Buy two bottles of Herbal Essences shampoo and/or conditioner, mail in the UPC codes, and get a voucher for a free manicure or pedicure. There are tons of participating salons all over the country—just check the website for all the details. The offer lasts until the end of the year but the sundress-and-sandal moment is happening now.

—Dawn Spinner, associate beauty editor

A few weeks ago, I woke up to skin that looked like old paper. I tried several rejuvenating creams—no glow. Shimmery powder blushes: Terrible (pink crepe paper). Highlighting creams? More moist, but still not truly glowy.

Because of course, glow really comes down to skincare. When a skin product's name includes the words "Radiant Glow" or "Brightening" or sometimes the slightly dubious "Energizing," it's usually code for "Hey! I Exfoliate, But Not in a Way That Will Make Your Skin Angry." That, in turn, is code for a number of exfoliating ingredients—namely, glycolic acid, retinol, vitamin C, or various fruit acids (papaya or pineapple, most frequently). So I set off with these ingredients in mind—and discovered two skin-sloughing agents that worked: one, a twice a week (okay, fine, I did it four times a week), scrub/fruit acid peel/mask deal, the aptly named Facial Glow from the new organic British line Elemental Herbology. The instructions say to rub it into your face for three minutes, but I was way too impatient, and washed it off after a minute—and it seemed to do the glowifying trick.

Glow product #2 is this bottle of once-a-day Dr. Denese's glycolic acid pads. I dearly love the convenience of a swipey pad, and this is particularly good because you don't need to rinse your face after you put it on—just put on your face cream as usual afterward. And lo and behold, the website has automatic redelivery—which I always think is pretty neat.

—Cristina Mueller, senior beauty editor

Disclaimer: I do not dislike Heidi Montag from The Hills. I mean, I don't LIKE Heidi Montag either: I'm apathetic. Look, she's not hurting anybody. She's annoying, but weren't you when you were 21? When I was that age, all I did was talk about myself and my lame boyfriend and the massive fight we'd had at the club the night before—and sadly, when I recapped the whole mess the next day, no one ever cut me a check or put me on the cover of Us Weekly.

That said, the founder of this new bath and body line is totally Elodie, the girl who trashes Heidi Montag in season three and calls her out on not having any friends except for Spencer! "You don't even know what's wrong or what's right anymore," she tells Heidi. "And ... it's so sad."

Elodie's name makes her sound like she lives in the 7th and wears an A.P.C. raincoat, but really, though authentically half-French, she's based in Los Angeles and watches The Bachelor and Gossip Girl—at least according to her MySpace profile. I considered interviewing her, but was stymied when my brainstorming yielded only creepy, not-so-beauty-oriented questions like:

- What does Heidi smell like up close?
- Don't Heidi and Spencer look like brother and sister when they make out?

From the morning I learned of their existence to the day the package arrived in the mail, I'd never desired beauty products more. I opened the box to find a cheerfully packaged selection of all-natural, paraben-free bath and body collection with truly appealing scents: the Banane Flambee Body Lotion smells beachy-sweet and not at all like a mushy lunchbox banana (one of many culinary nemeses of my childhood). As a coconut fan of exacting standards, I was impressed by the Noix de Coco Bubble Bath, which smells authentic and not, as other coconut products often do, of vanilla, cake mix, or even (gag) butter. I also like the creamy Menthe a l'Eau Shower Gel, which tingled pleasantly in the shower this morning and kept me feeling clean and minty all day. Very nice.

Like me, The Hills girls probably love these products—not because they got them free in their gift bags at the Gen Art show, but because they have easy-to-pronounce French names (hi, Whitney!) and little Eiffel Towers on the bottles. Buy them; enjoy them. I'm going home to watch TV.

—Cat Marnell, beauty assistant

Perennially quirky San Diego hairstylist/eponymous salon owner Jet Rhys came into the office last week to talk about what she's been up to: new color techniques, and cool styling tools, etc. As she was putting on her coat to leave, she pulled a tiny green-and-white bottle from her pocket and whispered, "I take this alcohol-free hand sanitizer with me when I fly. You spritz it on your roots if your hair gets greasy or flat. It gives you great volume! And the oil disappears!" It also smells grassy-fresh, which is just the icing on the cake.

