Pretty Iconic: A Personal Look at the Beauty Products that Changed the World

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Burt’s Bees Beeswax Lip Balm

It’s true to say that it’s much harder for a small company to create an icon than it is for some huge multinational whose research, development, marketing, advertising and PR spend is, metaphorically speaking, a bottomless cup of coffee. It’s perhaps harder still to do it while refusing to compromise on your principles of self-sustainability and all-natural formulas, and yet the thoroughly good eggs at Burt’s Bees somehow pulled it off. It started in Maine, when local artist and single mum Roxanne Quimby was trying to thumb a ride home. Burt Shavitz, a local beekeeper who sold honey from the back of his truck, stopped. The pair got chatting and Burt offered to give Roxanne any unused wax from his hives, so she could make it into candles. The candles, fashioned into fruits and vegetables, were beautiful, and their success allowed the pair to fund their next project, a beeswax lip balm.

To say this sweet, simple, natural, homespun product took off would be to grossly understate the achievements of Burt’s Bees. The cruelty-free lip balm, devoid of traditional ingredients of petroleum jelly, mineral oil or camphor, packaged in either its classic round bee print tin or a convenient stick, is a product that sums up perfectly the cult beauty movement of the 1990s, where customers sought out quirky, one-off products by cool brands outside the megabrand triumvirate of L’Oréal – Estée Lauder – LVMH. Burt’s Bees’ message of authenticity, nature and simplicity was, and still is, extremely appealing. I can think of no other product that infiltrated the snobbish cult beauty market via the shelves of health food stores, or as a novelty item sold in gift shops, and yet by virtue of being both effective and rather lovely, this succeeded. Burt’s Bees’ pluck, size and product range are already enough for me, before even factoring in what a thoroughly decent company it is. There are now many good products in the Burt’s Bees range (the Almond and Milk Hand Cream, which smells intoxicatingly like newborn babies wrapped in marzipan blankets, is my favourite), but the first and bestselling lip balm formula remains its queen bee.

Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair

There are several reasons Advanced Night Repair deserves both your respect and its iconic status. Launched in 1982, it was the world’s first consumer skincare serum. The idea behind it was that unlike moisturising creams, which have to pack in emollients, sun protection and thickening agents to deliver the right protective texture, a serum could have a much finer texture, smaller molecules and be stuffed predominantly with ingredients that fixed specific skin concerns. While a cream sat on the top of the skin, an inherently finer serum could dig a little deeper. In creating Night Repair (the ‘Advanced’ came later, and since then, it’s been known in the business as simply ‘ANR’), Estée Lauder completely changed the conversation around skincare. We were no longer talking merely about lovely creams that made us feel nice, but questioning the old wives’ belief that mere moisture kept skin looking its best. ANR was about specific problem-solving with active ingredients, and when it came to choosing those ingredients, the Lauder team struck gold.

Hyaluronic acid is a viscous fluid substance found naturally in the human body, particularly around the eyes and connective tissue, where its primary function is to keep things moist, mobile and comfortable. Its magic is in its ability to hold a thousand times its weight in water. Scientists began to wonder if its topical use could help dehydrated, crêpey, ageing skin do the same, plumping it up a little, like a raisin dropped in warm water. The research team at Lauder felt it could, and combined the hyaluronic acid with antioxidants and other actives to build the world’s first skin serum. The effect hyaluronic acid has had on beauty products across every price point and category cannot be overstated – it’s in practically everything you’d ever want to put on your face. It’s the one ingredient whose absence I will almost immediately notice. Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair was so unique and so revolutionary that even now, when the market is rammed with serums for every conceivable purpose, it still has over twenty-five worldwide patents and patents pending, and remains one of the world’s bestselling serums.

Whether or not you like ANR (and ironically, as I get older, I find its hyaluronic punch lands a bit too softly for me personally and the recent revamp – distinguished by a ‘II’ after its name – was fine, but something of a missed opportunity), its impact on skincare globally has been absolutely enormous. The little apothecary bottle and pipette dropper we now just accept as standard serum packaging? ANR did it first. The concept of repairing past damage with skincare? Lauder invented it with ANR. A skincare revolution in one little brown bottle, ANR is a true beauty icon without whom your bathroom shelf might now look very different indeed.

Cetaphil Gentle Skin Cleanser

This is a perfect example of how subjective skincare can be. For a good ten years, all any dermatologist seemed to recommend was Cetaphil, a relatively inexpensive and unfussy rinse-off cleanser available widely in the States but not, at that time, in the UK. While moisturiser, mask and serum recommendations were varied, Cetaphil seemed to be the doctors’ default cleanser of choice for almost any skincare gripe. If you had rosacea – try Cetaphil; if you were sensitive – stick to Cetaphil; if you’d just had a facelift – wash only in Cetaphil; if you were acne prone – well, you get it, I’m sure. The endless and uncritical love for Cetaphil was especially enticing to me because I have a serious obsession with American drugstores, and a disproportionate love for tracking down hard-to-find products. Truly, I’ve barely dumped my suitcase and passport in my hotel room when I’m on the sidewalk, charging towards the nearest Duane Reade or Walgreens to spend 200 unnecessary dollars on wholly unsuitable products because the font on the gaudy bottle looks pleasingly foreign. And so my love for Cetaphil seemed like a done deal.

