Your New Beauty Secret Weapon: Baby Products

Photo: Corbis

By Jesse Breeden

It looks like the first month of 2014 will be ending the same way it began, cold as hell. With Polar Vortex 2.0 (or Arctic Blast, if you will) scheduled to bring on the big chill again, the weather won’t let us forget that the long winter is coming.

These brutal elements have left me with chapped skin and dry hair that make me wonder if I should stop using all my products immediately and start over-like from the beginning-newborn-style. So I’m halting the use of my super-adult products with their adult issues, and starting to treat myself like the little miracle that I am, pampering myself with products meant for babies.

Hair

Arid, chilly air guzzles the moisture right out of my hair (as will the routine bleaching sessions I put my strands through). Enter my new liberator, California Baby Hair De-Tangler Spray. This French lavender-scented spritzer allows me to style my hair with ease, is tear-free (I sprayed myself in the eye last week with Tom Ford’s Neroli Portofino so this is essential for me), and, most importantly, contains tons of moisturizing essential oils.

After a quick spray of the aforementioned, followed by a blow dry, there are usually some choice sections in need of a little oil management. For that, turn to Johnson and Johnson’s Baby Powder, which works like a dry shampoo, and with scent options like Lavender & Chamomile, won’t leave you smelling like a baby’s bottom.

Why stop at robbing the cradle when you can cop a baby’s look? Baby hairs are having their fashion moment: There’s Anais Pouliot in Flaunt, Anastasia Rottie in Glamour França, and the hair at Alexander Lewis’ pre-fall 2014 collection to name a few. So grab a toothbrush and some L’Oreal Elnett and brush em’ down.

Face

A winter filled with lukewarm showers and sporadic exfoliation leaves me jonesing for summer months of haphazardly scrubbing and slapping on any serum, exfoliant, or cream I choose. But now is not the time for that. During these trying times, we need to ‘baby’ our faces. The delicious cream that has all but transformed my skin? Weleda’s Calendula Face Cream. This stuff is a miracle for chilling out redness and irritation stemming from issues like rosacea, product irritation, and even windburn. Its rich (and 96% organic!) texture locks in moisture all day, every day.

Body

Living in a miniscule NYC apartment with limited bathroom space, I freak for a multi-use product.Dr. Bronner’s Baby Mild Soap is the “Swiss Army Knife” of cleansers. You can literally use it foreverything. I use it to rinse my body, to clean cosmetic brushes (and as a sneaky shampoo switch-out for boyfriend). If you are reading this, stop using my Oribe!)

Other hydrating tricks: keep the bathroom door shut when moisturizing, apply lotion to damp, never dry, skin, and make sure to lube up in the first three minutes after getting out of the shower.Mustela Hydra Bébé Body Lotion is my one-and-only-true-love of body moisturizers at the moment. Before even gushing about the product itself, I have to tell you how amazing it smells. I want it everywhere (more on that later). Mustela describes it as “gentle and delicate.This subtle fragrance ensures that everything you do to take care of your baby turns into a moment of sensory awakening and pleasure.” Okay. For an extra dose of moisture, I soak in the tub with Burt’s Bees Baby Nourishing Oil before applying Mustela. My skin feels silky as a basset hound’s ear, and the delicate apricot scent perfectly complements the Mustela.

Home

Speaking of wanting the Mustela Scent everywhere. Musti Eau de Soin Spray is a gentle, hypoallergenic, alcohol-free fragrance that can be used as a perfume or linen spray. A few spritzes of this Paraben, phthalate, and phenoxyethanol-free frangrance on my bedding has me drifting off in no time-without exasperating my delicate skin. Babying myself indeed.