—Dawn Spinner, associate beauty editor

I got to stay at a big TV producer's big, absurdly beautiful house in Malibu, which featured what seemed to me to be the most crazily luxurious shower ever. (Soaring walls of Carrera marble, huge skylights, an overhead showerhead the size of a hubcap with the kind of water pressure only found in a fire hydrants.) In the guest bedroom, however, I discovered a Satinjet Maia showerhead—something Karyn Grossman, the Santa Monica dermatologist, has been raving about to me for months. Not only is it environmentally friendly, but it also contains a vitamin C cartridge that eliminates chlorine and leaves your water as pure as rain (chlorine has been linked to breast cancer; it also has a drying, dulling effect on hair and skin). I sort of get the whole bathing with Evian concept now. The water flow was at least as lush as the master-bedroom fantasia, and I emerged with silky-soft skin that needed no moisturizer.

The Maia is expensive, but in my opinion worth it. It's also incredibly easy to install, as I discovered while procrastinating over an assignment this morning: It took about three minutes, and all tools (there are two) are included. Anyway, I thought we had a pretty good showerhead in our bathroom before, but no: This is a whole different experience and it's all I can do not to go back in the shower right now.

—Jennifer Scruby, contributing writer, Miami

The Maia, $395, is available at barneys.com and blissworld.com—and starting in June, you can even get a botanical-extract Infusion pod to attach to the whole thing, at which point you'll probably just move into your shower and never come out.

I love to swim and I love the ocean, but sand—well, there's still some trapped in the bottom of my favorite bikini and coating the inside of my tote bag from last summer. Yeah, yeah, it's exfoliating. But reapplying SPF and simultaneously scratching your face with small chunks of rock and shell is just horrible.

Surfer's Secrets Sand Eliminator is a silky-soft-baby-powderish blend of cornstarch, grape-seed oil, and aloe vera that miraculously repels sand. You dust it all over, sand wipes away without any scraping, and you're at last able to reapply your sunblock every hour like you're supposed to, no excuses.

—Dawn Spinner, associate beauty editor

What can you do when you're at a bar and spot your friend in the middle of a group of guys, visibly tipsy and dancing sensually to The Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby"? Not that much, I discovered on Saturday, except take away her Stoli vanilla-and-pineapple (no, really) and drag her into the ladies' room "to do makeup".

My makeup, I knew, was already perfect: After months of Nick Nolte nights, I recently found my missing MAC Cosmetics LiquidLast Liner (shade: Point Black, the inkiest of them all, natch) and my friends, it is indelible. Budgeproof! Wearing it is the closest thing to actually doing what my weirdo mother always accused me of doing in junior high: using permanent marker as eyeliner. It stays immaculate the next 24 hours—you can wash your face as usual, so long as you don't actively attempt to scrub your makeup off. Also, one tube lasts forever; I've had mine for over two years (when it's not lost, I use it constantly).

A trick for the liquid-liner-phobic: I really sucked at it until I learned to dab the little brush on a piece of tissue first. That gets rid of the initial gob of color that always smears and leaks a little into your eye and ruins everything.

—Cat Marnell, beauty assistant

One of the double-edged-sword "perks" of my job is meeting the occasional celeb, as celebs heartily enjoy launching fragrances. These meetings can be excruciating—celebs launching fragrances tend to reference themselves in the third person, for instance. Or they earnestly discuss "the brand" (meaning themselves), or, more cringifyingly, "the brand DNA" (different than their own?), or "growing the brand" (getting fat?).

But fragrance launches can be a lot of fun, if the celeb turns out to be a human being. We all know Gwen Stefani is a human being (she was on our cover and was perhaps our favorite shoot ever), but it's easy to forget and lump her in the celeb category, as she is, in fact, a huge celeb, and she has launched a (great) fragrance, L L. A. M. B.

She's coming out with the CUTEST fragrance(s) in the fall that I have ever seen. Unbelievably fantastic; more on that in Lucky magazine at the appropriate moment. But what I loved about said scents' launch, beyond the impossible cuteness, was the very pregnant Stefani's comments on ... being very pregnant. As she was pelted with questions about top notes and marketing strategies, she smiled and laughed about how tired she was, how disinclined she was to wear lots of scent, how she kept forgetting things ... Every woman in the room who'd ever been pregnant was laughing with her. At one point she even demanded a show of hands: "How many women in this room are moms?"

I was so charmed I went right back to the office and spritzed on some L.A.M.B. in support.

—Jean Godfrey-June, beauty director

It's simple, really: Go to New Orleans. Or Houston. Or Key West, Calcutta, or Olympia, Washington—anywhere where the humidity likes to hover above 85 percent. Give yourself a week in a humid climate and the difference is truly astonishing—and if there's no air travel in the near future, this humidifier neatly accomplishes a similar thing—and as it's a cool-mist humidifier, it's much more Olympia than Calcutta.

