “Patricia Neale in Breakfast At Tiffany’s wearing that chic red turban as she classily removes herself from Paul Varjak’s life?” My daughter actually said “you’re not going to the opticians wearing THAT are you?!” to me the other day and made me button up my (admittedly leopard print) cardigan. I felt like Edina.
Also goals, no? Better Eddie than Saffy ….
I feel very Saffy at the moment, wearing disappointing jeans bought online which I felt too defeated by to return, and a dreary sweatshirt because the washing machine currently runs too hot to wash woollens. On the rare occasions I have pitched makeup at my puffy phizz the result, even with the lightest touch, is definitely Panto Dame, vastly improved by it wearing off.
I believe there is a specific hormonal state in a woman where all make up looks panto dame
Elf is a cheapie brand here so I’m betting the Urban Decay one is better. Which sounds snobby – but with beauty products I truly believe you get what you pay for. Nonetheless I’m happy to try it out and report back!
Reading reviews online the elf one compares really well anecdotally to all nighter
Okay cool thanks will try it
ohhh – anything that reduces time spent faffing with hair sounds like money well spent to me (even if it does look ludicrous) but how do you think the turban would cope with a fringe?
That’s a very good question, whenever I’ve had a fringe it’s as if I have my own personal terrorist on my head. It would at least reduce the faffing about to dealing with your fringe only
Ive just ordered 2 ELF sprays. If they arrive on Saturday you can have one.
Please report back!!
Sally – life goals frankly. I ALWAYS wash my hair every day precisely because if I don’t – it is a bird’s nest, so better to slather on the conditioner and then be able to drag a comb through ir rather than try and do something, anything with the horror of the nest. So this wrap sounds wonderful; But I don’t have the pennies for a £50 turban so I did my usual – went on eBay and have bought something probably highly flammable and shit – but it was under a fiver.
Report back
Will do Captain.
The Beauty Pie setting spray is good (Brownie points please). It seems to stay put under my PPE all day.
I’ve been considering a turban and you might have convinced me…
Ha ha!! Oh dear I love how I have made it out like Beauty Pie is my overlord!! That’s great I didn’t even know they had a setting spray. Definitely, if you want to do the thing a turban claims to do, it will do it! (If that makes sense)