Looking for the perfect Valentine’s gift for someone special? Then how about this  Kiehl’s Valentine Tin, featuring a trio of the cult skincare company’s legendary lip balm? You never know, you may even get a kiss out of it. The set’s exclusive to Selfridges, priced £28.50.

Fan of Jean Paul Gaultier’s iconic Le Male fragrance? Collect the bottles? Then here’s a glimpse of this year’s summer variant, with its jungle theme torso. As usual the fragrance itself has been tweaked for summer by making it a little lighter, fresher and generally more sparkly. Cute innit?

Le Male Stimulating Summer Fragrance will be available from 2nd April priced £38.50 for 100 eau de toilette.

I’ve long been a fan of alum – the old (and I mean old) treatment for razor cuts and nicks – for several years now. Used since Egyptian times, it’s an absolutely brilliant astringent, aftershave product and a natural styptic, stopping bloodflow and closing wounds almost instantly.

The traditional alum blocks are excellent but these novel, disposable ‘matchstick’ versions from The Legends London are a little more practical and hygienic and are ideal for travel too. You simply moisten the tip of one with a little water and apply to any nicks, cuts or razor burn.

If you’re one of those clumsy shavers who always leaves the house covered in bits of loo paper these are a must so give them a try.

Five books cost £5 with each book containing 20 matches. Available from thelegendsbarbershop.com

Billed as a fragrance for the modern gladiator (for which read contemporary narcissist) Dolce & Gabbana’s The One Sport, launching in the UK today, is described as being ‘fresh and clean with a musky base’ – very much how campaign model Adam Senn smells I suspect. Clearly someone at Dolce & Gabbana’s ad agency was a huge fan of Spartacus: Blood and Sand since the marketing is all about the gladiatorial spirit and is shot in an acient roman amphitheatre. Just look at the video below though. I mean, I know the ancient games were the ultimate contact sport but who’d have thought that the contact in question would be so predominantly with oneself?

So it was with some trepidation that I put a match to Timothy Han’s Lemongrass, Marjoram and Lavender candle today. Hancrafted, using soy wax and aromatherapy grade essential oils, it’s a nicely thought-out fragrance and the colour of the glass is exquisite (practically the same as my lounge walls, which is handy!).

Although touted as the kind of candle to help you unwind at the end of the day it strikes me as being quite a stimulating scent, one brilliant at keeping a lounge, office or bathroom fresh, rather than for setting the mood in the bedroom.

If you’re a man nervous of florals, it’ll be perfect for you and Timothy’s range includes a few other cancels I can see appealing to men, including Wild Tobacco & Jasmine and Oakmoss & Vetiver, which sounds amazing. Best of all, even though the one currently alight in my living room has lemongrass, it didn’t bring back one single awful memory. It may even have helped me tackle my fear.

Available from www.timothyhan.com priced £38.

In the last few years the Holy Grail in terms of men’s fragrance has been to come up with something as successful as Paco Rabanne’s surprise hit 1 Million. I say surprise because, in reality, the fragrance itself is a bit ‘meh’ – its natural home being a Wolverhampton nightclub on a rainy Saturday night. But the bling bling bottle is genius which kind of makes it the ‘all-fur-coat-and-no-knickers’ of the fragrance world. Or ‘all-leather-jeans-and-no-Y-fronts’ if you prefer. But still it sells – by the bucket load.

In a crowded, increasingly competitive, market bottle design really matters (witness Marc Jacobs’ novel Bang flacon) so it’s no surprise that a stand-out bottle was top of mind when creating Viktor & Rolf’s new fragrance for men, Spicebomb.

Designed to resemble a hand grenade (it even has its own pin) it’s certainly eye-catching, though I’d have liked to have seen it a little heavier myself, since a weighty bottle always says quality to me.

And, so, what about the fragrance itself? Well, it’s quite different to the design duo’s first men’s fragrance, Antidote. The brief here was clearly to create something sexy, wearable and very ‘now’ and in this respect it succeeds admirably.

Spicebomb hits you like…well, a bomb really, with one big olfactory wallop. There’s chilli, saffron and pink pepper along with fresh bergamot and grapefruit notes and leather, tobacco and vetiver ones. It’s a more conventional blend than the press bumpf would have you believe and to me it has a headiness akin to fragrances like Mugler’s A*Men and a faint gourmand quality (the cinnamon maybe?).

It doesn’t feel quite as sophisticated, daring or as complex as Antidote, nor as quirky, but because of this it should be able to reach way beyond the former’s narrow customer base. Who knows? It may even go off like a….No, I’ll resist that one.

Viktor & Rolf’s Spicebomb is available exclusively from Harrods now and nationwide from 7th March priced £45 for 50ml eau de toilette.

As someone who sported his own quiff many years ago (yes, there was a time when I had hair) I’m insanely jealous of the height David Beckham’s achieved with his in these pics taken by Doug Inglish for the new issue of Men’s Health. In my book, the quiff (the ultimate salon-produced penis substitute) is still the greatest male hairstyle ever and this one, styled beautifully by Ken Paves, is sublime. There’s much to envy about Beckham – the wealth, the body, the cultural influence –  but it’s his hair (that ever-so-versatile hair) that impresses me the most. Beautiful game? Beautiful mane more like.

