While the world comes to terms with the pandemic of the Corona Virus, we must keep safe and work together to prevent further spreading. Social media has been plagued with hand washing memes, and whilst it is good to bring the humour from an otherwise frightening epidemic, it is crucial for us to follow hand washing and other hygiene advice. NHS Medical Doctor, Dr Ejikeme has found that many of her patients have dry, itchy hands as a result of intense washing and use of hand sanitiser. We need to moisturise our hands regularly to avoid cuts and cracked skin as this may lead to infections.

Her top tips to prevent drying hands include:

• Wash instead of sanitising: If you can, wash hands with soap and water for 15-30 seconds instead of using hand sanitiser as it has a high alcohol content which is very drying on the skin.

• Don’t over-wash: Wash when necessary (after using the toilet and visiting public spaces, and before touching your face or others). Washing hands too frequently will dry them out.

• Water first, soap second: Make sure to wet hands first before soap to reduce irritation.

• Use hand cream- After washing, apply a hand cream to prevent the skin drying out and apply throughout the day.

• Super dry hands: If your hands are already dry, itchy or sore, apply a barrier cream (Vaseline or Lanolin) covering any areas of cracked skin.

• Please see more information on Dr Ejikeme and her West London clinic, Adonia Medical Clinic here.

Wash instead of sanitising: If you can, wash hands with soap and water for 15-30 seconds instead of using hand sanitiser as it has a high alcohol content which is very drying on the skin.

Don’t over-wash: Wash when necessary (after using the toilet and visiting public spaces, and before touching your face or others). Washing hands too frequently will dry them out.

Water first, soap second: Make sure to wet hands first before soap to reduce irritation.

Use hand cream- After washing, apply a hand cream to prevent the skin drying out and apply throughout the day.

Super dry hands: If your hands are already dry, itchy or sore, apply a barrier cream (Vaseline or Lanolin) covering any areas of cracked skin.

Please see more information on Dr Ejikeme and her West London clinic, Adonia Medical Clinic here.

Our Top 5 Hand Creams:

Best for sensitive skin:

1). The Body Shop Almond milk and honey calming and protecting hand cream

This hand cream is perfect for those of us dealing with sensitive skin as the nourishing almond milk helps bring moisture to dry hands, and the honey (full of antibacterial goodness) helps heal cracks. £5 for 30ml.

Best non-greasy formula:

2). Clarins hand and nail treatment cream

This rich lotion is packed full of essential ingredients like shea butter and sesame oil which offers quick relief to dry hands without leaving greasy residue behind. £23 for 100ml.

Best value:

3). Aveeno daily moisturising hand cream

Suitable for sensitive skin and clinically proven to help hands look healthier from the first use. Enriched with oatmeal to nourish skin. £3.99 for 75ml.

Best overall:

4). Neutrogena Norwegian formula hand cream

Rich with glycerin, this cream helps bind moisture to the skin and is long-lasting even after hand washing. Gives you soft skin without breaking the bank. £3.99 for 50ml.

Best high-end brand:

5). Liz Earle Superskin hand serum

Perfect for mature or dry skin, this serum is packed full of active ingredients like rosehip oil and cranberry seed to ensure skin is left plump, smooth and soft. £23.50 for 75ml.

Words by Camila Karalyte

Graphics by Katie Janes

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The post How to Combat Dry Hands During the Current Climate appeared first on Voir Fashion.

Glamglow’s Dreamduo Overnight Transforming Treatment and Mudmasky’s Sleep Repair Renewal Nourishing Mask are both great overnight masks for all skin types. They focus on plumping, hydrating and nourishing the skin. The Mudmasky is a light, creamy texture and so may be even more effective for oily skin. Guerlain also have an overnight treatment suitable for all skin types. Their Midnight Secret promises to reduce puffiness and tiredness, so is perfect for troubled sleepers or night owls.

