Beauty Fix: One very good reason to start using a night cream and more answers to your beauty questions

Every week our Beauty Fix columnist takes on your questions about makeup, skincare, hair and more and provides all the answers. Wondering if you should start using a night cream? Seeking a new scent for spring? Read on! Also, all our answers this week have one thing in common: they’ll help a charitable organization while also solving your beauty woes. Have a beauty question we haven’t answered? Email us at beautyfix@fashionmagazine.com.

I recently began colouring my hair and I think my usual shampoo and conditioner may be stripping my hair. What should I look for when replacing my go-to products?
Colouring your hair, whether it’s highlights a few times a year or a complete dye job every month, will impact the health of your hair. If you’ve just parlayed into the world of hair colour, you will probably want to look into a more hydrating shampoo and conditioner. In regards to hair colour fading or stripping due to your usual hair products, that’s very possible, especially if the formulas include sodium laurel sulfate, which is a soap agent that gives us the foaming action we so desire when washing hair, but also has a tendency to make hait feel straw-like! An award-winning duo like Pureology Limited Edition Hydrate Shampoo & Conditioner ($59 for both, pureology.com) is a safe bet for colour-treated hair that’s a bit shell-shocked from dyes. From each duo sold, $2.60 will be donated to Smart Water for Green Schools in association with Green Cross International to provide clean water to children in communities in Ghana.

I tend to gravitate towards gourmand scents, but they feel a bit overwhelming for spring or summer. What’s an alternative for these seasons?
Gourmand fragrances can lean towards the heady side of the scale when temperatures start rising, so it’s quite natural to want to switch it up when warmer weather takes over. Look for a fragrance that is more aquatic for a lighter smell overall that can be far more agreeable in the heat. A fresh scent that doesn’t force you to completely compromise your love for gourmand fragrance is Giorgio Armani Acqua di Gioia Acqua for Life edition (starting at $70, at department stores), which features notes of mint, brown sugar and lemon, which add a sweetness you will appreciate to a clean scent. Aside from the olfactory appeal of this fragrance, each bottle purchased of this edition of Acqua di Gioia provides 100 litres of safe drinking water to children in 27 communities in Charagua, Bolivia, where access to clean water is extremely scarce.

What should I be including in my evening bag for touch-ups? Space is so limited!
Isn’t that the truth? Every time my eyes lock in on a gorgeous minaudière, I have to stop myself to wonder what I could plausibly fit in such a tiny purse. I feel the concept of excusing oneself to go to the ladies’ room to touch up is rather ladylike, so why not have a ladylike compact to carry out such a timeless act? Estée Lauder’s Evelyn Lauder Dream Compact ($88, esteelauder.com) is a heart-shaped compact that contains a translucent pressed powder with an accompanying puff that is ideal for eliminating traces of unwanted shine. This compact is the perfect size for an evening bag (leaving plenty of space for other necessities, such as your lip product of choice for the evening) and it’s refillable, which will make it an essential for your evening bag for years to come. Evelyn Lauder founded the Breast Cancer Research Foundation in 1993, and in honour of her memory, 100 per cent of the retail price of this compact will go towards the foundation, which works to raise awareness of breast cancer and to fund breast cancer research worldwide.

My hands and cuticles seem to be dried out by normal hand soap. Which ingredients should I keep an eye out for when choosing a hand soap?
As we all know, we’re at the tail end of the most avid hand-washing season of the year, but that doesn’t mean we’ll suddenly be sudsing up less now that spring has sprung. Germs and bacteria are still a concern on public transit and in the workplace, so it’s important to continue to make it a priority to wash hands thoroughly with soap, especially when you’re just getting home from spending time outside the household. Keep a bar of L’Occitane Women’s Day soap ($9, at L’Occitane boutiques) in the soap dish. It’s a vegetable-based soap made with shea butter, which is heralded for its incredibly moisturizing and restorative properties for dry skin. One hundred percent of the retail price of one bar of this soap goes towards three bricks in the construction of literacy centres for women in Burkina Faso, West Africa, where the shea butter is harvested and then produced into these soap bars. Stock up for a wonderful cause that empowers women!

Should I be using a night cream?
I think most people would say it heavily depends on your age, but I think skincare is about being proactive and preventative measures and feel that most people can benefit from a night cream that incorporates an anti-aging benefit or few. Yves Rocher Anti-Wrinkle Night Care ($22, yvesrocher.ca) is a rich formula (so use sparingly!) that consists of 98 per cent natural ingredients, namely organic alfalfa extract. Alfalfa leaves contain the entire range of B-vitamins, as well as vitamins A, D, E and K, which are all incredibly helpful in repairing and strengthening skin overnight, so that’s a pretty powerful extract working for you. As a part of the United Nations Environment Program, Yves Rocher has committed to planting 50 million trees by the end of 2015. This purchase of this particular night cream (and many other products) each results in a tree being planted by Yves Rocher on your behalf!

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