A little less conversation, a little more action, please. This could, of course, be my epitaph, but on a week the Elvis film comes out, it’s time to look back and see how we can bring his 50s - when he was young and fit - feeling into our late summer wardrobes. Only fools rush in, but (hopefully) you can't help falling in love with...
Left - Austin Butler as Elvis in Elvis
Below - Diesel - L-KARIN Leather Jacket - £995
Right - Bershka - Faux Leather Trousers in Black - £35.99 from ASOS
Left - RM Williams - Santa Fe Boot - £375
Left - 1950's Elvis bowling us over!
Below - Scotch & Soda - Elvis Short-sleeved Shirt - £101.50
Below - Human Made - Heart Aloha Shirt - £219 from End Clothing
Left - Hello-ah Elvis!
Left - Superdry - Vintage Hawaiian Shirt - £39.99
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Dead ringer? I think not. The ringer T-shirt - those tees with matching piping around the arm and neck - have bounced back continually since their inception in the 1970s. From Stranger Things-like 80s revivals to 90s Britpop, the ringer T-shirt is back.
Left - Karl Lagerfeld X Alled Martinez - Ringer T-Shirt - £119
Thanks to a new collab. with Barcelona based designer Alled Martinez and Karl Lagerfeld, who has professed his love of the ringer T-shirt and emblazoned them with 'Team Karl'. He manages to balance a new feel of sexy and cute.
Gucci had them all over their latest adidas drop which taps into adidas' Originals heritage, while there are numerous designs out there or simply opt for plain.
If you want to get in on the trend, but with a minimal outlay, look on eBay where you can pick up plain ringer tees in a multitude of colours for around a fiver. It looks great on most body shapes and gives better definition to your arms while offering a retro edge.
Forget adidas x Gucci. £480 for a cotton T-shirt? No, thanks. If you want fun and beautiful sportswear look to the latest collab. with Percival and Champion.
Percival has taken Champion’s classic sweats, hoodies and Tees and put its usual whimsical spin on it. Fungi, shamanic boogies, amethyst and chrysoberyl, wild flowers, bonsai trees, knotted snakes, entomology collections and, lastly, swirling koi carp are all beautifully and delicately embroidered. Seriously champion.
Left & Below - Champion and Percival - Koi Carp Hoodie - £109
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If you're feeling inspired by Love Island remember fake tanning is much safer than tanning in the sun. Men are 3x more likely to get melanoma than women, so if you want to be brown make sure it comes out of a bottle.
Over a quarter of British men aged 16–24 have already tried self-tanning, so you’re in great company. Whether you’re looking to get beach ready or to give yourself an added confidence boost, a self-tan may be the best way forward.
Follow the step-by-step guide to achieve that even, golden glow.
Moisturise: get into the habit early
For the smoothest tan application, it’s best to moisturise regularly in the build-up to your tanning session. That goes for your face and your body – but it’s best to use separate products for each. Facial moisturisers are formulated to address your specific skin concerns, like oiliness or acne, while body lotions tend to be a bit too heavy for the face and can make you break out.
We recommend moisturising your face twice a day, every day, after you wash it. For your body, apply a body lotion all over every day after you’ve showered or bathed.
Trim: 24 hours before you tan
Top tip – if you shave your facial hair, make sure you do it before you apply your self-tan. This is crucial, as it means your tanning product – whether you go for a clear tanning water or a mousse – sticks to your skin properly.
Shaving 24 hours before tanning is the optimum time. But if you’ve got a last-minute night out you need to tan for, don’t worry – you can still tan even if you’ve just shaved.
Exfoliate: 24 hours before you tan
Exfoliating your face and body is the next step. If you’re new to exfoliating, don’t panic – it’s really straightforward. Men's skin is thicker than women’s skin, which means it can be a bit rougher in texture too. That’s why it’s so important to remove any dead skin, which can turn a different colour to the rest of your skin when you’re tanning, resulting in an uneven colour.
