BEAUTY OP-ED | An Ode to the Bath

IS THERE anything more relaxing than slipping below the still surface of a hot bath on a winter day… when clouds — too lazy to even shift in the sky — hang low and gray, bringing on night before your day seems to even begin? Coming in from your evening commute, you peel off your outer layers like a woolly onion, your cheeks, cold and firm, feel ruddy with the sudden warmth of the indoors. You’re barely through the door before walking to the bathroom, flicking on the lights and turning the metal knobs of the bath and stopping the drain. Somehow you’re schedule is wide open tonight — no drinks, no dinners, no work and nothing on the tellie.

The water drums against the tub floor as you puncture the steady stream with up-turned fingers to test the temperature. It’s a few degrees too hot. It’s perfect. When you step in, big toe first, steam curling up from the surface, sweat droplets form instantly on your upper lip. Incrementally you lower in, supported by your hands grasping the lip of the tub. First the feet. Take them out and re-submerge them. Then the calves and the backs of your legs as you gently sit down. The water envelopes your body right up to your belly button and you sit back letting it swallow you whole.

Salts added under the running tap massage your muscles into submission. The fragrant slick of oil on the surface eases your mind with each inhale....

Read the rest at Looking Good No Matter What.

I want a boudoir

How fantastic would it be to have a lit dressing table? Put some ceremony back into the primping process instead of all this slap it on nonsense. A mate of mine has one and it is just brilliant. You can actually see what you're doing without straining over the bathroom sink to edge yourself nearer to the bathroom mirror or dangerously applying liner with one hand whilst holding a compact mirror towards the light in your bedroom window.

The Independent did a tidy little list of some very cool dressing tables. Whilst I don't care for a few, there are some into which I would love to pile the contents of my makeup bag.

Best bathroom

This might seem like an odd entry. But really, let's think about how often we've had to relieve ourselves in manky and urine-scented stalls, hovering over a dubious-looking seat whilst trying to simultaneously keep your trousers from hitting the floor and stretching towards the just-out-of-reach loo roll (which happens to need to coaxing out of the dispenser). Nothing beautiful about that except maybe your superhuman balance.

I was bursting for the loo as I left a meeting with the amazingly cool Lafco New York and scampered into McNally & Robinson Bookstore (which has free Wifi, a blessing in a city that's overrun with Starbuck's and their $10-a-day Wifi). I wandered down the stairs of the cafe/bookstore past a little table scattered with both Luxe and Wallpaper guides (great for browsing whilst queuing for das loo) and eventually through a door behind the stairs. When I found the switch and flicked it, I suddenly seemed to be in a forest rather than a neglected loo. The walls are wallpapered, floor-to-ceiling, in the great outdoors, nice birdsong is piped in through speakers, the few surfaces are immaculate and the sink and counter countrified (basins and granite not formica). It was cool and so strangely relaxing to use their loo (and actually come out the other end of a bathroom experience without worrying that I might have contracted something from accidentally touching anything).

If you ever find yourself at the corner of Mulberry St. and Prince St. and in desperate need of a loo, you'll be happy to know there's one just a step away where you don't need to use your foot to flush the toilet.