BEAUTY CLINIC

Kate Shapland signs of

am often asked where I get my inspiration for this column, and while there has never been a time when I haven’t had something to say about beauty, the content is invariably drawn from you. Week after week for 12 years, alongside industry news, reader letters have sustained me. And I could gladly go on, tapping away at the keyboard, delivering more words on the subject. But it is time to move on.

In my ofce, fled with every issue of the magazine, are your Dear Kates. One reader, who frst wrote to me in 2005 when she was 80, has now written 14 letters, including a fourpager lamenting the loss of Rochas, and another requesting hairstylist Sam McKnight’s phone number to book a perm. There are hundreds of letters and emails, and I’ve replied to them all, either via this column or personally.

Much has changed in beauty in recent years. Strikingly, the volume has gone up – there is more of everything: more brands,

Iservices, more noise. A visit to the beauty counter is like an assault on the senses without the quiet confdence that comes from knowledge, which, as a calm voice in the storm, I hope I’ve helped to instill. Interpreting the business for you is what this column has been all about.

Now, though, I’m taking a little diversion to nurture Legology, the brand I developed with a French chemist as an answer to cellulite and heavy legs. So it’s time to say farewell to this magazine, and to thank you for your precious encouragement over the years. The imprint I hope that my approach to this subject leaves is that beauty – from fragrance to facials, foundation and the humble lipstick – is there simply to make a positive diference to our lives. And it’s something to be enjoyed.