Screen siren, Marlene Dietrich once railed at her photographer for producing a series of unflattering close-ups. “What’s wrong with you? Eight years ago you used to make me look marvellous,” she said. “I know but I was much younger then,” retorted the photographer. Undoubtedly, the obsession with eternal youth and beauty is not just a Dorian Gray hangover reserved for matinee idols, but a global fixation that fuels a multibillion dollar industry.

However, wisdom lies in walking the fine line between cosmetic beauty and wholesome wellness. We at Spice have dedicated this issue to combat the sedentary trends in racy urban lifestyles and their incumbent problems.

We begin with a grub crawl in search of healthy options on a decadent cruise aboard Celebrity Infinity, around Cape Horn, South America. Rugged beauty and four-course meals topped with crab martinis and tailed with crème brulee may seem like manna from heaven, but Spice does it differently. Between Chilean salmon and body sculpting classes, we find the perfect blend of hearth and heart to explode the myth of gaining a pound a day on a cruise ship.

But it’s not just what you put in your mouth that matters; it’s also what you slather on. Spice raids nature’s larder to cobble together a list of exotic ingredients that serve up the perfect elixirs. We journey to the Marajo Island in the Brazilian Amazon to discover the secret of the magnificent local macaws and parrots that fly to the ‘clay licks’ (white clay deposits on mountain cliffs) to eat clay, which then, nullifies the potentially toxic berries that the birds consume, with its antioxidant properties. From the humble Calendula flower to the Brazilian Acai berry, we pack a punch.

Of course, consummate health would be totally inadequate without the healing feeling of an almost karmic surrender to a massage therapist. Let imagination be your guide for a diamond massage carried out by 1.5 carats of diamonds; try and resist the allure of a mother of pearl body treatment that uses hand-crushed queen conch shell mixed with aroma-therapeutic oils; or simply go for gold with the body treatment at the Four Seasons Prague. Whether it’s jade or coconut, go native with the fruit of the earth.

From farm fresh tangerine scrubs to combating the ubiquitous stubble, Spice’s pot of surprises jostles between magic and mundane with effortless ease. We support the rugged spirit of individuality by handholding you through the most expensive shave in the world; all for the princely tag of $100,000. The Zafirro Iridium is a luxury razor that features hypoallergenic sapphire blades and a handle made from extremely rare and dense iridium. Available in a limited run of 99 razors, the blade remains as sharp as the first shave for a year, with the promise of complimentary re-sharpening for up to ten years. These blades are also atomically sharpened by high-energy, ionised particles to make blades less than 100 atoms across, or about 1/1000th the width of a human hair.

Now that’s what we call a cut above the rest; just like Spice.