Jo Loves... for Autumn 2025
Jo Fairley is loving dressing-table worthy fragrant treats, a fab detangling hairbrush, a sense-awakening soap bar – and a trio of brilliant make-up finds
A few weeks ago, I raved about a fragrance from the Art Deco-inspired brand Bienaimé in Jo’s Scent Notes, here . Frankly, everything in this range makes me want to redesign my bedroom and buy a kidney-shaped dressing table on which to display these products. I can then sit there in my negligée, anointing myself.
Sadly, this isn’t going to happen – but these two products are nevertheless giving me huge pleasure. Bienaimé Vermeil Baume Onrique has a glorious balm-to-oil texture, melting into skin to veil it in rose, violet, iris and white musk – Vermeil’s ‘Mummy’s Handbag’ smell, which I simply love. It leaves a subtly glittery finish on skin (very becoming in candlelight, I imagine). A total luxury, a frippery, nay, file under ‘reckless extravagance’ – but I’m crazy about how soft and how fragrant it leaves skin. Honestly, no need to perfume over the top – ditto with the Bienaimé Vermeil Hand Cream, a hand-softening cream with pretty much the perfect texture: rich-but-non-greasy, quite fluid infused with that wonderful fragrance. It’s obviously got a high concentration of fragrant oils, because I get wafts of the scent through the day. The Hand Cream is, honestly, heaven in a tube.
Bienaimé Vermeil Baume Onrique/£85 for 200ml – buy here
Bienaimé Vermeil Hand Cream/£28 for 30ml – buy here
Hourglass Curator Eyeshadow Palette – Minimalist
I still mourn the demise of Tom Ford’s Cocoa Mirage palette, which was the most flattering combo of neutrals I’ve ever whisked across my lids. But this one comes pretty close – and is stepping up to the the task nicely. Ignore the fact that the shades look really shimmery, in the above pic – they’re actually more matte than they appear there, a quartet of beige (for brow-bone), chocolate (for eye-lining), cocoa (for socket) and taupe, for smooshing it all together with a blender brush. (I would NOT want to have to open the front door half-way through this process, at which point I hear the words ‘Whatever Happened to Baby Jane’ echoing in my ears. But all blended in? Gorgeous, if I say so myself.)
£67 – buy here
I have been known almost to scream ‘NOT THE TANGLE TEAZER’ when a hairdresser unwittingly tries to use one of those brushes on my head. The sensation literally sets me off like chalk on a blackboard (or its close equivalent: the sound and feeling of my school felt hat, scratching against a brick wall while I waited for a No. 119 bus.) So I was deeply worried when Daisy, a talented junior at John Frieda Salons, reached for this. But my, was I wowed. It went through my notoriously difficult-to-comb wet hair like magic, with no accompanying horrible sound effects. I liked it so much, I bought the handbag-sized version for home use (in Beauty Bible pink of course!) – and it’s just as good on dry hair as wet, most definitely living up to what is quite an ambitious name.
£15.30 – buy here
MALIN+GOETZ Mandelic Acid Exfoliating Bar
Gosh, this is a better early morning wake-up call than any cup of coffee. (Well, definitely in my case, since coffee gives me the jitters.) Our friends at MALIN+GOETZ just launched a range of bar soaps – very ‘retro’ in this age of body washes, but of course also very eco (no plastic packaging to recycle). I suppose that technically, you could use this on faces – but it’s a long time since I let a soap bar anywhere near mine, so I prefer it as a skin-renewing body bar. There are enzymatic and physical exfoliants in here, but there are also plenty of nourishing ingredients – hyaluronic acid, shea butter, jojoba – which leave skin feeling cleansed, buffed, but definitely not tight. It’s the smell that absolutely sends me, though: eucalyptus and peppermint. Whoosh!
£18 for 140g – buy here
I’m so mad for this new lip product from VIOLETTE-FR – the make-up line created by the so-cool Parisienne make-up artist, Violette Serrat – that the day it arrived, I went online and ordered three more shades. It’s PHENOMENAL. Applied via a doe-foot wand, Plume Lip offers budge-proof yet hydrating colour that is literally weightless – you CANNOT feel anything there. It does come off when you eat, but not before then, and until that moment you have a wonderful, intensified, slightly blurred pout, in shades that range from strong red to a chestnut-pink. (It’s subtitled ‘Feather Matte Lip Whip’, and that description truly nails it.) Plume Lip is BRILLIANT for Zooms, when you don’t want to look washed-out on screen and want a lipcolour that stays put the whole time you’re trapped there. (I’ve ordered the red shade, En Feu. Will I be brave enough to wear it? I am looking forward to channelling my inner Parisienne, and having a go!)
£32 each – buy here (a trio is £77.76, which is a bit of a saving)
Airports are great places for having a mooch around make-up counters, in my experience – which is just what I did in Dublin, the other day, stumbling across this clever thing. As someone who is missing actual brow hairs, in a few places, this is genius. It’s a super fine-lined brow pen with which to draw in those missing hairs, almost one by one. And boy, does it make a difference! Poco is an Irish brand, founded by entrepreneur Pippa O’Connor Ormond. We’ve linked to buy it from Brown Thomas, Dublin’s super-spiffy department store, but as it’s EU, there may be extra duty to pay. Maybe an excuse for a visit to Ireland, with a detour via the Duty Free on your way home…? I certainly can’t wait to go back, and dip and dab my way through some more of this range.
£16.40 – buy here
