Celebrity Life

Here's everything new in beauty this January 2022 that we've had our eyes — and our hearts set — on.

From fashion brand Moncler's first-ever fragrances to the debut of magnetic false eyelashes in Asia, here is this month's roundup of the newest must-have fragrances, makeup, skincare and other beauty products to add to your collection now. And make sure to check our previous instalments here!

New in Beauty This January 2022

Gucci Flora Gorgeous Gardenia Fragrance

It’s difficult to tell what’s most intriguing about Flora Gorgeous Gardenia, the newest fragrance from Gucci: the floral but delicately sweet scent or the stunning bottle it comes in. The perfume blends white gardenia with jasmine grandiflorum and pear blossom, with a touch of brown sugar accord, for a captivating but never overpowering fragrance. And the lacquered pink bottle — featuring the Flora pattern originally created for Gucci in 1966 by artist Vittorio Accornero, now re-imagined by creative director Alessandro Michele — is a standout.

Nonfiction For Rest Fragrance

The sixth signature scent from minimalist Korean beauty brand Nonfiction promises to be sophisticated and modern, with a simple monochrome identity and a fresh woodsy musk scent created by master perfumer Barnabé Fillion. The main notes include hinoki, frankincense, Turkish rose, yuzu and nutmeg. In two sizes, Nonfiction For Rest Fragrance is available at Sephora Hong Kong.

Jimmy Choo Beauty Capsule Collection

Jimmy Choo has launched a make-up and fragrance capsule collection, comprising lipsticks and an exclusive set of six concentrated perfumes. Scents include notes of iris, vanilla, rose, white musk and oud wood. The entire collection is available at a Beauty Botanica pop-up in Landmark until the end of this month, and at select Jimmy Choo boutiques.

Moncler Pour Femme & Moncler Pour Homme Fragrances

Best known for skiwear, Moncler has released its first fragrances: Moncler Pour Femme and Moncler Pour Homme. The scents are the work of four master perfumers who created concoctions that pay homage to the brand’s alpine identity — the fragrance duo share a unique mountain wood accord exclusive to Moncler, and are housed in flask-shaped bottles.

NARS Lunar New Year Collection

If you’re already missing NYE celebrations, ring in the CNY with the Lunar New Year Collection from NARS, which includes two limited-edition products in traditional red and gold packaging. We love the look of the Taj Mahal Quad Eyeshadow — an ultra-luxe four-pan palette inspired by the brand’s classic blush shade — that features a yellow-gold shimmer, a light peach shimmer, a multidimensional burnt-orange shimmer, and a purple-red matte.

MATCHY! Magnetic Lashes

Touted as the first magnet-based false lash brand in Asia, MATCHY! has debuted in Hong Kong with a range of falsies that snap on without the need for glue. Whether you’re a novice or an expert, they promise to give you the lash look you’re after — delicate and natural-looking, thick and full, long and luscious — in no time, and with little effort or mess. The brand carries black and brown lashes in 12 styles and is available at matchylashes.com

Guerlain Orchidée Impériale Foundation Concentrate

Harnessing the brand’s exclusive brightening technology, Guerlain’s new Orchidée Impériale Foundation Concentrate is a skincare–makeup hybrid that delivers intense hydration, high coverage and a flawless finish for up to 10 hours. Velvety to the touch, it adapts to the contours of the face while avoiding bleeding into wrinkles and fine lines — ideal for those with mature or textured skin who seek a natural look.

Kérastase Chronologiste

The rejuvenating Chronologiste range from expert hair care brand Kérastase harnesses the power of three star ingredients — hyaluronic acid, vitamin E and abyssine — to deeply nourish the hair, repair damage and protect your strands from external aggressors. Products include a pre-shampoo hair cleanser, a gentle revitalising shampoo, a hair mask, fragrance hair oil, a heat protectant and a hair serum.

Dior Addict Lip Maximizer Serum

One of the French luxury brand’s star beauty products, the Dior Addict Lip Maximizer plumping gloss is now available as a lip care-focused clear hybrid gloss-serum. The Dior Addict Lip Maximizer Serum promises 24 hours of hydration, nourishing and smoothening the lips with the use of mallow extract, 100% natural-origin hyaluronic acid, a blend of sensorial oils and vegetable waxes, and a peptide that helps stimulate collagen.

Tatcha Red Camellia The Kissu Lip Mask

Tatcha’s bestselling The Kissu Lip Mask is getting a tinted update, featuring the same smoothening and plumping formula with a brand new subtle red hue. Harnessing the nourishing properties of Japanese peach extract, squalane and camellia oil, the non-sticky jelly lip treatment is now available in a limited-edition “Red Camellia” form inspired by the striking red flower of the same name, exclusively at Lane Crawford.

