Home-made cosmetics are no longer the preserve of the hairy-legged, hippie-dippy set, says BEATRICE AIDIN
IN THE MIX
The image of home-made face cream has always been more craft fair than Vanity Fair. But all that looks set to change. Concerns about ingredients, allergies and the soaring cost of designer-label cosmetics have increased the popularity of workshops that teach the art of handmade beauty products. So can you be weaned off the beauty hall for lotions and potions you have knocked up in the kitchen? Style puts three of the more popular courses to the rest.
KNOTS ELEMENTALS BESPOKE SKINCARE WORKSHOP, TEDDINGTON
As you sit arround her kitchen table, Barbara Sargent, founder of Knots Elementals, talks you through the properties of various base and essential oils. After an hour of concentrated note-talking, I attempted mixing a few drops of neroli, lemon and jojoba, and manage to create a divine-smelling shampoo. My fellow students are less smug: "Mine smells like stuffing", complains one, who has overdone the rosemary.
Indeed, home blends are fallible, but as each dose can be mixed individually, the cost of getting it wrong is tiny. Next, we are taught how to mix body moisturisers, along with all aspects of aromatherapy, such as how to create a mood or banish a skin problem. Sargent's enthusiasm is infectious, but as I trundle home with my exfoliating scrub, hand cream and few oils - all for about £21 - I wonder if I will still be mixing my own body scrub in a fortnight. However, it takes only 20 seconds to mix, so maybe I will manage.
A few weeks later, my main dilemma, apart from which oils to use, turns out to be what to do with the half-empty bottles of shop-bought products that still
line my bathroom shelves.
Best bit: Sargent is a former operations director at Penhaligon's, so you are guaranteed good insider tips. And then there are the very cute glass mixing pots. Drawback: why are no base materials provided to create a face mask? Goodie bag: information pack, your own handmade shampoo and body moisturiser, and 10% off all base materials purchased. Cost: £50 for a four-hour course; if you can get a group together (maximum 10), Sargent will come to you. Score: 5/5.
Beatrice Aidin, THE SUNDAY TIMES [JANUARY 13, 2002]
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Medicine by numbers
KNOTS ELEMENTALS WORKSHOPS • BUILD YOUR OWN MEDICINE CABINET WITH HERBAL EXTRACTS
Imagine you had access to your own 24-hour pharmacy. A fully-stocked apothecary of potions and lotions for everything from a bad attack of shingles to a lacklustre libido.
No sell-by dates, no side-effects, no prescription pad necessary and all at your fingertips - providing you're prepared to use some elbow-grease.
The idea of natural, bespoke pharmacy is not new. Medicines have been blended into beauty preparations since time immemorial (workers at perfumeries survived the bubonic plague), but incresingly strong and steroidal drugs, added to a general climate of pharmaceutical paranoia, has been driving people n their hordes to Sargent's Hampton Hill workshops.
The four-hour courses are held informally around a large kitchen table. Sargent introduces nine herbal lants and essential oils, exploring their properties, uses, quality, dosage requirements and any possible interactions or dangers - before demonstrating how to blend them into all-natural, fragrance-free bases that are then enriched and enhanced by carrier oils.
The skin, explains a pestle-wielding Sargent, is our outer lung - perfectly primed to absorb medicines topically. Nature's great healers, like calendula for its anti-bacterical properties (great for athlete's foot), arnica for bruising and circulation (added to a bath as a chilblain teatment) and comfrey for muscular aches (could have cleared Beckham's metatarsal injury right up apparently), are all mixed up in appropriate measures to the user's exact requirements.
Sargent calls it 'cooking for the skin' and, with the dexterity of Delia, shows you how to whip nine raw ingredients into innumerable different recipes - using a single bottle of body lotion to treat nan's arthritis, your hangover, the twins' flu and little Johny's nappy-rash all at the same time.
The Medicine Cabinet workshop is the natural successor to Sargent's hugely successful Knots beauty line (beloved by Cat Deeley and Emma Bunton) - and its arrival couldn't be more timely. Chemical-addled clients are increasingly taking responsibility for their own treatment and preventative health. Interest in tailor-made, never been greater, so why not tailor our medicines for a snug, skin-tight fit?