Sadly, it failed the due diligence. While the friends for whom I brought back a bottle raved about Cetaphil, I was left wondering what all the fuss was about. First, it contains sulphates. I’m not a fan of these foaming agents in skincare, though I quite understand those who need the psychological boost of a foam. The problem is that Cetaphil is so low-foaming that one gets the worst of both worlds: my skin feels drier, only without that sense of squeaky cleanliness. Second, and for me crucially, Cetaphil is no good at all at removing make-up. The most thorough-seeming cleanse will still result in orange smears on the towel, making Cetaphil advisable only as a second night-time step. This flaw sums up my long-held belief that while dermatologists – whom I have utterly revered and valued since early childhood – are the final word on the science of skincare, their insight is often poor when it comes to real life outside a lab or surgery.

What I mean by that is while a great derm can tell you exactly which sunblock will best protect the skin without clogging pores, they will rarely know if it also peels off in lumps the minute you apply your foundation, rendering unusable even the best product in the world. Doctors are rightly thinking about skin health and efficacy, not lifestyle and quality of use. They correctly obsess over ingredients, while not always acknowledging that overall texture, packaging and formula can be the difference between addictive and useless. And so I concluded that Cetaphil was, for me, one such case in point. Almost everything about this legendary product looks good on paper, and I can understand why it’s so respected by doctors, even loved by so many consumers. It just doesn’t work for my life.

Dove Beauty Bar

I realised the other day when completing my online grocery shop that I buy more products by Dove than any other brand. To be fully transparent, I am extraordinarily lucky in that I don’t generally pay for many products at all – everything is sent to me before launching in the hope I like it and write something favourable. What I do buy is deodorant, razor blades, handwash, bar soap, toothpaste, shower cream and body lotion, mainly because when it comes to these items specifically I’m quite uncharacteristically brand loyal and have little appetite to experiment unless a work assignment demands it. Dove caters for many of my household toiletry needs: the shower cream (especially the Silk Glow version) stands permanently in the bathroom, cap flipped and ready for action. The original deodorant is the only one, I think, that doesn’t spoil the smell of a good shower with obtrusive scent. Desert Island Discs while soaking in Dove’s almondy bath foam is one of life’s true and guiltless pleasures. The liquid handwash, deliciously creamy and cheap, is the one I decant into the prettier bottles of luxury brands long since drained by my extravagant and undiscerning children.

Ironically, the one incarnation of Dove that I don’t like (men’s range aside, with its pointlessly gender-specific take on the already lovely unisex Dove scent) is the very foundation of every one of its products, and the only one truly deserving of the term ‘icon’. The Beauty Bar, launched in 1957, is a face soap and therefore no amount of added moisturiser – famously one quarter here – can persuade me to use it anywhere above the shoulders.

Neutrogena Norwegian Formula Hand Cream

The irony with Neutrogena is that I tend to back the wrong horse. One of my favourite products of all time is its Body Emulsion, an absolute godsend for serious dry skin sufferers that they’ve twice tried to discontinue (at time of writing, it is available again as Deep Moisture, but I live in a mild state of fear). I almost unfailingly adore Neutrogena suncare, and yet they choose not to sell it in Europe. The wonderful, moisturising Original Rainbath shower gel has been withdrawn from general circulation and must now be obtained like some grubby porno from online importers, and as for their peerless mid-price, retinol-based, anti-ageing skincare – will they ever see fit to share the love with Britain? Meanwhile, the appeal of Neutrogena’s internationally celebrated icons, namely T/Gel dandruff shampoo and Norwegian Formula Hand Cream, eludes me.

Nonetheless, one cannot deny that the stiff, rather unyielding concentrated cream based on a traditional recipe used by Norwegian fishermen on their sore, wind-chapped hands, has earned its place in beauty history. Because those who use it are evangelical about it, and I won’t begin to tell them they’re wrong. And yet funnily enough, the thing people love about Norwegian Formula – the ungreasy, dry-touch texture so uncommon in hand creams – is the very thing I can’t bear about it. The large amount of glycerin (an excellent old ingredient, I’ll readily admit) makes for a strange, slightly waxy feeling that I can’t seem to ignore. It certainly moisturises well, if temporarily, and I love the soft, comforting smell of the original, fragranced, version. But apart from that, Norwegian Formula Hand Cream just doesn’t float my sea trawler. In my typical fashion, however, I do really love the less popular Norwegian Formula Fast Absorbing Hand Cream, though I’m afraid the mere act of my putting that in writing may jinx its very existence.