For older skin, there’s an array of overnight treatments which claim to keep wrinkles at bay. Filorga’s Sleep and Peel treatment attack fine lines and pigmentation in the skin, leaving your skin looking youthful and even in tone. Khiel’s Midnight Recovery Concentrate is also perfect for aged skin. The facial oil soothes and nourishes in the night, allowing you to wake up with more toned and radiant looking skin, with the additional benefit of a nearly completely natural ingredient base. If you want to splurge, Sarah Chapman and Estee Lauder both do luxurious overnight treatments. Chapman’s Skinesis Overnight Facial is a silky serum rich with vitamins, omega oils and antioxidants, giving instant results for dull and tired-looking skin. Estee Lauder’s Advanced Night Repair reduces the look of key signs of ageing and promises immediate hydration

For drier skin types, Clinique’s popular Moisture Surge Overnight Mask intensely hydrates whilst you sleep, so you can wake up with replenished, nourished, healthy-looking skin. The Body Shop has a more affordable alternative with their Hemp Overnight Nourishing Rescue Mask at £18. Your skin will be softer and dewier, without oiliness or residue. Hemp seed oil is known for its nourishing and skin-restoring properties which will relieve dry skin of its tight feeling. For a similar price, Glow Recipe have an overnight face mask inspired by Korean skincare. Their Avocado Melt Sleeping Mask is a creamy formula packed with avocado to nourish and manuka honey to firm. However, for those with more oily skin, Klairs Freshly Juiced Vitamin E Mask has a unique texture which clings to the skin and absorbs with speed but is still light enough to use throughout the day.

It’s important to give attention to your eyes and lips too, both of which can also be treated overnight. Laneige do a range of sleeping masks for both eyes and lips which hydrate, plump and depuff, so you wake up fresh-faced with well-rested and healthy-looking eyes and lips. Burt’s bees also do a very affordable moisturising lip mask which can be used at any time of day.

With all overnight products, you can lay back, let your skin do the work and wake up with results. It’s the ideal solution for hectic schedules: you can be running around all day, swipe on an overnight mask and leave people wondering how on earth you do it all and have flawless, radiant-looking skin at the same time!

Words by Amy Ellis

Graphics by Séverine Denis-Lessard

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The post What’s Missing From Your Overnight Skincare Routine? appeared first on Voir Fashion.

Skincare can be complicated, and it seems to get more complicated with each passing year. That’s why, now we’re reaching February, it’s really time to solidify and improve your skincare regime. Routines don’t have to become a laborious half an hour in the bathroom, morning and night, so here’s Voir’s rundown of some resolutions for your skincare cabinet.

Arguably the most important step of skincare: a good cleanser. Cleansing your skin gets rid of dirt, impurities, makeup and excess oils that gather on your face throughout the day. If you layer other products on an uncleansed face, you will be more prone to breaking out, so a washed face is a prepped face for the rest of your routine. Liz Earle’s Cleanse and Polish Hot Cloth Cleanser has raving reviews, and at £13.18, it’s not a bad place to start. Kiehl’s also has an affordable Ultra Facial Cleanser which is suitable for all skin types. For those who wish to spare no expense, Tatcha’s ‘The Deep Cleanse’ has a luxurious gel-based formula with added Japanese luffa fruit fibres, which incorporate a soft exfoliation to your routine, without needing a whole other product! These fibres actually dissolve as your cleanse, so there’s no harshness and risk of dry skin. Although exfoliating is important in order to get rid of more stubborn dirt and dead skin, it really shouldn’t be done more than once or twice a week. Too much exfoliation and your skin will become damaged, irritated and dry – not ideal, especially in winter.

