Beyond lingerie: great beauty products

While lingerie might be our universe here at Knickers, we know that a killer bra set isn’t everything a woman needs in her daily arsenal – she also wants to look great in her own skin. Thankfully, Glam announced their annual beauty awards last week, which has given us a great excuse to take a wee break from our knickers and tell you about some beauty products we’re in love with.

Arsoa Queen Silver Soap

The base of any beauty regime is a good soap, and after trying Arsoa’s Queen Silver Soap, we’ve found our match. Imported from Japan, this mineral soap apparently contains mineral rocks and traces of tourmaline, but all we know is that it leaves your face squeaky-squeaky clean. If you have oily or combination skin like us, you’ve probably also found that a lot of soaps leave your face feeling slightly coated – not this stuff, it washes right away and gives your skin a pleasurably tight, firm feeling. At $40 a bar it’s not cheap, but we think it’s worth it — you can try for yourself with a free sample (they seem to have discontinued this!), or can also buy a smaller travel bar. We figure a bar will last about 3-5 months, depending on use.

Givenchy Prisme Libre Powder

Pale girls, this one’s for you: if you want to wear makeup but hate the “corpse bride” effect a regular foundation gives, Givenchy’s Prisme Libre (in light pastel) is well worth a look. The loose powder is composed of four colour blocks (green, blue, white, and pink) which blend together to create a milky, fresh complexion that subtly sparkles. The greens and blues balance out any redness in the face, and the pink adds colour. It worked beautifully for my pale features, and I love that I can just do a light brushing before I go out without having to worry about foundation. The powder (in quite a large box) is $63 at Sephora, and UK readers, we bought ours at House of Fraser for around 30 quid.

Go! Professional Makeup Brushes

After buying our Givenchy powder, we went a little mad looking for high-quality brushes — who knew that goat’s hair was the bees knees, and apparently worth $50 a brush? Luckily, we finally tracked down this 18-piece brush set from Go! Cosmetics, an absolute steal at just £25. The set is fantastic – it’s the same materials as professional brushes, and comes in a great fold-up case that we swear is leather, even if it’s just too cheap to believe. Even for U.S. readers, that’s a hefty savings when compared to other sets. As a bonus, there’s even a 9-piece travel set for just £10. Bargain!

If you’re not cool with the animal hair brushes, try Urban Decay’s lovely synthetic set for $100, or Too Faced’s synthetic hair brushes for $62

We’re back to our regularly scheduled knickers programming now, just had to get out some of our girly makeup love!