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Capture

Snap Happy


This will not come as news to you if you’re a proud member of Gen Z or Alpha. For the rest of us, listen up: there’s this cool app called Snapchat … kidding. We aren’t that clueless. There’s this cool app, not new but new to me, called Dispo, which takes the most flattering pictures possible from your phone. It works like a disposable camera, flashing light on the subject so it blasts out unpleasant details (lines, wrinkles, warts, what have you), making your face glow. It doesn’t have any other photo-editing features, so you don’t have to worry about being unskilled at retouching. Once you take the picture, it “develops” the next morning at 9:00 a.m., almost as if you’d dropped your camera off at the mall. The delay adds a little suspense to the process. The app is free, but a subscription unlocks souped-up features, including filters and prints. Say cheese! ($59.99 for a year’s subscription, apple.com) —Linda Wells

Spritz

Gamine Dream


Is youth wasted on the young? Not for Celine creative director Hedi Slimane, who is endlessly fascinated by the gamine, insouciant style-setters of the 1960s known as “Zouzous.” Now Françoise Sagan and Jean Seberg have inspired the 12th addition to the Celine Haute Parfumerie Collection. In Zouzou, Slimane uses tonka bean, vanilla, musk, patchouli, amber, and resinous labdanum to create a heady, lingering scent that, somehow, doesn’t feel quite as serious as it sounds. Zouzou’s glass-and-lacquer Art Deco bottle is too pleasingly heavy to take on the road, but the travel-size spritzer is just right for an Air France flight to Roissy. (from $280, celine.com) —Ashley Baker

Teresa Tarmey
Book

Glow-Up Girl


If it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert, Teresa Tarmey is clearly a master. The London-based aesthetician estimates she’s spent 50,000 hours giving facials. At home, she’s a believer in “skipcare”—using only a few products at a time. But perhaps that’s because her bespoke, multi-step salon treatments are so effective at obscuring the appearance of fine lines and making the skin’s texture resemble something more commonly seen on TikTok. She offers a full range of cleansing and exfoliating, massage, a lactic-acid peel, L.E.D. light therapy, and, occasionally, micro-needling and laser treatments, including ClearSkin, I.P.L., and radio frequency. Now Tarmey is seeing clients out of the Cadogan, a Belmond hotel near Sloane Square, several days a week. If the allure of exquisite skin isn’t enough temptation, perhaps the hotel’s decadent post-treatment breakfast will entice. Three words: brioche French toast. (signature facial from $368, belmond.com) —Ashley Baker

Read

Food for Thought


For those of us who find few things as fascinating as how, what, and why we eat, More, Please: On Food, Fat, Bingeing, Longing, and the Lust for “Enough” provides plenty to think about. Equal parts memoir and cultural commentary, this debut from Emma Specter, a culture writer for Vogue, explores how food, in all its powers and permutations, preoccupies the lives of young women. “Today, I can honestly say I wouldn’t trade anything in my life to be thin again, but I ache for the lost years when that wasn’t true, when I would have given anything I had and then some for a visible rib cage,” she writes. Specter’s experience with binge-eating disorder frames this conversation, which includes incisive analyses on wellness-and-diet culture from Virginia Sole-Smith, Jennifer Weiner, and Leslie Jamison. But it’s her voice—acerbic, skeptical, humane, and funny—that makes More, Please so compelling. ($28, amazon.com) — Ashley Baker

Apply

Out, Damned Spot!


Have you ever tried to cover up a Botox bruise? A zit? How about a splotch of rosacea? If so, you know the drill: tap, tap, tap and you might as well have a neon sign marking the spot. Quinn Murphy, makeup artist to Natalie Portman, Rachel McAdams, Kate Hudson, and, when I’m lucky, me, figured out why this often goes so wrong. All those layers of liquid or cream concealer end up standing out from the surrounding skin. Murphy’s secret is fine, silky powder in shades that offset the bruise or zit. He named the line Spatch, after the Facetune Patch tool, and calls the compact “your own pocket-sized retoucher.” He says, “You can use a lot of the product, and it looks almost invisible because it adds less texture to the skin.” It’s effective on a bare face or over makeup. Meaning, if you’re going to the gym and just want to hide a spot, you’re covered. Murphy figured out the complicated color theory, too. “It’s so painfully simple,” he says. The line—a primer, six color-correcting compacts that work with a wide range of skin shades, and a setting spray—is makeup as a cloak of invisibility. (from $29, spatchskin.com) —Linda Wells

Wield

What a Tool!


There’s no substitute for a professional blowout, but the Aire 360 ceramic air styler, T3’s latest invention, comes mighty close. It straightens, volumizes, and creates lasting curls that have enough bounce and pizzazz to make everyday hair look a little more glamorous. (Go ahead and channel Barbie, if that’s your thing.) With three heat and speed settings and a cool-shot function, it’s suitable for all hair types. Fortunately, it’s light enough to prevent arm fatigue, a big plus if you’re straightening thick hair. And brush off that sticker shock—thanks to Dyson’s Airwrap, a tool that costs about the same as airfare to Paris, the T3 Aire is a bargain. Just think how great your hair will look at the Café de Flore. ($300, t3micro.com) —Ashley Baker

Issue No. 17
July 5, 2024
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Issue No. 17
July 5, 2024