Speaking of dry skin; moisturiser is a must. It keeps your face looking fresh and wrinkles at bay, but there’s a fine line between a nice glow and looking oily. That’s why products such as the Clinique Moisture Surge and Neutrogena Hydro Boost Water Gel are perfect; they’re lightweight and long-lasting. Even better? A moisturiser with SPF. In the summer, completely swapping your moisturiser with SPF is a viable option, as a sunscreen contains oils and moisturising elements, however, in the colder and harsher months, it’s best to stick with a heavier moisturiser, especially if you are prone to dry skin. The Glossier ‘Invisible Shield’ is a perfect option for sunscreen as it has a water-gel formula so it feels like a serum and has no white cast. It also plays well underneath makeup, so you don’t have to worry about a greasy residue. The Body Shop also does a range of moisturizing and enriching products at a lower price than that of Glossier. Their Vitamin C Glow Protect Lotion has SPF 30, and even their CC creams have SPF 20. Using products like these takes out two birds with one stone, whilst cutting down on expenses.

Serums, sprays, oils and daily face masks can all be incorporated once you know how your skin reacts to these basic steps. But really, it’s time to give your skin a break! Jade and rose quartz rollers? We’ve gone skincare mad! Less is definitely more, and although it’s easy to layer product after product, let’s strip it back down and give your skin a bit of TLC, by listening to it and giving it what it truly needs. This isn’t to mean we shouldn’t ever use other products and more luxurious items, but in this way we can use them to pamper ourselves – a nice face mask at the end of a hard day at work, or dousing of serum and eye cream after a night out. With a reduced list of products, you can save money and time this January.

Words by Amy Ellis

Graphics by Katie Janes

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The post Keeping it Clean: Our Skincare Resolutions appeared first on Voir Fashion.

More people are starting to worry about climate change, mostly Millennials and Gen Z’s who have started talking more about what we can do to save our planet for the generations to come.

Is your Instagram feed being filled by beauty bloggers talking about the environment and different ways you can change your beauty regime to become more eco-friendly?

More people are starting to worry about climate change, mostly Millennials and Gen Z’s who have started talking more about what we can do to save our planet for the generations to come. Since the blaze in the Amazon rainforest last week, more and more people are beginning to consider ways to become eco-friendlier in their day-to-day lives, including in their skincare and beauty regimes.

We love a product with beautiful, glossy packaging that we can show off on our dressing table, but chances are, it’s made from plastic. Sure, your limited-edition eyeshadow palette with 28 different colours looks good and probably cost you a pretty penny, but after you throw it out it will take decades to decompose, as well as the one you buy to replace it, and the one after that.

Zero Waste Week announced at the beginning of the year that over 120 billion units of packaging are produced every year by the global cosmetics industry. As well as the actual container, this includes the unnecessary boxes, wrappers and bags that they all come with!

You have probably received a Lush Cosmetics Snow Fairy set for a Secret Santa and know them for their delicious bubble bars and bath bombs. But they are also famous for their eco-friendly, black recyclable pots that they collect back from the you in exchange for a fresh face mask. They are recycled for more yummy products after being sanitised and melted into new containers – and the pots are only used if the product needs a container.

Lush have so many products that do not need any packaging like their bath bombs and massage bars. They have also formulated their own shampoo bars and solid deodorants, which sounds frightening but work just as well! Most recently the company has created “naked” products, with no wrapping or packaging at all and are zero waste. The products are so popular that Lush have even opened naked-only shops with zero packaging in Manchester, Milan and Berlin, but don’t worry, only the products need to be naked.

BYBI is a skincare brand that is 97% recyclable, most of their products live in cute little glass bottles instead of plastic. And for when glass is not an option, BYBI use bioplastic. What is bioplastic you ask? Well it is a type of plastic that is derived from sugarcane, a renewable source that has a low risk of running out, hooray! Plus, they use boxes made out of grass for shipping, because like they said “just think about how quickly grass grows compared to trees!”.BYBI, like Lush, have circular recycling so you can send back your empties to be reused.

Products that you haven’t even thought about like toothbrushes, razors and makeup remover pads can be made from bamboo that helps lower our plastic waste.