]]> http://groomingguru.co.uk/2012/01/25/david-beckham-gives-good-hair/feed/ 8 groomingguru becks mh beckhamjpg http://groomingguru.co.uk/2012/01/24/day-one-of-my-slendertone-challenge/ http://groomingguru.co.uk/2012/01/24/day-one-of-my-slendertone-challenge/#comments Tue, 24 Jan 2012 16:15:38 +0000 groomingguru http://groomingguru.co.uk/?p=5498 Continue reading »

When I was contacted by the people at Slendertone and asked whether I’d like to take part in their 30-Day Slendertone Challenge it never occurred to me that I’d probably have to post a pic of my burgeoning gut in order to show whether it actually works.

Frankly, it’s not what you’d call my most appealing feature. Post-Christmas, I have a belly button that’s not quite what you’d call taught. Actually, it’s so deep it’s more or less a bodily Bermuda Triangle which may, I suspect, hold the answer to where that Oyster card vanished to several weeks ago. I have included it here in glorious black and white, because everything looks better in black and white right?

But anyway,  I’m nothing if not a good sport and I accepted the challenge partly because I started 2012 with a desire to get in shape, lose a little weight (I have no intention of being a client of Rigby & Peller so the moobs have got to go too) and to be a little less sedentary. Using the Premium Slendertone Abs belt is just one part of the jigsaw puzzle, helping out when deadlines get in the way and I don’t get time to do the  exercise I’d like.

Over the next four weeks I’ll be updating you on how I get on with it (i know, lucky you). The new belt itself  has been designed to give the best possible workout and a twenty minute session is meant to be the equivalent of 120 sit-ups – probably as many as I’ve done, ever. As somebody who generally abhors gym culture but who still wants to be in decent shape this is quiet a  promise.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not not expecting Men’s Health cover-model abs but well, let’s see what happens. The instruction booklet has been read, the gel pads are attached, the battery is charged. May toning commence…

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Back in mid-December during a visit to Bath I popped into Boots to see if they could repair my reading glasses (the screw had popped out in the street) and they very kindly popped another one in free of charge. Alas (and I say this with hindsight) whilst I was there I stumbled upon a pair of frames I really loved.

I’d actually spent the best part of four months trying to find new ones, going from designer pair to designer pair and finding nothing I really liked. To my astonishment the ones I loved (a translucent pale grey pair) were a mere £79. For two pairs! With lenses! An absolute bargain, even with the additional cost of reflective, scratchproof lenses. I couldn’t believe my luck. As a person I’m not remotely snobby about such things – if I like something then I don’t care whether it comes from Prada or Poundland – so I was thrilled.

So when I returned to London I popped into Boots, found the frames, handed over my prescription and duly waited my five days for them to be ready for collection. Oh they were ready alright. Ready and dark brown. Since I was desperate for new specs (my old ones were falling apart at this point) you can imagine my disappointment.

And so after kicking up a fuss (and being told the code on the display specs was the same as the ones that arrived and that it must be a supplier problem or “perhaps the ones I wanted were discontinued”) I was told they’d sort it. Five days later my new specs were ready collection. “Sorry about the mix up – your glasses are back and they’re grey!” said the man at the store gleefully.

Today I picked them up. The good news: he was correct, they are grey. The bad news: they’re a grey about three shades darker the ones I actually chose. When I pointed this out (by grabbing the display ones off the shelf) I was given that old get out clause  ’colours may vary’. Given the fact that grey initially came back as brown I should, perhaps, have expected this from the beginning.

It’s a shame nobody actually pointed this out at the time of purchase, however, because if they had I certainly would have had second thoughts. I mean, if you order a pillarbox red Mini and when you pick it up it’s vermillion you’d be pissed off right? Subtleties do matter. They matter even more when the item in question is something you plonk on your face every day.

So, did I kick up a fuss again? Well, no, partly because I desperately need the glasses  and party because I honestly haven’t got the time or energy to keep on going back until they provide me with the frames I saw on the display rack.

You might be thinking “well, what do you expect from such cheap frames?” but I don’t buy that for a minute. Whether something is £79 or £279 a customer has the right to get exactly what they paid for, not some variation thereof. Some of my followers on Twitter (bless them) have had to live this sorry saga in real time and I’ve lost count of how many times people have written “should have gone to….” And do you know what? I think they’re probably right.

One of the problems with them, though, is that it’s so easy to overload the applicator brush which can lead to a too-strong effect, patchiness and a shirt dusted in powder. Make-up artist Daniel Sandler has very cleverly tackled this problem, however, with this brand new bronzer brush.

Taking its cues from the silver tipped badger shaving brushes most men are familiar with his ultrafine, supersoft High Speed Bronzer Brush is supersized, made from a mixture of goat and synthetic fibres and features more sparse hairs than regular brushes making it almost impossible to overload. Having given it a go myself I can vouch for its effectiveness and its large surface area means you can get the job done in a matter of seconds.

If you’ve never used a brush (or a bronzer) before don’t worry, I asked Daniel for a few expert tips: ”For the best results, gently sweep the tip of the brush hairs over your bronzer powder to pick up colour, tap off any excess then gently sweep over face making sure you apply beyond the jaw line so your tan looks natural,” he says.

“To get the best out of the brush itself, always apply without pressing the brush tip too hard on skin and use quick light, circular motions for a speedy, even-finish.” If you’re applying over moisturiser he recommends waiting for it to be fully absorbed before using  the bronzer – that way you’ll avoid streaks. Easy, no?

You can use the brush in conjunction with your own bronzer (I’ve just tried it out with the Jean Paul Gautlier one I regularly use) or why not try it with Daniel’s Mineral Bronzer Powder? Go on! Don’t be a scaredy-cat – give it a whirl!

Daniel Sandler’s High Speed Bronzer Brush is available from 1st Feb and costs £26. For stockists, or to buy online go to www.danielsandler.com.