Blog

The head esthetician at Cowshed Chicago keeps her team on the cutting edge of beauty trends.

Monday

'Under-27 members go half price on Monday, so it's busy. I show up early to check supplies and then pull a double shift; 10 straight hours in the spa doing facials and waxing. It's a fun time to catch up with clients and hear about their latest work drama, or how the big proposal went down, while we cleanse. I love how they trust me with their skin and as a friend.'

Tuesday

'We also get a lot of regulars on Tuesday, when there's a member discount. I feel a bond with many of them. One lady I've been seeing since we opened five years ago was depressed because she and her husband couldn't conceive. But last year it finally happened. I remember her walking in, crying with happiness. Clients can be vulnerable with me in the spa. It's intimate.'

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Here are three DIY beauty hacks that you can do at home, tried and tested by Cowshed’s treatment trainer Jessica Sproson.

‘When I make ground coffee in a cafetiere, I save my granules rather than throwing them down the sink and I scrub my body with them. Either mix them with a little bit of olive oil, or to make it more abrasive mix with dead sea salt. I leave it on my skin – it’s really good for the digestive system and I use it on my face too – it’s really detoxifying and brightens everything up. I do that about once a week – usually at the weekend when I’ve made a coffee at home. Afterwards everything smells lovely and coffee-like – it’s very ‘wakening’!

I do facial massage every night – I use Wonder Balm as my massage medium but you could use any of our facial oils. Normally I just get into bed, I’ve washed my face already and all my make-up’s gone, then I warm it up in my hands and I press it into my skin first - forehead, chin and cheeks – and then I do draining motions along my jaw and lifting along my cheeks on the diagonal, quite firmly – as if you’re pulling towards you ears because that’s the way the muscles lie, working up onto the forehead. Then to finish I gently massage down the sides of the neck, one side followed by the other, just to help with lymphatic drainage.

When I’ve been out drinking, in the morning I wash my skin with ice. The first thing I do is I’ll get up, get an ice cube from the freezer and use it as my ‘water’ – all over my face, over my eyes, it’s melting, cooling everything down, reducing the puffiness that you get after you’ve had a drink. I’ll have taken my make-up off the night before using whatever’s to hand – maybe a micellar water – but in the morning, I’ll do another cleanse to get every last trace of make-up off. I prefer a cream cleanser to a gel after I’ve been drinking because my skin is super dehydrated.’

We asked Bathe author Suzanne Duckett to explain the transformative power of a long soak in the tub.

There are few pleasures to rival the rare, innate idleness and exquisite stillness of a soak in a bath. Baths are the ultimate equaliser and the most accessible and universal form of self-care for both men and women, with the remarkable power to instantly transform how we look and feel. For some, baths are a weekly exercise in self-indulgence and a luxurious personal ritual with twinkling candles, oils or salts poured into the water and a glass of wine to hand. For others, a daily wash while reading a crinkled book is part of their wind-down schedule before bed. For many, having a bath is the only time in the day when they can simply shut the door on the world and be on their own; it is an indulgent moment of privacy and solitude.

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Our new bespoke treatment lets you create your own tailored experience in consultation with your therapist, so you get something that's designed to address your specific needs. We asked Cowshed Carnaby's Danielle to explain a bit more about what to expect from our Bespoke Body treatment, which can be 60 or 90 minutes long depending on how much time you have.

'The baseline of the treatment is a bespoke salt scrub massage – every version includes that. You get the body brushing, the scrub and the massage. The bespoke part is the products or the areas that the client wants us to focus on. It’s a mixture of how they’re feeling and any physical areas they want to address. So, if they want something a bit more relaxing we might use the Knackered or the Lazy oils which are more calming. If they’ve got concerns with things like cellulite or water retention we’ve got the Slender Cow products that we could use. If they've got dry skin and they’re wanting something a bit more hydrating, we’ve got richer products with butters and coconut oil in the Udderly Gorgeous range.'

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From reporting on the latest advances in skincare technology and vampire facials to writing about the emotional associations of perfume, Anita Bhagwandas knows a thing or two about beauty. Never afraid to think outside the make-up box, the award-winning journalist shared what she's learned about trusting your instincts when it comes to finding a style that truly expresses who you are.

From the moment we’re born, so much our ourselves belongs to other people. Our carers pick the clothes we wear until we’re old enough to pick them ourselves. Our bookshelves contain the tomes lauded in verbose newspaper reviews we’re told are epic and so often our careers are chosen from a mixture of parental, societal and economic choices we make.

Our beauty choices follow the same path – scarily pre-conditioned and seemingly impossible to make totally autonomously. Our earliest forays into make-up came from copying our friends huddled around one illicit Heatherberry lipstick stolen from Boots (sorry mum) or what we gleaned from teen magazines as a barometer of cool. And yet – if you think about it, I mean really think about it - we’re still following that same approach.

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In our spas, we offer touch therapy and great food and drink in a warm, welcoming environment but we know that our customers’ emotional and general wellbeing need to be addressed too, so we're now offering supplements to sit alongside our feel-good treatments. The capsule collection (forgive the pun) of food-grown supplements is by Wild Nutrition, founded by nutritionist Henrietta Norton and her husband Charles.

