4th Floor Salon limited-edition shampoos

I'm late on the uptake with this and I've left the draft languishing in my drafts for weeks. But it's a cool project and I like Wallpaper's treatment of the intersection between design and beauty with interviews by the four designers (geddit... there's a theme around the number 4). 4th Floor is probably classified as so cool it hurts (although I just find it cool) and is located in an industrial building in Clerkenwell. This project is a collection of limited-edition sleeves designed for their 4 shampoo flavours (Green Tea and Mandarin, Mint and Lime, Fig and Neroli, Rosemary and Eucalyptus) for the salon's 20th birthday. The designers are: Tom Dixon (furniture and lighting Designer), John Pawson (Architect), Sophie Smallhorn (Sculpture) and Brad Lochore (Artist). If you haven't visited the space, it would be worth doing so, even if just for the view. It's all windows and white space above the skyline, quite a change from street-level salons.

Tatty Devine, pretty personal accoutrement

Have we told you how much we love Tatty Devine yet? If not... we do. Alot. Their new batch of jewellery is fantastic. Magpies and Cockatiels and rose puzzle pieces and all sorts that we know our friend at Wee Birdy's going to love. It's a sort of updated take on old-fashioned floral broaches and a bit of a new take on dandy cufflinks.

The yellow rose ones might be hard to pull off in the board room but, hell, if you're man enough, you can pull off anything. And there are loads of us no longer in, ahem, the office with all this economic fallout going on. And it's not as if I don't regularly see men pairing pink and purple ties and shirts (NB: NOT in America, home of the pleat-front chino and blue button down the, now disgraced, banker uniform).

They even do muy cool collaborations with the likes of Gilbert and George and Rob Ryan. See more pretty pieces below:

Red rose puzzle piece studs

Yellow rose puzzle piece cufflinks

Yellow rose puzzle piece broach

1/3 off new brand Good Works by This Works

Kathy Phillips, creator of This Works, launched a new range in association with Boots today. It's called Good Works and apparently supports a charitable cause, which is surprising since the range looks so... well-designed and interesting. Even the (RED) charitable campaign doesn't always look this good. It's a shame but charitable products aren't usually this nice. They should be, but there not. It just seems to be the way it is.

Phillips seems to be changing that, and it's probably because she openly acknowledges that all companies involved are actually reducing their individual margins for this project. So, instead of scrimping on the quality to maintain their margins they decided that creating a good product for a worthy cause was more important, and they ate those margins. Thank god. Wall Street could learn something here, so pay attention all you laid off Lehman's lemmings.

What's the worthy cause? It's Kids Company, set up by Camila Batmanghelidjh in aid of vulnerable children and they need to raise £4.5 million to cover the cost of services to 11,600 children in their care.

That's where Good Works comes in. For every Good Works Good Karma Shower Gel sold, £2.00 of the £8.00 retail price will go directly to Kids Company. There are 18 products in the range so we hope more sales from remaining items will go to a cause too.

Nevertheless, to give 25% of sales, even on one product, to a cause is quite something and, let's be honest, they're giving a little something to general people as well by making This Works-quality products available to the regular Boots consumer.

Smart beauty with a heart. It all sounds good to me and the minute I'm back in town I plan I trialling the lot.

Good Works launched in Sedley Place Boots this afternoon with Kathy Phillips in-store. Get 1/3 off the range in the Sedley Place shop today, Thurs, Fri and Sat this week.