Chloé Eau de Parfum Naturelle

A new addition to french luxury house Chloé’s signature perfume collection, Eau de Parfum Naturelle is a 100-percent natural-origin fragrance developed with ethically sourced ingredients and lower-impact packaging. Featuring the Maison’s fresh woodsy-rose scent, the formula is vegan with water and naturally derived alcohol and free from artificial colouring.

Burberry Matte Lip Colour

British fashion house Burberry has added an all-new Matte Lip Colour to its Burberry Kisses lipstick line — a luminous matte with hyaluronic acid to ensure hydration and comfortable wear on the lips, and an intense colour payoff that promises to last the whole night. Packed with pigment, it only needs one stroke for high coverage. It’s available in 20 shades, including the luxury brand’s signature colours: Red, red-brown Russet, Soft Pink and Burgundy.

Gucci Beauty Rouge De Beauté Brillant

Gucci Beauty has added three vibrant new shades to its Rouge De Beauté Brillant hybrid balm-lipstick line — a burnt-orange Lucy Dark Orange, a dark-pink Diana Amber and an Abbie Maroon Red. Sitting between a sheer and satin finish, the deeply moisturising formula features a concoction of flower oils, fruit butters and hyaluronic acid to deliver hydration and a lip-plumping effect. It’s available now at all Gucci Beauty counters.

Benefit Brightening Face Primer

Benefit’s “that gal” Brightening Face Primer is now available in three shades, with two new colour-correcting options to help even out your complexion and create the perfect base for make-up application. With raspberry, chamomile and oat-kernel extracts, the silky lotion-like primer comes in a Silky Pink for a rosy glow, a Silky Lavender to brighten and cover sallowness, and a Silky Green to conceal redness.

And, while stocks last, here are a few of our holiday collection picks...

The holidays may be over, but there's no deadline on picking up a skincare kit or makeup duo. Grab them while stocks last.

Fenty Beauty Resting Peach Face

We loved everything in the holiday collection from Fenty Beauty — especially the brand new 12-pan Bomb Posse Mega Mix & Match Eyeshadow Palette — but our pick of the bunch is the limited-edition Resting Peach Face duo. Featuring two best-selling cream products in all-new set-exclusive peach shades — a full-size Cheeks Out Freestyle Cream Blush and a mini Gloss Bomb Cream Color Drip Lip Cream — it’s perfect for a soft wash of peach colour to the cheeks and lips.

Hourglass Cosmetics Unlocked + Caution™ Mascara Duo

This limited-edition gift set from Hourglass Cosmetics features the brand’s bestselling mascaras — Unlocked Instant Extensions Mascara and Caution Extreme Lash Mascara — that deliver length and volume to your lashes with long-staying power and absolutely no flaking. Layer both for the most impact, using Caution to build volume and finishing with Unlocked to lengthen. As part of Hourglass’ cruelty-free mission, 5 percent of the annual profits from Unlocked Mascara will be donated to the Nonhuman Rights Project, a US organisation that works to secure fundamental rights for animals.

Drunk Elephant Kissy Face Skin Kit The Babyfacial Routine

Drunk Elephant’s holiday collection included four kits that promise to strengthen your skin’s barrier. Our eyes are on the Kissy Face “softening routine” set, featuring two full-size cult favourites — the TLC Sukari Babyfacial AHA/BHA skin resurfacing chemical exfoliant and the Lala Retro Whipped Cream moisturiser that rescues the skin’s acid mantle.

(Hero image courtesy of Dior, featured image courtesy of Gucci)

The post New in Beauty This January 2022: Dior, NARS, MATCHY! Magnetic Lashes appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

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Shanyan Fok Koder and Richard Bassett explain how a Hong Kong art entrepreneur joined forces with a former special-forces soldier to launch a health and mental wellbeing app, Mentor360.

"Mental health and mental fitness are universal concerns," says Shanyan Fok Koder. "And regardless of your demographic, social status, your job or your age, it’s something everyone has to deal with."

Shanyan Fok Koder & Richard Bassett on Mental Health App Mentor360

The Mentor360 app dropped on World Mental Health Day in October, the cumulation of the last 20 months of work and conversations (usually across continents over Zoom) between former military man Richard Bassett and worldly art advisor Koder. A month later, I’m sitting with both in a North London café talking over slices of pizza.

Their app, they hope, offers everyone a holistic 360 guide and framework to “finding your formula” for mental and physical wellbeing. It uses a hybrid approach, with a core layer of clinicians and professional Mentors and then celebrity Ambassadors (who’ve publicly shared meaningful life stories) critical for building noise and momentum.

"I’d been in the military for a long time. And there were a couple of incidents in my life that made me want to create something," Bassett, the CEO, explains. "Firstly, it was my father committing suicide. Then my son had a bit of misdirection. And several of my friends in the military had PTSD issues or adjustment disorders."

"The biggest issue is why people wouldn’t come forward and say they’ve got a problem?” he asks.

