Getting your daily dose

AFTER THE BEAUTIFUL EXCESSES of a busy winter and spring, there is nothing like a trip to the beach to reconnect body and soul. The opening of HipTique in Santa Monica was a nice place to literally start fresh after our last splurge for the season with the MTV Movie Awards. Though there were a few indulgences with artisanal cheese, treats from CookieCasa and Hello Kitty Wine (which, by the way, hails from Italy and is actually very high quality—no Hello hangover here!), guests received some serious pampering. The setting: Hamptons, NY-refinement with just the slightest hint of LA hippie flair.

We began our afternoon getting a hand from staffers of boutique manicure shop BellaCures (co-managed by Chelsea, who hails from Nelson, New Zealand, right) before moving on facials from Karuna (Elyse) and Red Flower (Leyla), Spa Tiara’s massages and sampling of Coola’s tinted sunscreen and protective products and very useful blotting powder papers from Mai Couture in handy carrying cases.

In a secret location just east of Beverly Hills’ shopping CBD and along Venice Beach the following week, celebs and press got their literal groove on at the Muscle Milk Fitness Retreat, which not only allowed press and celebrities to sample Los Angeles’ best trainers and fitness experts hands on, but also try out the most innovative fitness tools by Power Plate, Art of Strength, Spri, and Core Sticks. After addressing their body’s needs, they took care of their souls, via Spa treatments provided by the Equinox Spa.

Guests including Sasha Grey, Stacy Keibler, Brooke Mueller and Amber Stevens, who, along with trend-scanning journalists were outfitted in the latest performance apparel from C9 by Champion for Target (serious fitness style and great quality fitness fabrics at insanely good prices!), Oakley Sunglasses (we loved the Jackie-O and Ray-Ban-like styles adapted for our afternoon runs and hikes), Everlast boxing gloves and Polar heart rate monitor-watches that take the guesswork out of training (and look good as well). Everybody involved also got some life-altering advice and workouts, and it seems very apt that Ms Mueller, with her major life transition to single motherhood, took an empowering boxing class with celebrity fitness expert, Jarett del Bene.

All told, the most valuable thing we all got from our fitness sessions was some sound advice from trainers like Jennifer Cohen and Sarah Mitchell.

‘A person can do two workouts in the time it takes to go to and from the gym, especially with traffic,’ said Cohen, who taught the useful session on getting your workout without a gym. ‘What I am doing is removing the excuse factor with a workout that enables anybody with a busy lifestyle to bring exercise into their lives. With something like this, you do not have to work out for 90 minutes to get the results you want, as long as you try to do a little something every day. It can also be cost-effective, given all you need is your own body weight and perhaps a few dumbbells if you choose. The secret here is to use several different muscle groups at once, to make it efficient and effective. It is great for people who travel or balancing work and parenthood, especially as you can even use furniture and the floor at home, a park, office or your hotel room to do squats, lunges and the like.’

Mitchell, meanwhile, notes that while the fitness levels and dance experience of the celebrity attendees were a little higher than average, the most important thing anybody could do was simply to try.

‘If you are not a professional dancer, but you want to use dancing as a way to get fit, watch your favourite dance competition and when you see a move you like, mimic it,’ she advises. ‘Even if you can’t copy the moves exactly, but you like the movements, feel free to add your own flavour to the steps, and do what feels right and good for your body. The important thing is to just get moving.’

Though we’re still working on our fitness regimen, we decided to get a jump start on our summer makeover by trying out ICON’s new Stained Glass add-on hair colour service. Unlike traditional salon hair colour, which is good (and often essential) on its own, the newly launched Stained Glass service brings an almost blinding sheen to the hair’s surface along with a blast of colour that can be tailored to be as natural or as wild as the client wants-with shades ranging from subtle Crimson Coffee, Deliciously Dark and Summer Sunshine to wilder hues like Radioactive Red, Vortex Violet and Obsessively Orange. For pure shine, a client can also opt for the transparent sparkle of Glass.

On another level, these translucent Stained Glass pigments are also clear on a chemical level, as the line is peroxide-free, alcohol-free, paraben-free, ammonia-free and vegan. To maintain our colour for the promised 30 days, we also took home ICON’s nutritive India Hair Oil (combining argan, moringa and amber oils), Cure replenishing spray, Mesh styling cream (for curls) and Task powder (for perfect up-dos and back combing). We will be back in a few months to report on our continued use of these products and services, as repeated salon and home treatments are meant to improve and de-age hair.

Though the swanky and sprawling Beverly Hills backyard pool deck setting, several attractively attired women and Hanky Panky lingerie party favours jauntily displayed in the home’s outdoor par made the event feel like a bridal shower, it was actually New York publicist Alison Brod staging a coming-out party for the latest must-haves from top clients Via Spiga, Stila, Hanky Panky and Zico Cocoanut Water.

While cocoanut water is getting raves as either nature’s great chemical-free energy drink or cocktail mixer, the celebrity stylists and select LA press were quite taken with Via Spiga’s 2011 fall and holiday collections, focused on animal pony skin prints, adorned flats, boots with subtle but striking hardware and towering heels. That said, everybody went home happy with something espadrille-inspired from the 2011 summer collection. Stila’s latest collection-always a favourite with professional make-up artists-mixed the practical (a primer-bronzer potion in a DNA-inspired presentation), sugar candy-coloured lip glosses and a hit of Lady Gaga (i.e. lots of glam hues and glitter, though the make-up artists explained more conservative types could tone the look down to suit their more office-y lifestyle). •

Elyse Glickman is US west coast editor of Lucire. Leyla Messian is a senior writer for Lucire.

Hello Kitty wine at HipTique, Santa Monica


Polar


Oakley


Icon


Via Spiga


Stila


Waiter at the Alison Brod event


Hanky Panky