To exfoliate, you can use a body scrub with physical grains that’ll slough off that dead skin. Chemical exfoliants, meanwhile use skincare ingredients such as salicylic acid, lactic acid, and glycolic acid to get rid of dead skin on the surface of your skin and in your pores for smooth, soft skin that’s ready to be tanned. The latter is better for your face because scrubs can damage the more sensitive skin there.
After exfoliating, make sure you moisturise again and pay close attention to your hands, elbows, knees, and feet. These can be tricky areas to tan because the skin is even tougher here. This softens up these extra-tough areas even more for easier application and adhesion.
Dry and protect: immediately before tanning
Reduce potential streaking when you apply your tan by completely drying your body hair, stubble, hairline, and skin completely. Then, apply a thin coating of lip balm or Vaseline on your nails, eyebrows, and hairline to prevent the tan from staining or leaving weird streaks around these areas.
Apply your tan
Now it’s time for application. For sprays, apply a single, light coating all over your body from an arm’s length distance using a soft, circular motion. Once applied, take a dry towel and gently pat away any excess build-up on stubble or around your hairline.
When using mousse, a tanning mitt is the easiest way to apply the product without staining your hands. The ideal amount for a first coat is three pumps for each section of the body. After applying, use a clean, soft-textured face cloth over any hairier areas of the body to avoid any build-up at the hair follicles and to prevent the hair from changing colour.
The trick to successful self-tanning is that less is more. Start small and work your way up to a deeper tan. You can even build up a deeper tan over the course of a few days if you’re brand new to it and you want to take it slow. A bonus here is that you’ll look like you’re bronzing more naturally!
Source Tan-Luxe
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A former brand manager for L'Oreal has co-founded a new skincare company offering the first allergen-free moisturiser, serum and cleanser. Oodee is the only skincare brand to actively eliminate all known food and fragrance allergens from their products, giving consumers control and freedom with high-performance, nutrient-rich formulas that feed skin from the outside in.
Based in London, Oodee is a pioneering Allergen Neutral™ skincare range that is providing a new solution to the links between allergies, intolerances and skin flare-ups.
Left - Oodee - HALO Purifying Foaming Cleanser - £24, NOVA Illuminating Moisturiser - £55
The range is backed by science, kickstarting a revolution to offer worry-free skincare for people that suffer from unknown flare-ups – a group that is often overlooked by the beauty and cosmetics industry.
Karen Harwood and Victoria Tdydeman first started the company in 2018 and spent four years developing the product range that eliminates 14 food and 26 fragrance allergens. Its formulation focus on using a multivitamin complex of scientifically proven active ingredients called DermaRDE+.
Karen Harwood, co-founder of Oodee, says, “I spent a decade trying to figure out the cause of my flare-ups, whilst missing out on all the beautiful products I couldn’t use. To make it worse, there was no evidence or answers to point me in the right direction, so I was lost in this constant cycle of trial and error. My flare-ups were random and painful; often red and raw, especially around my eyes, which also meant I couldn’t use makeup to disguise them.
“At the time, people were becoming aware of allergens in their diet thanks to the free-from food movement, but nobody was linking the same triggering ingredients with skincare. I realised that if you wouldn’t eat something you’re intolerant or allergic to, then why would you put it on your skin?”
TheChicGeek says, “This is a great idea. My skin is particularly sensitive to gluten and dairy, when ingested, causing painful acne and flare-ups, so I was looking forward to seeing whether anything topical could make a difference. Or, by eliminating these factors, how my skin fared when compared with products I had used before.
I tried the HALO cleanser and the NOVA moisturiser from Oodee’s launch of 3 products.
The cleanser has a pump dispenser which gives the product extra froth, but it dissipates almost as quickly as it appears. It feels like using nothing at all, which in some respects is good, but on that satisfyingly-washing-your-face barometer it makes you feel like repeating it all over again. My face didn’t feel satisfyingly cleansed.
The NOVA moisturiser has a gelatinous texture and a light aroma. It is non-greasy and goes on easily. It just doesn’t have any richness. My skin didn’t look any different at all.
Could this product range be a case of stripping so much out nothing is left?”
