One of the strangest and most thrilling aspects of the English language is that it can be used to create compound words and phrases that evolve to carry meanings and implications that go far beyond the sum of their parts. Scarecrow, for example, doesn’t suggest frightened crows, but grumpy, hairbrush-wielding mothers and the way we feel on day three of Glastonbury. Artisanal simply means ‘made by hand, not machine’, but it conjures up feelings of resentment, farm shops, aching feet and candles that cost Diptyque prices but smell a little bit too outdoorsy. (Possibly of frightened crows, shitting themselves.)
So it is with Duty Free. It’s simply a legal term for a shop that is exempt from local taxes. But it means so much more than that. It’s a red faced man asking if he can buy some Jack Daniels ‘by the flagon’. It’s a Toblerone lightsabre fight, with the victor doomed to spend the next decade picking six kilos of nougat out of their molars. It’s a panic attack for the senses. Can we spray a bit of CK One on the backs of our hands without weepily remembering the blue eyed, floppy haired dreamboat sixth former who looked straight through us when we waved at them across a pyramid of ring binders at the local WH Smith? Nope.
Still, for the skincare fan and make up enthusiast, it has a different meaning again. Duty Free means classic. It means grown up. Although we might go on holiday seeking novelty and experience, airport shopping is a celebration of the tried and tested. For 11 months of the year, we want new and weird, CBD infused this and Vitamin C that. We’re not interested unless it contains an acid that was invented half an hour ago. But when we’re in Duty Free, we stock up on the peerless classics, the brands our mothers met through their mothers. This is what Duty Free means to true students of premium beauty and skincare. The Fab Five that we will keep returning to even when global political events turn everything into a Beyond The Thunderdrome style hellscape, European travel becomes obsolete and airports become something we have to explain to our grandchildren.
SHOP: The 5 Classic Beauty Products TO Buy At Duty Free
Duty Free Beauty Products
1 of 5Estee Lauder advanced night repair complex II – Duty Free RRP £106.55 for 100ml (size only available in Duty Free)
We must buy this while we can, because one day all of the supplies will be requisitioned for use in witness protection programs. To put it simply, put this on clean skin before bed and you will wake up with a brand new face. It's sold as an 'anti-ageing' product, and even if you have strong political objections to the term, or you're ageing in reverse like a soft skinned Benjamin Button Stewie Griffin hybrid, this will make you look as though you have been on a meditation retreat. For eight years. It's light, it's subtly fragranced, striking just the right balance between 'flowers' and 'medicine', and having the brown glass bottle on display in your bathroom will make you feel like Helena Bonham Carter in Suffragette.
2 of 5Elemis Pro Collagen Cleansing Balm Rose – Duty Free RRP £38.50
Some days, it feels as though all of the evils of the world are seeping into our faces. We feel so sad and sensitive that every spilled cup of coffee, every passive aggressive 'You're welcome' and every bobbly, unhoickable tights crotch is worrying at the very fabric of our souls. These are the days when we wish we could shake the irritation from our bodies and make everything disappear as though we were Etch-A-Sketch screens rendered new again. For days like this, you need Elemis balm, which dissolves all scraps of grime, each trace of dirt, and every single second that you were trapped in a lift with a gang of attendees from an halitosis support group. Put it in. Rub it in. Wash it off. Then be reborn, my child. Tomorrow is a new day. The rose limited edition is perfect for sensitive skins and smells like heaven. (I'm pretty sure that heaven is the Chelsea Flower Show with no queues.) If you're new to Elemis you can scoop up some exclusives on your travels. The Pro Collagen Duo and the Pro Collagen Eye Trio are only available at Duty Free – investment purchases, but great value ones. Gold bullion for the face, if you will.
3 of 5Kiehl’s Crème De Corps – Duty Free RRP £23.30 for 250ml
This classic makes me think of two things. Every single supermodel in the nineties slathering it on their limbs before slithering off for a threesome with Brad Pitt and a displaced Eastern European empress* (*for legal reasons, this is something that has only happened in my most fevered imaginings) - and Ilana from Broad City discovering that they have it on tap at Soulstice, and attempting to fill a carrier bag with it. Kiehl's products make a girl feel fancy, and fancy free. The brand is timelessly cool even though it's been with us since 1851. Charles Dickens probably used it. I bet he was the inspiration for the Beard Grooming Oil. Anyway, Crème De Corps is absorbed into your skin more quickly than a [REDACTED PARCEL DELIVERY COMPANY] drives legs it from your front door after pressing the bell, but unlike a [REDACTED PARCEL DELIVERY COMPANY] driver it leaves you smooth, soft and never makes you reddened or irritated.
4 of 5Bobbi Brown Illuminating bronzing powder – Duty Free RRP £26.65
This might be the most controversial sentence I ever write. Contourers come and go, but bronzer is forever. It's easy to fall into the hipster beauty, more is more, shade this and strobe that trap. But no matter how much we mess about with the new kids of the block, all we really want is to look as though we have stumbled into some perfect lighting at 5.45 on a June afternoon, and that's what this does. It has the slightest, sheerest, most adult hint of a shimmer – it's magical realism in make-up, the Barbara Kingsolver of cosmetics – and makes you will look lit from within, like a gorgeous summer pumpkin with better teeth.
5 of 5Jo Malone English Pear and Freesia cologne – Duty Free RRP £84.80 for cologne and lotion set.
I met my pal Paul on a writing retreat and decided that I wanted to be his friend forever when he revealed that he knew exactly where the Jo Malone concessions were located at every single airport in the UK and most of the US. Paul is a Wood Sage And Seasalt man, but I live for English Pear And Freesia, which smells exactly like I imagine Emma Thompson smelled when she played Eleanor Dashwood in Sense And Sensibility. It's part bone china and sighing, part secretly being ravaged in an orchard by a local farm hand and being betrayed by your own trail of pearl topped hair pins. A fruity floral for people who don't think they like either, it's one of the classiest items money can buy, and you can pick it up at the same time as a five kilo sack of M&Ms.