The Beauty Products I Buy On Repeat

Here are some beauty products I buy on repeat. And I know what some of you will be thinking. Wowee, you’ll be thinking. Big deal, you utter twerp. We all have beauty products we buy repeatedly: it’s just called liking something.

But here’s the thing: I routinely get sent beauty samples as part of my job as a beauty content-creator and at any one time I have multiple versions and iterations of nearly every single type of beauty product, all waiting to be tested.

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I tell you this not to be a prize prat show-off (fifteen years in, I love that testing beauty samples is part of my work, but it is most definitely work) but to drive home how much of a big deal it is to spend money on a mascara if you already have eight brand new ones on your desk awaiting appraisal. You must really, really bloody love that mascara you’re buying. It means you can’t risk time without it, and that you’re willing to bet that most of the new launches won’t come close to knocking it from the top spot.

Same with fake tan, same with bath oils, same with hair styling creams that smooth dry ends: if there’s one that you’d go out and buy again and again, despite the fact that you have four gradual tanners, a plethora of bath oils and an entire plasterers bucket (don’t ask) of styling creams that need to be tried out, isn’t that just the most immense sign that something is absolutely brilliant?

Anyway, all this to say: I finished a load of beauty bits and here are the things that I would buy again and again. The first three are visible to all subscribers, the rest of them are for those with an upgraded subscription. (Which you can do here, if you fancy treating yourself to more Crilly Content and accessing my most closely-guarded secrets. It’s £3.50 per month.)

Aromatherapy Associates Bath and Body Oil:

I wang on about Aromatherapy Associates all the time. Their oils, blended specifically to relax you or to balance you or to de-stress you or to revive (strangely, revive is the one I use the least yet possibly the one I need the most!) really do work wonders on me. They do exactly what they promise to do. Half a capful of Bath and Shower Oil into a warm, already-run tub and I am away with the fairies into the world of total relaxation.

I have never found another brand that truly competes with Aromatherapy Associates in this particular beauty/wellness space: the potency and quality of the oils is superb and I feel as though the blends have been so carefully curated. Everything feels like the most enormous decadence.

They currently have 20% off sitewide here using the code MAY20 so it’s a good time to take the plunge if you’ve always fancied treating yourself. At this price point they should be firmly a luxury buy, but they’re now so intertwined into my daily routine that I must consider them more of an essential. They should make these oils available on prescription…

Aveeno PHA Cleanser:

OK so I haven’t bought this one again and again - yet - it has just been the once, but I appreciate the reasonable price point of this very gently exfoliating cleanser and can see it being a repeat buy. If you have very sensitive skin then this might be the closest you’ll get to an acid-activated brighten-up. I massage this in on dry skin, leave it on for a couple of minutes whilst my hair conditioner gets to work (this is/was my in-shower cleanser for morning cleanses) and then rinse off.

It currently has 40% off here - and it was a good price anyway. I really rate the Aveeno face products.

Philip Kingsley’s Flaky/Itchy Scalp Range:

OK, it’s my “if I could only use one product for the rest of my life” choice from the world of haircare: the shampoo and conditioner from Philip Kingsley’s Flaky/Itchy range. The reason I like these so much is that they are treatment products, and very effective ones at that, but they also work brilliantly at doing the normal stuff you want your haircare to do. Leave the hair clean but not stripped, for example, and conditioned but not weighed down. I have fine hair and a tendency towards an itchy scalp: this range is just perfection, for me. The shampoo (faintly apple scented, very pleasant) leaves my hair and scalp the cleanest it can ever feel, but never dried out. The conditioner is really very surprisingly intensive yet rinses off beautifully with no waxy or greasy residue and no heaviness to the finish.

I’m such a repeat buyer of this range that I recently made the ultimate product commitment and bought the huge one litre bottles of both products. I worked out that it would be loads cheaper in the long run. (I got 20% off by signing up to their newsletter, too.) And this all harks back to what I said at the beginning, about it being a big deal when I repeat buy stuff: I have a cupboard filled with haircare waiting to be tested, reported back on, reviewed, featured (if I love it enough) and so to spend big money on the same sort of product…well. It’s surely a good sign.

I bought direct from their website here.

Now onto the secret section and four more products that I will happily repeat buy, ignoring the press samples that are patiently queueing up for my consideration…