Remember that eyeshadow palette we were talking about? Well you can get refillable palettes that you can fill with eyeshadows, bronzers, blushes and highlighters instead of buying multiple plastic palettes. This way you can be more selective and choose your favourite shades and not waste that contour shade that is too warm for your skin tone and makes you look like an Oompah Loompah!

If you didn’t fall asleep in your science lessons you will know that trees absorb Carbon Dioxide in exchange for Oxygen- making it a win-win for us and our environment. But the number of trees on our planet is decreasing due to them being cut down, meaning more Carbon Dioxide is left in the atmosphere heating up the planet like an oven, resulting in more global warming.

The Body Shop builds bio-bridges that “help regenerate forests and protect them from exploitation, poaching and unsustainable harvesting.” This helps endangered animals and habitats, and helps protect the forests so the trees can continue to capture CO2, yay! The Body Shop is now on a quest to find renewable ingredients from natural origins to create sustainable products.

There are so many more brands and products in the beauty industry that is helping to make the world of cosmetics more sustainable, and 9 out of 10 times the products are high quality, affordable and will still look good on your countertop!

Words by Georgia Palmer

Graphics by Katie Janes

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The post Sustainable Beauty appeared first on Voir Fashion.

Empowering, daring, independent; just three of many evocative words that come to mind in relation to International Women’s Day – and Voir Fashion. It is an event that has been continuing for 109 years to celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women, and beauty brands have been vibrantly and emphatically backing the movement. Below we look at five of the brands that are showing their support for International Women’s Day.

The Body Shop

The Body Shop is a beauty brand that is renowned for its ethical products, but perhaps less known is the amount of work it does globally to support and empower women. From the Tungteiya Women’s Shea Butter Association in Ghana, where 500 women are given the opportunity to continue on with shea nut processing techniques from past generations, to Candela in Peru which represents Castañero Brazil nut collectors – a trade traditionally managed by women – the brand makes sure that women have the information, rights and opportunities that they deserve, not just on International Women’s Day, but all year round.

Elemis

Like The Body Shop, Elemis are at the forefront of advocating for women’s rights and education. They have been using their influence to back Women for Women International, a charity that supports female survivors of war. Over 12 months, the survivors learn vital skills such as how to manage their money which they receive through a monthly allowance from the charity. To supplement this, Elemis have got involved with a campaign called which allows women to send survivors messages through their website. They have promised that if they are tagged ‘@Elemis’ on social media and the is used the company will donate £1 to the charity (up to the value of £5000). But quick, this is only happening from 6th-8th March!

L’Occitane

Moisturise your lips in this chilly weather and support the L’Occitane Foundation programme for women’s leadership in Burkino Faso! Every penny spent on the Shea Butter Solidarity Balm (£5) is being used to help fund the education of more than 450 girls and 10,000 women in the landlocked African country and has been brought out specifically for International Women’s Day.

Elizabeth Arden

Who needs men when you’ve got red lipstick! Elizabeth Arden has returned with a limited shade for their March On Campaign designed by Reese Witherspoon, where 100% of proceeds go to UN Women. The project was designed as an homage to Elizabeth Arden giving out red lipsticks to suffragettes in 1912 to boost morale and is sure to remind women everywhere of the hardships that those women went through to secure the rights that we have today. The Elizabeth Arden Beautiful Color Lipstick – Red Door Red (Limited Edition) is on sale now for £22.00.

Reina Rebelde

This Mexican inspired female owned beauty brand is focussing their attention on a prominent, global issue that effects all women and has been prevalent in the media recently after the Harvey Weinstein accusations. The brand is donating 15% of its sales profits to the Me Too and Time’s Up campaigns until 8th March which both encourage women to speak up for their rights and empower themselves to be in control of their own bodies.

Source: Instagram

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The post International Women’s Day: Empowered and Beautiful appeared first on Voir Fashion.