“Unlike some apps, we’re not trying to get people hooked. Come on to it when you need it”

— Richard Bassett

The answer often lay in culture, lack of education or concerns about privacy that prevent many from seeking help. With that came Bassett’s idea of creating an app that functions as a “non-judgmental toolkit” with content validated by experts – who include coaches, performance psychologists, mental health-specialising nurses and a clinical psychologist.

Basset’s link with Koder came when his best friend, ex-special forces colleague and TV star Jason Fox, sat next to a pregnant Koder at a charity fundraiser for Born (which researches to prevent premature birth) in late 2019. As the pair talked about their passions for mental health and children’s wellbeing, the connection to Bassett’s idea became quickly apparent.

"Foxy told me that I have to meet his friend, Richard, who’s building this app," Koder recalls. "I was always wanting to support things that are very meaningful and close to my heart … and now Jason is actually our key mentor. The partnership between Richard and I was almost like two parts of a jigsaw puzzle come together."

Although some might go to the app for help with stress, trauma or even resources to help with suicidal feelings, Mentor360 is designed specifically as a three-dimensional offering that will also encourage fitness, workouts, performance and meditation or more clinical matters.

"We wanted to maintain the human factor as a constant throughout. So it feels like somebody has given you some advice rather than some process-driven machine learning," Bassett adds.

The co-founders might come from two different worlds, but the unlikely partnership speaks to the ubiquity of the issues at hand. Bassett’s 25-year military career saw him being appointed the first ever Command Sergeant Major within the UK Special Forces military group. "It was at that stage where I was asked if I wanted to run defence,” he says. “At that point, I thought, I’ve kind of had my fill of the military now, it’s time to move on."

Koder meanwhile grew up in Hong Kong and the UK as the daughter of Li Ka-shing’s "right-hand man" Canning Fok, carving out a career in the arts and taking over her family’s impressive collection. As a female art entrepreneur and mother, her challenges would be different.

"When I had the misfortune of losing three babies to miscarriage and dealing with that emotional fallout, it led me to want to support this as a cause," Koder divulges. "If there’d been something like this app available to me, I don’t think I’d have suffered as much as I did emotionally. It’s a topic that’s still very taboo, even in this day and age … and while you eventually find your own community, at the very beginning, you do feel very alone."

Both were clearly driven towards the app through deeply personal experiences. Bassett saw first-hand how soldiers who’d done several tours in Iraq and Afghanistan suffered – his best friend, Fox, had left the forces with PTSD. Perhaps machismo or fear of institutional repercussions meant that the issue was often ignored or hidden in the military – but he hopes that Mentor360’s holistic approach can gently lead people to explore mental fitness alongside physical performance too.

The male-female perspectives of the pair offer a well-rounded, powerful tool. And while the wellness space is already crowded, Mentor360 stands out by being so broad, human-focused and non-prescriptive.

There’s been exciting traction too. Since its launch, the app has been downloaded in more than 176 countries, with the UK, the US and Australia leading. British schools have reached out and it’s one governance board away from being trialled within the National Health Service (NHS), which means added clinical risk management in the app. That has been an important validation, says Bassett, "especially when an institution like that has picked it out from a huge spectrum of apps on the market today."

Covid-19 and lockdowns have helped throw light on mental health, taking the conversation more mainstream. The timeliness has hit home; as Bassett says, “there’s a lot of people now struggling with the transition between Covid and normality”.

Koder tells us that the plan is to serve individuals but also institutions such as the NHS and the military. There’s also the option of “white labelling” it, so the app can be packaged and tailored to certain industries or corporate employees. In the future, might they look more global, with different languages and translations? Absolutely, the pair say, but they’re taking it “slow and steady”. There’s been interest from American corporations and Koder says that she’s keen to push into Asia very soon. Although going truly global might mean translating for languages, cultures and tone, as well as working with diverse psychologists, it remains a future ambition.

Mentor360 may be extra helpful in cultures where mental health is still relatively taboo. As Koder says, "I think, coming from our Asian culture, it speaks volumes to me – so much of our culture is about still performance or hiding a lot of what you’re feeling."

"Unlike some apps,” Bassett adds, "what we’re not trying to do is create a hook or get people hooked. Come on to it when you need it, and if you don’t need it for a while because you’re good, you can just put it away … We’re starting to see those patterns in the trend analysis."

To get a little personal, I ask what works for them individually to keep a healthy mind and body. Bassett’s formula revolves around daily exercise, time with the family, dogs and good sleep – even the occasional glass of wine on the sofa in front of a crackling fireplace. Koder’s happiness hacks centre around motherhood, being content and at peace in her skin, and looking at life with a certain romanticism: "I always love to see the poetry in my day,” she says, "and I think it’s important to just pause throughout the day, check-in and acknowledge that I’ve achieved these things and I should be proud of myself, rather than just rushing on to the next thing."

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