“The best facial is what you put inside your body” says Elle. Here, she shares her skincare essentials - inside and out.
Growing up in Australia, I was able to spend endless days in the sun. I‘d either be at the beach or heading there! Naturally, this was great for my vitamin D levels but perhaps not so great for my skin health. I lathered myself in baby oil to nail that iconic seventies' golden tan.
Having said that, I was fairly blasé about my skin, barely looking in the mirror most days. I certainly didn’t have a skincare routine. As a teenager, I had my fair share of pimples to which I would apply toothpaste and Aussie teen rite of passage, Clearasil.
I definitely consider my father’s olive skin and dark eyes a major influence whereas my mother was fair with blue eyes. Both of them still have wonderful skin for their age.
Later, when I was modelling, I had to be fastidious about removing my makeup. It was the eighties and nineties so think full hair and full makeup, leaving nothing untouched. These excesses were documented by iconic photographers such as Ellen von Unwerth, Patrick Demarchelier and Herb Ritts.
Post-shoot, I would scrub it all off – sometimes even triple-cleansing. Clean, fresh skin was a model’s calling card. At that time, I associated beauty with youth and wanted to do all I could to maintain it. I believed that treating skin topically was the answer and I couldn’t see any alternative at the time.
It wasn’t until I was around 40, when I’d become the fittest I’ve ever been, that I saw that real beauty starts from making meaningful lifestyle choices. I still wasn’t identifying beauty as an internal process, but I was beginning to sense that the answer was in my hands. It would take another decade to fully grasp that.
In 2014, I was burned out, irritable and exhausted. I first visited nutritionist Dr. Simone Laubscher PhD’s London clinic and I remember telling her about my skin being particularly dry, dull and prone to rashes and hives. She prescribed me 30 days of her anti-inflammatory nutritional greens powder.
After just a few weeks, I was feeling better, lighter and brighter. The quality of my skin improved noticeably and people’s comments confirmed it.
Ever since, I’ve felt driven to change the age-old perception of beauty being founded on youth. It never really resonated with me. Your natural beauty can express only when you are well.
Meeting Dr. Simone changed the course of my skin… and my life! (You can read in my previous column here how that encounter birthed an ingestible beauty business).
Those super greens are now known as The Super Elixir™. The Collagen Elixir, our marine collagen-infused powder, and The Skin Elixir, our powerful skin-supporting greens, came later. Today, these three make up my inner three-step protocol responsible for having transformed my skin.
Continue reading over at Get the Gloss .