Honey Love

Legend has it that Cleopatra, long considered to be one of the world’s most beautiful women bathed in milk and honey. She was way ahead of her time using the lactic acid in milk to keep her skin soft and beautiful as well as radiant, many other queens followed suit. Milk softens the dead skin allowing heathier more supple skin to emerge. Honey is nature natural serum, it’s naturally antioxidant and anti-microbial. It is also a natural humectant which makes it perfect for dry skin. Raw honey was praised in Egyptian times for its healing properties too. From a fragrance perspective honey is noted for its soft and balsamic sweet accords and it is used frequently to enhance floral notes. Its soothing and comforting and widely used in fragrance, both gourmand and floral. Examples of this would-be Thierry Muglers iconic scent Angel or Elizabeth Arden Red Door, both lauded for their sweet fragrances. Milk and Honey are like chips and curry a perfect combination. Together they make skin look and feel supple. They are the perfect partners for many skincare brands and even individually work well. The skin is the largest organ of your body so it is worth treating it right. Kiehls Pure Vitality skin cream, Debenhams €56, uses manuka honey from New Zealand increases the skins barrier to give a more healthy and radiant complexion. The gel cream texture won’t leave your sin oily an it is light enough to use under make up. The ginseng offers a little pick me up for the skin too and I found a little went a long way. I picked up a sample of 7ml at the counter and it lasted a week, used morning and evening. Milkshake a brand I love have in their range a milk and honey leave in conditioner that helps to strengthen the hair as well as detangle it prior to styling. It contains milk proteins which help to fortify the hair and conditioning agents to help make it silky and shiny. It retails at €15 from the Salon Shop, there are a whole range of products to compliment it including styling ones.

The Body shop launched a range for sensitive skin recently called Almond Milk and Honey. It comes in a bath milk, soap, hand cream body butter, shower cream and scrub. The body butter from The Body Shop has always been a favourite of mine for numerous reasons, it melts into the skin and will last all day. It keeps your skin from drying out especially of you love self- tan. It is delicately fragranced so as not to irritate. The almond milk is sourced ethically from Spain and the honey is from Ethiopia. The range itself is hydrating and won’t strip your skin or inhibit the delicate moisture barrier. The shower cream is soap free and so helps to maintain the PH. Anyone that likes light non-fruity fragranced products will love this. I tried the shower cream and body butter and honestly felt it was money well spent. My skin can be dry and sensitive so I feel this range is great for me. It starts at €8.95 and is available at Oliver Plunkett Street now. Pharmacy brand Moo Goo have built a whole brand around milk, and it’s natural healing properties for atopic skin. The Skin Milk Udder cream is a light cream that easily soaks in and was the first Moo Goo product to be launched. It also contains Aloe Vera and comes in two sizes, a tube and a pump. It is paraben free and they avoid using any nasties in their range which hails from Australia. If you fancy going a little Nigella and making a foodie facemask at home using honey, I’d suggest using a great Cork brand like Healy’s. If you are prone to Acne they try this one: 3 teaspoons and honey and a ½ teaspoon of cinnamon, mix it together and apply, leave for ten minutes and remove with tepid water. This mixture should be avoided on sensitive skin types though. Cinnamon helps to shrink pores and is quite minty feeling on the skin. For a sensitive skin try a teaspoon of mashed avocado, a teaspoon of natural yoghurt and a teaspoon of honey.