Henrietta developed the range of food-grown supplements after noticing that some of her clients were unable to process synthetic nutrients effectively, or even had adverse reactions to them. In the course of her research she discovered that this is due to ‘methylation’ – genetic variations which means the body struggles to proces synthetic forms of supplements such as vitamin B5. She realised as a nutritional therapist that she only wanted to work with natural, food-grown nutrients.

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Whether on your bathroom shelf or in your handbag, our new multi-tasking Wonder Balm has you covered. There are many ways to use it, but one of our favourites is as a hot cloth cleanser - a quick and simple ritual that will leave you with velvety-soft skin. Here’s how to do it:

1. Massage a pea-sized amount of Wonder Balm into dry skin, working the balm into facial muscles.

2. Dampen a muslin cloth in warm water, wring it out and hold over your face, pressing to open the pores and help the balm penetrate the skin.

3. Wipe off any residue, taking care to use gentle upward motions so as not to pull the skin.

4. Rinse your face with water and splash with cold water to close pores.

Julia Rebaudo of lifestyle blog Stylonylon is also a fan. Here's what she thinks:

‘I absolutely adore the new Wonder Balm. A multipurpose balm is especially brilliant for travelling and I've been working it hard these last couple of weeks in Portugal, multi-tasking as a last-thing-at-night lip balm, on my ever-dry heels and as an extra barrier of protection for my clavicle bones where my skin is thin and delicate; plus it's perfect for small cuts and grazes pre-plaster with Gus and every few days I've been applying as a night facemask to rehydrate my skin after a day in the sun. I've even been using it to remove my mascara!’ Julia Rebaudo, @stylonylon

Allow us to introduce Kahai Wonder Balm, our new botanical multitasker in a clever balm-to-oil blend that works to heal, nourish and protect from head to toe. It's packed with Kahai oil, Avocado butter and Daikon oil and also smells delicious thanks to a heady blend of Jasmine and Rose essential oils.

The hero ingredient is cold-pressed Kahai oil which is rich in Vitamins E and F and Retinol and packs some serious anti-ageing and skin-softening punch. We asked Cowshed's product formulator Oliya to explain just what makes Kahai oil - and Wonder Balm - so wonderful...

'Our new Wonder Balm nourishes, softens and repairs skin and hair. We tried it out on the team when it was being formulated and many found it improved their dermatitis and are now massive fans! You could also use it to treat eczema, psoriasis, acne, stretch marks and burn marks. Kahai oil is a relatively new ingredient that hasn’t been used commonly before. I call it the new supernut! It's has fantastic anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant and anti-fungal properties too.

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We asked Cowshed's product formulator Oliya to tell us a bit about the newest addition to our Indulge mood - a bath & body oil - and a little bit more about its hero ingredient, Borage seed oil.

‘Indulge is one of our most popular fragrance moods – it’s a beautiful, floriental, spicy fragrance. A lot of women were asking for a complimentary oil to bathe in, to use on their skin and for massages – basically to complete their ritual. There was a real demand, so we met it! This particular oil has such a heady, romantic, intensely feminine and sensual fragrance… we wanted to try to bring back that sense of taking time for yourself - think Cleopatra, or the golden age of Hollywood, just making bathing into a ritual again.

Of all our senses, smell is the strongest and that’s why this oil is so powerful. It is a 100% natural, bespoke blend of floral oils that interact with the parfum - which comes from Rose Absolute, Mandarin Oil and Palmarosa Oil - to create a unique composition. It warms on the skin, gradually releasing the different layers of scent – you might pick up on the spicy heat of clove oil, while sweet almond will intensely moisturise without leaving the skin feeling greasy.'

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Sam Reynolds runs an online resource for those adjusting to life after cancer at www.samspaces.co.uk and runs the monthly support group Safespaces. We asked her to put our new Jennifer Young spa treatment for people living with and beyond cancer to the test. Here's what she thought:

'Self-care becomes quite the priority after a cancer diagnosis, but when it comes to spa treatments we can feel more stressed out than blissed out.

For patients and survivors, simply completing the questionnaire pretreatment can bring on a panic attack, let alone the thought of having to strip down to our M&S t-shirt bras and undies! When it comes to ticking boxes and adding further details to having had any of the ‘medical conditions listed below’, there is a sharp intake of breath and in my case about three sides of A4 paper!

For anyone affected by cancer, the word ‘treatment’ itself can often be associated with all things chemo and radio and any patient will tell you that the idea of massage and facials can feel like a form of psychological torture after surgery. After two of my three breast cancer diagnosis, I was refused a facial because I was still taking the maintenance drug tamoxifen. What a treat indeed! And once again, the complexities of life after cancer are never ending.

However, the idea of a few hours to myself in London to sample a new spa treatment, specifically designed for those affected with or post cancer, after eight weeks of school holidays, made me feel slightly light headed. After three uninterrupted chapters of my book, a coffee so hot there was actually steam coming off it, a little sniff around my favourite shops and a salute to the mother ship that is Liberty’s, I arrived in Carnaby Street and skipped into the most stylish shed ever (and not a cow pat in sight!)'

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