Sisley Black Rose Cream Mask

Oh Sisley, with your aloof, impenetrable French packaging, unknowable department store counters and your bonkers price points, so inaccessible to the vast majority of beauty lovers. I wish you weren’t so damn lovely. This is the mask used by supermodels after six straight weeks of sleepless, over-made-up, skin-terrorising service. It’s the mask reserved by make-up artists for only the best magazine covers and gold-band clientele. It’s the mask I give to women at their lowest ebb, when divorce, bereavement or illness has ravaged the body, mind and soul. Rich, luxurious, gentle and soothing, a ten-minute session with Black Rose Cream Mask is like your most well-off girlfriend taking you for a four-hour lunch and three bottles from the lower half of the wine list.

Molton Brown Hand Wash

When I first moved to London, aged 15, Molton Brown was the coolest hair salon around. Opened in 1973 and named after its home, South Molton Street, and Brown’s fashion store, located a few doors down and owned by Molton Brown’s founder Caroline Burstein’s parents, Molton Brown was where Sam McKnight – arguably the most successful session hairstylist of all time – made his name, and was among the first of a teenage Kate Moss’s modelling clients.

Molton Brown specialised in natural hairstyling techniques at a time when harsh chemical treatments and heated tools were all the rage, and their sought-after product was the ‘Molton Browner’, a dusty-pink quilted bendy roller, stiffened with a wire loop, that was wound into sections of hair and slept in overnight. I was gifted a dozen by my Aunt Sue and though I was wholly inept at using them (the resulting style was reliably disastrous), they were so pretty, so unlike anything I’d ever seen, that I adored them out of all proportion.

I finally got to visit the salon myself when they opened a little shop in reception. Here, they sold body lotions and soaps, and unexpectedly pro-grade beauty kit. It was here I bought my first ever make-up brush roll (I still have it) and my first bottle of Orange & Bergamot Hand Wash. I would never have believed that this ancillary product in a line known for its haircare would become a beauty phenomenon, launch an entire category of luxury handwashes (paving the way for wonderful brands like Cowshed and L’Occitane) and be copied so mercilessly worldwide. Nowadays, handwash and hand cream are the products for which Molton Brown is best known. They are the sign of a good-quality boutique hotel, an unfailingly well-received token of love on Mother’s Day, and a clear message of gratitude to a teacher at the end of term. Their high-quality natural oils make for delicate, authentic scents and gentle, skin-softening cleansing.

Sadly, the same cannot be said for the dozens of brands and retailers who’ve exploited Molton Brown’s cachet and very modest, easily replicated packaging, and knocked up their own. I’m all for a designer dupe, whether a Miu Miu-inspired coat from Topshop or an Eames-style desk bought in IKEA, but there’s no doubt that over the years Molton Brown has seen its excellent product devalued by impostors. Worse still is the common practice of businesses refilling real Molton Brown bottles with some industrial soap bought in Costco, sending an illusory message of luxury. I can’t imagine how many people assume they’re using the real thing then wonder, as they breathe in the smell of car air freshener, what all the fuss is about.

Palmer’s Original Cocoa Butter

Some time around my seventh or eighth birthday, my mother returned home from Cardiff with a bottle of Cocoa Butter Hand & Body Lotion from one of the very first branches of Body Shop. She’d engaged the sales consultant in conversation, told her about my dry, scaly, inherited skin condition, and been promised that cocoa butter would help. The lotion was nothing short of revelatory and marked a huge turning point in my life. I’d previously used only horrible, NHS-prescribed bath oils and emollient creams that sat thickly on the surface of my skin, smelling like hospitals and never sinking into anything other than my school tights. Conversely, the Body Shop lotion sank a little better into my skin, soothing, softening and making it smell of Milky Bar chocolate. That one bottle of lotion set me down a path of skincare obsession. I began tweaking the cocoa butter – adding olive oil from the kitchen, pouring it into baths, mixing it with Tate & Lyle to slough off the flakes before a soak. The only problem with the Body Shop lotion was that it did leave an oleaginous film on my skin, and didn’t improve its overall tone and evenness (I looked a bit pink and veiny) and so I began searching for an alternative.

I found Palmer’s Cocoa Butter Formula Lotion on an Afro-Caribbean beauty stall while skiving off school in an indoor market and soon found my prayers answered. This – the world’s bestselling cocoa butter product – sinks in more rapidly and thoroughly than any other I’ve found, smooths skin, banishes the occasional ashiness of brown and black skins and leaves all legs with an even, healthier-looking tone. It softens limbs, cuticles, elbows, feet, scalp and babies’ bums, and smells of holidays, warm beaches and of ice-cream sundaes melting in hot chocolate sauce. Its cheerfully cheap price tag means it can be treated like an essential family household item and slathered on with abandon whenever dryness strikes. There are now dozens of products in the Palmer’s range, but the true icon here is the waxy formulation sold in tubs (don’t be put off by its solidity: the secret to cocoa butter’s success is that it’s the only known natural moisturiser that melts at body temperature).