—Cristina Mueller, senior beauty editor

My gorgeous, chic friend Laney just got back from Paris. She partied with artists, met with a "shockingly accurate" spiritual psychic, and spent hours strolling through upper Marais, "just to be with the people." She spoke only French. And everyone assumed she was, in fact, French. The reason for her authenticity, she says, was neither her Chloé boots nor her vintage capelet ... it was her manicure. "If my nails had been any longer or any other color, it would have given me away instantly!" she explained.

Her look: short, round nails in classic red. "But the red has to work with your skin tone," Laney warns. For her (dark hair, convincing faux tan), it's OPI's Vodka and Caviar. "I'm bringing it with me to the nail salon from now on. Just in case they run out."

—Dawn Spinner, associate beauty editor

The Diane von Furstenberg shop in Merrick Park, FLA, is very white and clinical and sort of Clockwork Orange–esque, so I feel totally cowed when I ever go in. But go I must, as I love DVF! I bought a top there recently; for the whole time I was in the dressing room, the woman next door could not stop raving to the saleswoman about Armani makeup and how it had changed her life. I was sold. I bought the top, then ran over to Neiman Marcus and bought a tube of its Lipstick 23. She was right: This is the best color ever, best sheer mauve, has the nicest smell, and if Armani ever discontinues it, I'll die.

—Jennifer Scruby, contributing writer, Miami

It's officially a body cream, but if you want the thickest, richest foot cream on earth—I put it on before bed and my feet are still feeling it when I wake up the next morning—the Orange Blossom Body Cream from the Soap & Paper Factory is unbelievably amazing. It smells fantastic, it feels even better, and it's all-natural, no parabens, phthalates, propylene, glycol—only things like shea butter and essential oils. I say conflict of interest because, as you may know, the Soap & Paper girls are some of my best friends in the world.

Believe it or not, though, my knowing them—sitting around in their huge studio while they haul boxes around and stir soap and ship orders—actually disinclines me to like their products, in much the way that if you cook an elaborate dish, by the time it's on the table, the others are delighted but you're kind of over it. The Orange Blossom cream, to my amazement, overcomes my familiarity with it and still seems glamorous, elegant, beautiful, and a total luxury, even though I'm on intimate terms with the blood, sweat, tears, and occasional shot of vodka that make it all possible.

—Jean Godfrey-June, beauty director

From: "Rollins, Meredith"
To: "Godfrey June, Jean"
Subject: That eyeliner you liked ...

... is Hi-Definition Fluid Eyeliner Stylist in Slate by a company called Prestige ... which is sold at Walgreens. It's absolutely the perfect eyeliner as far as I'm concerned: draws on like a marker, makes a nice thin line, is small and chubby-ish so it fits well in your grip, and it's the prettiest, almost-subtle shade of dark gray. I sometimes do that press-in-the-lashes trick you talked about on your page a while back, and sometimes I do a full-on swept-up-at-the-corner cat-eye line, and either way it makes me look about ten thousand times more awake and better.

Our glamorous Miami correspondent Jennifer Scruby reports that she has been overrun—overrun—by visitors ever since she set out several Ceremonial Jasmine Tea candles from Burn. "Everybody comes over, and they stay —and stay—and then they come back!" says the exhausted Scruby. "And they never fail to talk about how good the house smells. The scent is beautiful—subtle, pretty, you just want to keep smelling it—but I've started wondering whether I should put the candles away for a little bit, just to get some rest!"

After your 350th encounter with an at-home face peel, you begin to develop an extremist streak. And by "you," I mean "me." Why use a gentle, skin-energizing 10-minute peel when there's a three-minute one? Why use the three-minute when there's a super-powered one-minute version?

In the spectrum of hard-core peels, Kate Somerville's spinach green Exfolikate, née Kate in a Jar, is the hard-core-iest it gets. A legend within the beauty department, the stuff has made it into every one of our medicine cabinets; I've been through two tubs of it in the past three months, and as I scrape the bottom of the third, I feel compelled to inform you that this might be my favorite product ever. Ever! Here's how it goes: You put it on, and 20 seconds later (20 SECONDS later!) you MUST rinse—because judging from the burning, your face is beginning to melt. Rinse quickly, ignore the resultant (temporary) redness, and then the next day, boom, there you have it: The skin of an infant!*

*The fine print: If your skin is sensitive or prone to random freak-outs when under duress, I'd wager this isn't the thing for you. If you're on the fence, I'd say leave it on for 10 seconds the first time, just to be safe.

