Featuring 5 favourites for September – beauty, fashion and home favourites. An M&S cardigan, bathroom storage, lipstick and scent – reviewed for you!

Hurrah, top marks for me, please, because I’ve managed to do the monthly favourites in the month they were the favourites of! And if that’s not the most confusing, possibly grammatically inaccurate sentence you’ve ever read then I don’t know what is.

I have two interiors favourites, a snazzy little cardigan (counts as fashion) and a couple of brilliant beauty bits that have made me scrunch up my toes with delight. Let’s get going:

M&S Animal Print Cardigan, £17.50 at M&S here*

My first favourite has had many (three) admiring comments in real life and hundreds (about a dozen) online but it’s not the mass adulation (“lol”!) that has made me love it. It’s just a really neat, soft M&S cardigan that provides a welcome splodge of print on a dull day. And at £17.50 you just can’t go too far wrong. With high-waisted jeans, with a full skirt and nipped-in waist? Just add pearls…

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My second is a tricky one to give any real information on: it’s the floor-to-ceiling storage in my new bathroom. I still haven’t managed to actually clean the bathroom windows properly and so the “reveal” pictures of the whole thing are slow to happen, but as wood is more forgiving in photos than glass I’m happy to show you the cupboards!

The carcasses are made from brown Valchromat, which is a coloured MDF and well worth looking at if you want your cupboards to be anything other than white on the inside and don’t want to have to get them painted. The doors are made from Sapele that has been waxed down to a deeper and richer colour and the grain is just beautiful.

I’ve been yearning for good bathroom storage for years and years – somewhere to put all of the products I’m currently trying out, as well as the solid favourites – and now that I have it, I just can’t believe my luck. It’s like opening the doors into beauty Narnia every time I go in there, and so much easier than rootling through a million sample storage boxes. It means I’m beginning to try more stuff but that also I’m becoming more organised about singling things out to write or talk about. Expect lots of new beauty content after a bit of a hiatus!

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Victoria Beckham Posh Lipstick in Pout, £38.50 here*

I’ve mentioned this particular lipstick before, I’m sure of it, but it’s so pricey that I don’t think I’ve made too much of a song and dance about it. However, it’s precisely the colour (just a hint of pink) and texture (glossy, balmy plumpness) that I love and so I’d be doing you a disservice not to mention it. I have to say that the Beauty Pie lipsticks* are very similar in texture – I just need to find the right shade! On it.

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Mauli Sacred Union Scent, £68 at Space NK here*

I say something very rude about the effects of this hair and body oil in the video below. You should watch it to find out exactly what. But to give you a hint, every time I dab it on after my nightly bath I’m almost guaranteed…a good time. It’s like it has some sort of magical seduction powers. I don’t think Mr AMR (need to find another name for him now that I’ve retired the “A Model Recommends” branding!) even notices the scent itself, it just seems to have subliminal effects.

Anyway, putting that particular benefit aside, it’s also just a gloriously grounding and relaxing blend of oils and I was pleased as punch that Mauli sent me a bottle of it. I had previously been using a teeny sample for many years, so that gives you an idea of just how potent the stuff is – I’m now sorted for life, I think!

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Umbra Flip Hooks, £19.03 at Amazon here*

I loved these flip hooks so much that I went back and bought four more. Well, three more flip hooks and something that looks a bit like pan pipes. All in the warm, rich wood tone that matches what we’ve done with the rest of the house – I do like a materials tie-in!

The flip hooks are metal and they either sit flush into the solid back bar or you can flip them down to hang things. They are so brilliantly made and finished, really robust but also very stylish and elegant. There are loads of different colourways and lengths of these flip hooks – check the link above for some, and the one below for others. There doesn’t seem to be one site that does the whole range together, I had to go to the Aspen site to find the walnut and brass that I show in the video.

Umbra is such a great interiors brand – they do beautifully designed accessories that would normally just be boring and functional. Like bins, mirrors, hooks, towel holders and so on. Some of their stuff reminds me a bit of Alessi, but overall it’s less quirky than that. Highly recommended, all of it. You can find their website with all of their products here, I bought my brass and walnut ones at Aspen here.

You can also watch my: 5 BEAUTY AND FASHION FAVOURITES | AUGUST 2021 | AD video.