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The Polish Baltic city of Gdańsk is the inspiration behind the new fragrance from award-winning London- based perfumery GALLIVANT. Gdańsk, the eleventh perfume from the brand, is an exploration of mysterious ambergris, of sperm whale fame, and the fantasy accord we know as amber.
Warm and spicy in the opening, with plum, honey, cardamom, nutmeg and saffron. A rich, woody heart with leather notes, cistus absolute, sustainable sandalwood oil from New Caledonia, patchouli, and incense resinoid – with a light touch of rose. Finished with a deep, earthy, smoky ambery base of tobacco absolute, cypriol, styrax (liquidambar), vanilla, musks and ambergris.
Left - GALLIVANT - Gdańsk - 100ml Eau de Parfum - £145
Founder and Creator Nick Steward says “Poland is a country close to my heart. I admire the character of the people and the place: strong, warm-hearted, independent-minded. That’s the emotion I wanted to conjure up with this perfume. Gdańsk is a beautiful and memorable city on the Baltic – famed for its amber and its intrepid history of seafaring. I wanted to pay tribute to this city with its surprising and fascinating history.”
Gdańsk by GALLIVANT was created by Founder Nick Steward in collaboration with Barcelona-based perfumer Julia Rodríguez Pastor. Julia says “When I visited Gdańsk I was genuinely surprised by the city - and the place amber resin has in the history and culture there. In perfumery, we tend to think of the ambery style as linked to the Middle East, so I was excited when talking to Nick that we could explore my favourite style of accord – amber – in a new way, and play with this style of perfume-making in an expected and novel way.”
TheChicGeek says, “Gallivant continues its travels, this time, I'd readily admit, to a city that I had to Google to firmly know it was in Poland. This has a consistent warmth with a light rose at the start and comforting depth of amber and ambergris. It doesn’t change very much through time, but isn’t a stayer. It disappears almost as magically as it arrives. This is my favourite from Gallivant’s offer of 11 city scents.”
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For some people, a receding hairline is as irrelevant to their life as the next thing, yet for others, when their hair starts to thin and even starts to fall out, they feel as if their identity is falling away with it.
If you would unfortunately class yourself as being in the latter group, regardless of age and lifestyle, then you have come to the right place because here, for your information and hopefully to provide you with some valuable and helpful advice, are the best ways to manage a receding hairline.
Surgical Treatments
If, or indeed when, you feel entirely ready to make a permanent and life-changing decision to have a surgical procedure to manage your receding hairline, then there are several different options you will be presented with.
The most obvious and frankly most effective pathway would be to choose to book yourself in for a hair transplant, such as by visiting the prestigious and renowned hshairclinic.co.uk. Hair transplants basically work by the surgeon surgically removing a tiny strip of just two or three hairs from the back or side of the head and then replanting them in the area which is balding. Hair transplants are not only incredibly effective in producing a natural looking hair line but are also substantially more affordable than one may think.
Other surgical treatments to combat a receding hairline, for both men and women, include:
Non-Surgical Treatments
If you are a man who is looking for a more affordable and non-surgical method of combatting your receding hairline, then you are in luck, because there are two main drugs, both of which have been scientifically proven to make a real difference to thousands of people across the length and breadth of this country and beyond.
Minoxidil
The drug Minoxidil, also known as Reginae, was the first drug of the two to be approved by the UK government to be an effective way to manage and prevent hair loss. Taken either in pill form or else in a cream directly applied to the scalp,
Minoxidil, aside from in the past being used to treat those with high blood pressure, has been known to aid hair regrowth in the affected areas. It is also worth noting that Minoxidil is only effective when on the treatment, which makes it more temporary though less intrusive than Finasteride. Additionally, women can also take Minoxidil.
Finasteride
Finasteride, on the other hand, is the general name for the drug known as either Pro Scar, which is five milligrams of Finasteride and Propecia, which comes in one milligram form.
Originally designed to treat men who were living with problems with their prostate, Finasteride essentially works by lowering the DHT levels in the male body, DHT being the primary factor in the reduction and shrinkage of hair follicles.
It is extremely important to point out that women should never take Finasteride, as it can lead to a host of medical problems.