—Cristina Mueller, senior beauty editor

Once a year, my Atlantan friend Mike hosts a big party and shaves his head in celebration of St. Baldrick's Day (as in St. Patrick's Day, but different!), an event that raises money (close to $500K over the last five years) to fight childhood cancer.

Stylists from the fun, laid-back-yet-chic Salon Lotus wield the razors, so you're guaranteed an even buzz. And if you can't work a Sinéad O'Connor, you can stop by the salon for a precise (but really affordable) bob—and donate to St. Baldrick's online. But just imagine all the money you'd save on shampoo.

—Dawn Spinner, associate beauty editor

Mike's the hunky, tall one all the way to the left.

From: Jen Ford, fashion news director
To: Jean Godfrey-June, Cristina Mueller
Subject: Hair Moment

Can't tell you how many girls in London/Paris are wearing their hair like this, rolled and twisted on the side.

It's that time of year—not quite spring, but decidedly no longer winter—when I go a little crazy in anticipation of warm, summery weather and want to smell of coconut, exclusively, all the time. I consider myself something of an aficionado: The Body Shop's Coconut Body Butter is my hands-down favorite—it's thick and gloppy and smells heavenly, and it leaves your skin sort of sexy-oiled-up-looking when you use a lot of it (not a look to rock at the office, but great at night). The Body Shop also makes a little bottle of Coconut Perfume Oil, which is perfect dabbed on or layered over other fragrances.

There's also the fantastic Amino Acid Shampoo from Kiehl's, which despite its clinical-sounding name has the beachiest, prettiest coconut scent ever. Then there's the amazing all-natural line from Mountain Ocean called Skin Trip, which smells so fresh and clean and, obviously, coconutty (I'm partial to the extra-creamy bar of soap).

Fellow coconut lovers: What am I missing?

—Cat Marnell, beauty assistant

My friend Jenn often complains about her perfect, blonde hair. It's either "too flat" ('70s, sleekly gorgeous) or "too poufy" (tousled, Victoria's Secret model-ish), or her highlights are "too obvious" (like Sienna Miller's).

When I received a frantic voice mail ("What do I do? They discontinued my favorite wave spray and it's the only thing that makes my hair not-flat-but-not-poufy!"), I almost ignored it. But I figured Jenn would be the ultimate critical-yet-fair test subject for the for-blondes-only spray wax that I—unquestionably a brunette—was never going to try.

A week later, I got another voice mail: "Oh my God—I love it! My hair looks just right. It's piecey, but it's under control, and it doesn't feel like there's anything in it."

I'm happy for her; really, I am.

—Dawn Spinner, associate beauty editor

From: Meredith Kahn Rollins, executive editor
To: Jean Godfrey-June, beauty director
Subject: Proof at last

I ran out of Dermalogica Daily Microfoliant two days ago. And now I am—as I was pre-Microfoliant—completely broken out. Possibly the best proof ever that a product really, truly works for my skin.

Whether you're talking fawning over celebrity magazine profiles or characters in serious novels, the canon brims with beautiful women who never wear makeup and ugly women who are caked in it. A marked and unbelievably consistent departure from reality, and one that I rail against endlessly.

I am in the middle of the absolutely fantastic The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa—is there anything better than being in the middle of a really good book?—which, for perhaps the first time in contemporary literature, features a beautiful woman in makeup. Makeup that makes her look even prettier. The woman, a.k.a. the Bad Girl, is no angel, but the makeup is not presented as part of her devilry. She ages, but the makeup does not maker her look more aged. The man in love with her is forever noting how well she does it, how flattering, how tasteful; he also calls out the hair.

Makeup is hardly the only reason to read The Bad Girl; it is gorgeously written and unputdownable.
*I happened to look at the new Barneys New York catalogue just as I began reading The Bad Girl, and the model dancing around in the red lipstick and the red Marc Jacobs dress within its pages somehow morphed with the book and provided a visual for me.

—Jean Godfrey-June

No matter how sweat-free and rose-petal-scented your feet may be, eventually, every pair of flats turns. Patent leather, especially. There are foot sprays ... but even the name "foot spray" is horribly unappealing, bringing to mind Grandpa's Tinactin.

Dry shampoo, I've found, does the same thing for your shoes that it does for your hair: refreshes, absorbs moisture, and makes them smell significantly better. Plus, it doesn't say "feet" anywhere on the bottle.

—Dawn Spinner, associate beauty editor