Dermalogica’s Holiday Skin & Hair Skin Savvy Event

Earlier this week I got to check out Dermalogica’s Holiday Skin & Hair session at the company’s King St. space.

I've been to one previous event at the Dermalogica offices but it was sponsored by Loose Button and was free. This one was strictly a Dermalogica affair and required a $20 donation. For that $20 guests were going to learn tricks for getting holiday party-ready skin and hair and get a gift bag.

I know that people are always curious about the gift bags so let’s get that out of the way now. In our bag we received:

• A 59 ml bottle of Precleanse
• A 13 g bottle of Daily Microfoliant
•  A 50 ml bottle of Mulit-active Toner
• A seven ml bottle of Skin Hydrating Booster
•  A foil pack of the new Mulitvitamin Power Serum 

I've really been wanting to try the Precleanse so I'm thrilled that it was included. I'm also looking forward to using all of the other products I received.

Okay, onto the actual event itself. Compared to the Loose Button one, this event had, initially, fewer people and a less impressive selection of snacks (where did the yummy cupcakes go?).  But there was free wine so that was good.

At around 6:30 pm we were asked to take a seat inside the teaching room. Suddenly the place filled up with women. I have no idea where they all came from but by the time we got started, the place was packed.

My friend says "Hi!"

The seats were arranged around three long tables and everyone spot came with a mirror, a fabric headband, a product book and a pencil. Each table also contained a selection of Dermalogica products, as well as things like wet naps and squeeze bottles of water.

But it wasn't time to play with those items yet. After hearing a bit about Dermalogica’s FITE charity, which our $20 was going to support, we were introduced to the night’s guest speaker, hair stylist Kait Slattery from Salon Solis.

Kait was a wonderful speaker who was clear, confident and organized. She started her talk by introducing us to her favourite product lines (the always popular Mocconanoil, sustainable beauty brand Davines and something called I.C.O.N) and then went over what ingredients to avoid (alcohol and  Sodium laureth sulfate) and which ones to look for (argan oil). She also gave a nice little speech about how silicones can be great products as long as you wash every now and then with a clarifying shampoo to remove build up.

Then, after quickly reviewed six hot trends for winter hair (braids; twists; accessories; short, geometrical styles; fringe bangs and big hair)  she pulled out a hair dummy and got to work on showing us what she described as a day-to-night time hair style.

The day time part of this look involved tousled curls and a teased crown while the night time portion involved pulling those curls back into a messy but attractive up-do.  All three stages looked great and, thanks to Kait’s excellent instructions, seemed like looks I could achieve, if I had enough time. But there’s no way this would be day-to-night hair for me, curling my hair in the morning is simply something I don’t have time for.

I really liked that Dermalogica had set up a camera that broadcasted what Kait was doing to her hair dummy onto a screen behind her. This set-up let me easily see everything from how Kait was holding her comb to how she was sectioning the dummy’s hair.

Once we were done with the hair portion of the evening, we got to try all of those Dermalogica products that were on our tables and were let through a routine that we were told was  ideal for getting our skin holiday party ready. While this routine was a bit longer (and certainly much pricier) than my current one, I have to say that my skin did look amazing at the end.

We ended up the night with some draws (sadly neither my friend nor I one of the three awesome prizes that were up for grabs) and some time for shopping (I picked up a tube of the Renewal Lip Complex; it’s going to be part of my Christmas sock so watch for a review on it in January).

Overall, I really enjoyed this experience and would do it again. Yeah, it cost me $20 but my gift bag was worth far more than that and I really did learn some stuff. Also, since I both live and work near the King streetcar line, getting to the Dermalogica office is pretty easy for me.