TRIED AND TESTED | Ortanic airbrush tan

I HAVE a secret to share... until April 2011, I'd never had a spray tan.

Not one.

Poor little old me, right?

For a beauty writer, though, to admit that is like a chef to admit they've never scrambled an egg. It's a somewhat (in context, people) embarrassing confession.

But there's a reason for my shying away from such activities.

How many women just looked plain orange after a spray tan? Most. Even the ones with all the money in the world to spend on the most expensive faux tans.

Even when faded down to a more natural hue, there's always a hint of Tango.

Plus, it's expensive. Um, there are plenty other things I'm happy to spend 40 quid on... per week.

And, for that wad of ten pound notes or ten dollar bills, you get a slightly neon color that last only days, making it more expensive than that gym membership you don't ever use. If you do it every week, that's a couple thousand quid down the drain.

And I've heard time and again about the horrors of the patchiness that comes with the fading process. I already have a hard enough time looking put together on a daily basis and don't need big brown patches on my legs and chest, like a bipedal Jersey cow, to make getting ready even more of a process. 

But... last month I had a wedding to attend in Cancun.

This time I wasn't going to be the ghostly pale girl in a bikini, garnering looks of pity, amid a sea of caramel-coloured hard bodies. The thing is, I do tan, but I'm never in the bleeding sun long enough to do so anymore! I longingly look at pictures from my youth sometimes, where I'm a shade of brown no helicopter parent would ever let their children achieve nowadays.

In my adult life, I'd never openly cared about being pale in a bathing suit. Sure I'd feel a twinge of jealously when a gaggle of tan girls would saunter by on the beach in Hvar or some exotic friend would seem to turn an even more exotic brown from just 20 minutes in the sun. But that twinge, I figured, was just part of being a girl (and human), so I never really caved.

This trip my vanity won out and I was ready to fake a bronzed glow for the sake of suddenly needy ego.

And, to be honest, my curiosity just sort of got the best of me. Here's this thing that I am constantly hearing about, talking about, analyzing, etc. and I'd just mentally circled the idea of fake tanning like a cautious animal. I was ready to pounce.

So I researched and researched some more. Because lord knows I wasn't sitting in the sun to develop a real tan (not that there is any sun in Chicago in April or May).

Two real options cropped up -- Mystic Tan or Ortanic. Ortanic being new, offering a $10 savings for first timers and having piles of rave reviews I decided to give it a go.

Plus, it was next to Whole Foods and I needed to do a shop.

DESCRIPTION

At the moment, Ortanic is, surprisingly, only in Chicago -- not a city known for being a beauty trendsetter or hub for that matter.

It's housed in various FFC gyms and each location has it's own, secluded room with heat lamps, ventilated booths, a no-nonsense, hand-held airbrush system, full length mirror and dozens of bottles of color (to be hand mixed by your technician).

Lauren was the technician I had that day, and boy I was glad I did. Turns out she's a trained makeup artist and avid Ortanic fan, so she was a dab hand at application and able to custom mix a shade for me based on where I was going, my natural skin tone and what I wanted (to look like I'd already been in Mexico for two weeks).

I stripped bare, although some women (and men, although I bet less so with the latter) bewilderingly leave on underwear. Seriously, girls, just take it all off. Do you really want panty lines included with your faux tan? Save the modesty for somewhere else.

You stand in the both while the technician hooks up your color to the airbrush. Then, arms out, she paints each section of your body (front, back, left side, right side, face, feet, sides of hands) methodically so that you end up with super even color everywhere.

The product smells nice and I didn't feel the least bit asphyxiated during the process.

From start to finish it might have taken 10 minutes and I was able to put on my clothes and go. There is only the gentlest of a cross sell on one of their DIY tan extender products, and she was very quick to let it go when I said no thank you.

Throughout the day, the product they applied deepened in color (I had it done at noon). It is visible when they spray it on, so be forewarned that you will look a bit like Magda from Something About Mary (as one of my sister's so charitably pointed out) while it develops. Most girls, it seems, get it done in the evening and then go straight home so they can sleep in it and shower in the morning.

If you can't do that, simply suck it up and rock a deep bronze for 8 to 10 hours, after which you can wash it off, revealing a super even, very natural (and brown, not orange) tan.

While you wait out those 8 to 10 hours you do have to be careful not to sweat or get your skin wet too.

Lauren advised to avoid very hot water (so hot showers, hot tubs, etc.) and moisturize like mad to maintain a good tan as long as possible.

Even though I went diving once in the sea before the wedding, the tan stayed up, possibly thanks to my religious moisturizing, aversion to hot water and hyper-quick showers.

My airbrush tan was, by far and away, the best accessory I brought with me to Mexico.

THE GOOD

Great, natural color, quick, lasts for 5 days, fades evenly, technicians with experience, custom-mixed color, very few ingredients, didn't smell terrible...

THE MEH

Magda-esque bronze you sport for 8 to 10 hours after it's done, too pricey to have done every week, lasts for 3 to 5 days not 7 to 10, only available in Chicago... and this last one: the name implies the product is organic BUT there's no indication or outright statement saying as much. They also utilize a lot of green on the website (images of trees, leaves, etc.), which isn't super honest use of imagery if the formula isn't, indeed, 'green' or organic.

