While the first two posts of The Modern Femme travel series might lead you to believe that I'm passionate about travel fashion, my real travel obsession is beauty and skin care. I hate landing at my destination feeling crummy, with limp greasy hair, splotchy skin, and my glasses amplifying my tired, puffy eyes. After ending a couple of flights in this sad state, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I was determined to arrive at my destination looking as fresh faced as possible. To wit, here's the routine I've come up with:
Le Part Three: I feel pretty, and witty, and...dry?
Before the flight:
If time allows, I'll make sure to eat a balanced meal before my flight so that I don't have to eat the crummy airline food. Most often, this will be in the terminal, since I tend to fly a lot at night. Regardless of where I've eaten, one thing that I absolutely always do before boarding is brush my teeth and floss (and yes, I get a lot of weird looks in the terminal bathroom doing this, but I don't care!). Having squeaky clean teeth going into a long flight always makes me feel better.
The other thing I do is buy the largest bottle of water I can find. Cabin air is very dehydrating, so it's important to make sure you have water on hand during the flight. (This is especially important if you decide to indulge in one of those little bottles of wine on board!)
During the flight:
I always carry a my beauty kit with me on the plane. Here's the sequence I go through after take-off (again, I mainly take overnight flights, but you could do this for a long daytime flight as well):
1. Pull my hair back into a ponytail or low bun. I read once that one of the dirtiest places on an airplane is that little cloth cover on the headrest - they don't get cleaned in between flights, so your hair is resting against grease and oils left from prior passengers. Gross! I pull my hair up to have as little as possible rubbing against the headrest, and to keep my naturally oily hair off my face and contributing to any flight breakouts.
2. Remove any make-up and cleanse my face with cleansing cloths. I like Neutrogena cleansing towelletes. I use these cloths all the time on flights - not just for cleaning my face, but also for cleaning my hands when they start feeling grody.
3. Apply a good amount of eye cream - my eyes suffer the most on flights, getting incredibly dry and puffy. I've used a variety of creams, but I like this eye cream from L'Oreal, as it's not too greasy.
4. Slather on the facial moisturizer. My skin drinks in moisturizer on airplanes, even though I have oily/combination skin. That being said, I don't like feeling like I have a lot of heavy product sitting on my skin while traveling, so I prefer to use a gel based moisturizer, like this one from Garnier.
5. Put on lip balm (and reapply often). I like this Nivea lip balm for flights, though plain old Vaseline works pretty well too.
6. Moisturize my hands. The delicate skin on the back of my hands feels tight during a flight, and I always somehow give myself paper cuts on my knuckles (don't ask, I have no idea how). My salvation is this wonderful shea butter hand cream from L'Occitaine , and bonus points for the relaxing lavender scent. I focus the moisturizer on the backs of my hands, because I don't like the feeling of a lot of product on my palms - again, that's my aversion to greasiness while traveling.
7. Finally, I remove my contacts. As I mentioned, my eyes take the brunt of the dry air on flights, and while I'm not a fan of wearing my glasses in public, leaving my contacts in during flight guarantees that I'll have sensitive, bloodshot eyes when we land. Even with the glasses, I bring eye drops to keep my eyes lubricated throughout the flight and Visine to take away any redness before we land (when my contacts go back in).
I reapply the eye, face and hand moisturizers at least once during the flight. I also like to carry with me this travel sized Evian facial spray and use it mid-flight. It's very refreshing especially if you follow it with some moisturizer (I recommend using it in addition to, not in lieu of, moisturizer.) And of course, throughout the flight I'm drinking that big bottle of water I bought!
When we're about to land I clean my face again with a towelette, reapply eye and facial moisturizer, put my contacts back in, and put on a little makeup. My makeup routine is pretty simple - concealer, gel blush, a coat of mascara, and some colored lip gloss. I go to the bathroom to apply some deodorant and brush my teeth a final time.
And there you have it! That's my travel beauty/skin care routine. It helps me feel as fresh as a girl can be after long hours in economy.
Extra recommendations:
For anyone interested in learning more about in-flight skin care and beauty routines, I cannot recommend the following videos enough:
The lovely Lisa Eldridge has a fabulous video about turning your flight into a spa experience, and you can check out the rest of her blog at http://www.lisaeldridge.com/ for delightful make up tutorials and tips.
Michelle Phan is another makeup guru I love, and she has a great video about applying makeup in flight, as well as another general video about tricks and tips she uses while traveling. You can check out her blog at http://www.michellephan.com/. There's no way to not smile while watching Michelle, her joy is infectious!
That's all the beauty queen wrote! Stay tuned for the final post in this series, The Modern Femme travels, le Part Four, coming soon.
Till next time, dear readers, be well.
xoxo,
MF
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