In her latest bid to find beautiful brands that work, beauty creative director, Michaela Day, treats herself to a designer beauty item - but is it worth the price? We asked her to pen her thoughts on double C designer beauty..."I’m on a trip in southern India, sitting on my colonial veranda in Kerala soaking up the dawn. The sun is flooding silver-pink across the heavens, a stunning backdrop to this watery paradise. I have a cup of hot chai beside me, a finished book at my feet and a cold, dead camera battery in my hand.
Obviously, there’s no wi-fi. Everyone else is sleeping through those very vivid curried dreams that a diet so much more spicy than normal can contrive.
So, what’s a girl to do with an unusual piece of me-time like this? Her nails.
Cue, excited opening of Chanel Gentle Nail Colour Remover - my duty-free gift to myself at Heathrow. I needed nail polish remover, and in that supermarket-run rush to shop before boarding, I fell for the cute travel size bottle and the milky pink absinthe-style contents - I’m more than a little obsessed with how many bottles I can fit into one of those horrid plastic bags they torment you with in airport security.
When I flew to The Dordogne in the summer the Stansted Sadists made me throw away, yes throw away, half my beauty bits because they claimed my plastic bag was over generous.
‘It’s a zip-lock normal Sainsbury’s…’
‘It’s too big.’
‘But, I need it all…’
Fellow travellers in the security line beside me jumped and muttered comments like, ‘Must be a stow-away parrot in her handbag,’ so loudly did I squawk when they actioned their vile intention to chuck my beauty essentials away. My protest was in vain. So was the tug-of-war game I shared with the lady guard, who predictably won.
I bit my lip and bade farewell to my friends.
With this livid scene in mind I justified the price of the Chanel Dissolvant Doux by the importance of having a dinky screw top glass bottle for travel: no more melted plastic ones. Hurrah: I shall achieve a capsule plastic bag.
The Terminal 3 Chanel sales girl promised ‘one stroke and I promise… all trace of nail enamel disappears at a stroke. Whoosh, the colour’s gone. It’s amazing.’ Apparently, it contains a special blend of water and acetone, which removes nail enamel effectively, gently and fast.
She backed this with a hand demonstration that would have impressed my hero, David Eyebrows-Copperfield, convincing me to shell out £10 without hesitation. (Well, with only a small stab of guilt, not in any way on a par with the pain that accompanied my Chanel handbag purchase a while back. Did I mention that I’m such a sucker for all things Chanel I even named my cat Coco? But she doesn’t wear pearls. Just pink diamanté…)
Bottle.
Pink.
Double C.
Amex.
I’m there.
Back to a Kerala backwater, and a huge disappointment.
The cotton wool sticks to my nails. The clear polish, not even colour, stubbornly remains in place. I persist, rubbing a fifth of the contents of my pretty pink present onto my nails. But sheen from the old polish remains to mock my gullibility.
I am sad.
But hey - I do have the bottle, with its two cute C’s on the lid, which I can refill with my trusty old Cutex when I get home!
No thanks, Mr Lagerfeld… I'll stick with High Street this time, it’s ten times better.
Cutex. 100 mls. £2.20. (Everywhere. And awesome.)
Chanel. 50 mls. £10. (£13 in Selfridges)"
Michaela Day is a freelance creative director and author of The Beauty Game, her debut novel, which takes the lid off the beauty game and exposes the ugly truth behind the glossy advertising campaigns. Available on Amazon in paperback and eBook from October 17th or via www.beautyholic.co.uk.
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