THE DETAILS

Ortanic is available at FFC Chicago locations for $47 (bulk discounts available).

HOW TO | Homemade instant bronzer

IN the oh-so-serious world of a beauty writer, there are a few things that can ruin a girl's day. Yes, yes, there're the 'real life' things (no, not the biggies like death but the daily bits) like bills, that extra few (10) pounds, the way your mobile makes your tooth filings hurt when you talk on it, the fact that you can't actually pay rent with free beauty swag (not that you haven't tried)... that can get a girl down. One of the things that really makes me sad when my head's in beautyland? When I accidentally break a lovely product I've been trialling.

Click to read more ...

EXPERT SECRETS | A fake tanning tip... or ten

RECENTLY I penned a piece on how to self-tan. Yes, yes, there's so much about it in the papers ALL THE TIME because tanning has become a four-season sport in the last 10 years. Just another bit of pulp to add to the pile, right? Sure, and not just a day or two after writing a piece about ignoring all this beach-ready nonsense. I'm sticking to my guns on that, by the way. If you already respect your body and have realistic expectations, it'll be in fine shape for a bikini.

It goes without saying that even though I emplore peeps to not go crazy and all unrealistic on the beach-body stuff, they will self-tan. And that's cool. There's nothing wrong with not wanting plucked-chicken palor while wearing teeny summer frocks.

So, because there is so much SHITE advice on how to apply self-tanner, here is my list of essential beauty tips to applying the stuff properly. Leave any of these out and you will probably have a sub-par fake glow. And nobody wants tell-tale signs that any aspect of their *cough, cough* 'natural' beauty isn't as advertised, now do they?

Do it or put down the tanner:

1. E. X. F. O. L. I. A. T. E. Like it's going out of fashion tomorrow and you have a stockpile of the stuff to get through before then. Once you're done, go back and do your feet, ankles, knees and elbows again.


2. Don't shave or wax the day of unless you want a pretty polka-dot pattern to show up on your skin when that fake tanner settles into those freshly vacated follicles.


3. Whatever you do, don't use sprays, liquids or anything other than a cream, foam or gel tanner at home, preferably with instant color to help show you where you already covered. Spray (yes, even those 'just spray a thin coat and your done!' airbrush ones) and liquid are IMPOSSIBLE (impossible!) to get right at home.


4. Use gloves. Seriously.


5. Start at your feet. Some hair-brained idiots who somehow, some way have earned the title of beauty expert will tell you to start at your thighs. Right... so when I bend over and my non-super model stomach rubs against them the entire time I'm applying the stuff to my feet, ankles and calves, what do I then? Wear my smeared stomach and thighs as a badge of non-anorexic honour? Cockamimi. Start at the bottom and work up the torso, then do the back (yes, the back is hard to do alone so work up from the hips and then down from the shoulder), followed by the chest and arms then the face and neck (although do the back of the neck when you do your back). Work your body in segments too (think colour by numbers). Don't just randomly slap it on. Hands are the last thing you do before washing your palms. Use it sparingly here.


6. Put vaseline on your toenails, cuticles and eyebrows. Any build up in cragy areas will be instantly tell-tale.


7. Mix the self-tanner with regular lotion (1:1) before applying it to ankles, knees, elbows, hands, inside arm and any other area it's easy to cock up. It's easier to build a tan gradually than have to walk around looking like a diseased satsuma.


8. Massage the stuff in like you're being paid by the hour to do it. The more thorough the application, the more even it will be.


9. Take the time the side of the box says it'll take for your tanner to dry and treble it. At least. Stay naked for as long as possible after you've applied it and avoid heavy sweating, water (salt, fresh, chlorinated, whatever) and acidic products right after.


10. Finally, time is precious while you're working so do it efficiently. The quicker you get the application done (while still doing a crack job at it), the better. It's literally a case of hurrying up to wait (naked).

And now for a few of our favourite fake tan offenders. How do we choose when there are just so, so many. Thousands... millions of them? It was a tough call but we think these three have earned the title through dogged dedication to the cause, come rain or shine, winter or summer. The seasons may change but their orange hue does not

:

Linday Lohan, you're like an orange beacon in the night. Your fake tan seems to fluctuate as frequently as your lips... patches of it here and there. Some days it's orange... other days it's... oranger. You labour on, impervious to us naysayers down below on earth. Your airbrush bronze must double as armour that keeps you safe from our prying eyes and disbelieving gasps while you toil day and night to bring us our very own range of dyslexic self-tanner so we too can fly the flag of the fake tan!

Chelsey Davy, you are an inspiration to wannabe Royals everywhere. Wear the tangerine badge of an aristocratic parvenu with honour!

And then there's the king of the mahogany mug himself, Valentino. The man who puts the 'tan' in fantastic. I was once stuck behind this naugahyde wood nypmh while in a rush on Sloane Square and almost ran smack into him as he disappeared into the scenery like a chesire cat. Very effective urban camo... In cuban heels, he measured in at 5-feet nothing and weighed in at a whisper more than a sack of grain. Which was fittingly the same colour as his suit, hair AND skin... he was a monochrome picture of caramel and camel that disappeared into the brickwork of the surrounding buildings effortlessly. I have yet to afix my eyes to such a vision again... the closest I've come to it is an orange stereogram and I had to look away because it gave me a headache. He might have the same effect if I stared too long.