BUZZWORD: FLEX-ILATOR

THIS WEEK: BEAUTY DIRECTOR LYNNE TRIES THE FIRST EVER FLEXIBLE EPILATOR

I’ll never forget my first epilator. I was 15 years old, stubbly of leg and with Saturday job money to burn. It took approximately 10 eye-watering seconds of running the yanking, pinching demon over my shins before I was packing it up for a refund.

Still, times and tech change. For 2020, Braun claims to have reinvented epilation in the form of Silk-epil 9 Flex, the first with a flexible head. It adjusts to your contours as you glide, keeping the tiny tweezers in close contact with your skin so more hair gets plucked out. Braun also claims this makes for a more comfortable epilation.

The full kit also comes with a facial epilation head, body brush, trimmer and shaving heads, plus the Braun Face Spa which strikes me as slightly random, and a way of trying to justify the £369 RRP. Yes, plucking hell! (In reality, you’ll pay far less – it’s likely to be discounted on Amazon.)

Being frank, no technical wizardry can overcome the basics of biology: hair and follicle cannot painlessly be parted. As I passed the Flex over my skin, the sensation started at mildly tickly/prickly on forearms and went several notches nastier on calves and thighs but nothing I couldn’t wince through. I can only speak for my own pain threshold; coarser hair is likely to hurt more.

I was impressed with hair removal itself. The Flex seemed to actually hoik hair out at the roots rather than just snapping half of it all, thus causing pain AND stubble. The wobbly head really came into its own on knobbly areas like knees.

It’s pricey, even at a discount, but I’ve tried several epilators since that fateful first and the Flex is the best I’ve found.