Monthly Favorites: August
GlowLab with Susan Yara
Host Susan Yara shares her curated list of favorite purchases from August, spanning beauty, jewelry, fashion, and kitchen essentials. The ep
Key takeaways
- Tower 28's Swipe Serum Foundation is specifically formulated for sensitive skin and is fragrance-free.
- Lenox and 16th Prep Pads feature a unique beaded texture designed to stimulate blood flow during hydration.
Main topics
- Skincare and Beauty
- Hair Care Innovations
Notable quotes
I have a big shopping addiction so I love sharing all the things that I loved buying this past month.
Conclusion
A comprehensive shopping guide for listeners looking to upgrade their
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:00) Hi everyone, we are back with my favorite time of the month and that is my monthly favorites. Today we're doing the August favorites. I have a big shopping addiction so I love sharing all the things that I loved buying this past month. Welcome to Glow Lab. We're gonna have a lot of fun and learn a lot together. Now I know I just said I love shopping but... We're going to start with beauty products. And you know that with beauty products, a lot of the time I'm sent them in PR. So I will note that. The first one is a foundation. If you are looking for a foundation that feels light and like a serum on your skin, like a skincare serum, then you have to try the new one from Tower 28. It's called the Swipe Serum Foundation. It comes in a lot. of different shades for lots of different skin tones. It's about $36, so it's reasonably priced as well. But what I really love about Tower 28 is they make every single product with sensitive skin in mind. And I really like that approach because at the end of the day, When it comes to your makeup products, when it comes to your skincare products, you can't guarantee that it's great for people with sensitive skin, but you can take things into account. You can absolutely think about the ingredients that you're putting into your product. You can think about whether it's got fragrance or doesn't, in this case, have fragrance. They even went as far as putting an ingredient that's antimicrobial for the skin. So it causes, again, less chances of skin sensitivity. So I really love this foundation. They even get it run by the National Eczema Foundation. So it's really interesting how they take this approach. because the founder, Amy, has dealt with eczema for a long time. I want to say all her life, probably, but she's dealt with it for a long time. So she really focuses on that when it comes to this brand. And I love that they take this approach because a lot of people at the end of the day, even if you don't have sensitive skin, a lot of us have dealt with skin issues, some kind of skin sensitivity. Like for instance, for me, I've been dealing with years now of perioral dermatitis around my mouth area. So the fact that this serum doesn't make it more irritated is really great for me. It makes me want to use it more, but it also looks good. It's like a medium coverage foundation. So it's very light on the skin. You can build it up if you want to, or you can keep it looking really natural. And in the humidity right now in Miami in August, it was so, so hot outside, so, so wet outside. And this wore beautifully, just like skin. Okay, next up is a skincare product. I'm not usually the kind of person that wants you to go buy a tub of something. But this product is really innovative to me. I didn't think it was at first, if I'm being really honest. Because I looked at it, I was like, I've seen this before, especially with K-Beauty. But... It is different. It's the Prep Pads from Lenox and 16th. If you don't know about this brand, it's actually a brand by one of my favorite people. I've actually had her on the podcast, I think more than once at this point, but Amy Peterson. She's an esthetician in Miami and one of my absolute favorite people to go see whenever I need any of my laser treatments. I go see all the ladies that work in her practice because they're all fantastic and they're all beautiful and so much fun to be around. But it's her latest skincare product and it's basically a skin prep. product. Whenever you think of these, you know, these pads that come in a tub like this, a lot of the time for me, I'm thinking like toning. or even more so, I'm thinking exfoliation. This is really hydration and barrier repair. And what I especially love about these pads, they're fairly large and you can stick your fingers into them. On one side, it's very typical, a typical kind of pad. And that's what I start with is I put it on my skin, let that hydration really sink in from the serum that it's soaked in. But then when you flip it around, I've never actually seen this type of texture before. It has this like almost beaded texture on the other side. And when you rub it onto your face, it feels like you're getting a massage. It's very stimulating. And I can't begin to explain it because I've never really felt something like this before. It's not the same kind of massage you get from like Gua Sha or from using like a roller or any kind of tool like this. These little beads are very interesting because it almost feels like you're tickling the skin isn't even the right word. It's like. It just makes it feel like you're stimulating your skin, like you're stimulating the blood flow and everything. And I really like what it's doing for my face, especially before I put on makeup because I'm getting that hydration that I obviously need right before I apply my makeup. But then I'm also getting that stimulation. And I think for women, as we start to age as well, we lack that stimulation. Like when you think about babies and children, they have those rosy cheeks and everything. And it's because they have so much really great blood circulation. But for us, it's. to slow down. Like I remember Renee Rouleau, who's a celebrity esthetician. She tells me all the time that she lays with her head hanging over the side of the bed so that she can bring that blood flow back to her face and back to her skin. And I feel like you're getting that kind of stimulation without irritating your face. And I think that's a really big one because whenever people use tools on their face to massage, sometimes I'm worried that they're getting a little bit too rough. It's impossible. to be rough with these pads. They're really, really nice and I highly recommend them. The next beauty product is one that I'm very proud of because it's from my brand, Playa. It is our new perfumed dry shampoo. It is amazing. For me, I feel like... I'm a dry shampoo girl. I've been using dry shampoo for years. I took a little break because I felt like it was making my scalp a little bit more irritated. It turned out it's that I have scalp psoriasis. So I just have an especially sensitive scalp and it gets more flaky. So we kept that in mind in developing this dry shampoo. We wanted it to be different from other dry shampoos on the market because so many of us use dry shampoo, but so many of the dry shampoos are exactly the same thing. They're just like... powdery. They leave your hair at the roots looking a little bit powdery and almost like a white cast on them. It doesn't feel nice. It gets sticky. It gets itchy. All of this stuff, right? So with this dry shampoo, first off, we call it perfumed because it smells like our Made in Miami scent. So it brings this like Miami elevated scent to it that's really sexy and it's really a strong scent. So by the way, I have actually seen comments from people, very few, but... Some comments from people saying that our products are too strong, like the scent is too strong. And I guess in some ways that's a compliment to me and the team because this is what we've been going for is making sure that you really get fragrance, but in a different way with your hair care products and with your body care products. So that's something that we're going for with this dry shampoo. It really does have this elevated scent to it that lasts a little bit longer than usual. And it smells like you're putting perfume in your hair basically, but it's really good for your hair, especially for your scalp area. First, what makes it really special is that most dry shampoos use pretty basic ingredients to soak up the oil that you have on your scalp. Think like cornstarch or your typical powders. We decided to use something that's more commonly used in cosmetics, like in your face powders. It's called Oopsalite. And this is an ingredient that actually I discovered because of Danessa Merrick. She uses this in some of her face powders. And it's a really great ingredient because it's very, very light and it soaks up both oil and water. And it's really, really. great in the way that it's just cosmetically elegant is the way I like to explain it. So instead of it being this like blast of just like thick powder in your hair, you do put it on. It's an aerosol. So you do spray it on it at first. You will see a little bit of whiteness, but you notice right away that it starts to absorb everything very quickly. If your hair is not dirty, you might still get a little bit of a white cast to your hair if you have dark hair like mine. But if your hair is actually oily, it's going to soak up that oil really quickly and it's going to look and feel so much better. better than other dry shampoos that you've ever used. I promise you this. But then we took it a step further. We added an ingredient that actually helps with the volume of