Best Foot Forward

With little chance of a trip to the salon for a thorough foot slough-and-primp, we’re looking at how to achieve the best possible results from home.

First off, spend a few minutes soaking your feet in warm water. Add a handful of something soothing, like Westlab’s Cleanse Bathing Salts, a blend of Himalayan and Epsom salts pepped up with the addition of citrusy essential oils. £6.99,

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This will help soften but should be considered the pre-prep to the main event: that inevitable build-up of hard, dead skin will need to be physically removed for tootsies to truly flourish. Before you reach for the parmesan grater, check out exfoliating foot socks. There are a number of options, all following the same broad premise: wear for an hour or so, rinse, and after around a week the dried out top layer will start to drop away.

We tried the SVR XERIAL Peel Exfoliating Foot Mask (£17, feelunique.com) with active ingredients including a combination of urea and skin-safe acids. Unlike other exfoliating socks this will start working in around four days, and usually the full procedure (a miraculous shedding of dry, roughened skin) is complete within a week or so. There’s no denying that you need to make your peace with the fact that you will be leaving fragments of skin wherever you go. Ideally, they should be used before sandal-season starts, but if flapping around in flip-flops whilst self-isolating has had a deleterious effect on your feet, bite the bullet, live with the moulting, and soon beautifully soft feet should emerge from the desiccation, like a butterfly from a chrysalis.

A less dramatic option is to slough off manually. Traditionally pumice stone has been deployed for this purpose. A fabulous alternative comes courtesy of Tropic Skincare. Their Polishing Foot Pebble is described by our tester as “brilliant. It’s effective and quite deceptively abrasive. I doubt anyone would need to use it more than once a week but it’s transformed my feet.” This foaming bar contains sand and volcanic ash to exfoliate and peppermint to leave feet fresh. £9, tropicskincare.com

When the hard skin has been consigned to memory, get to grips with moisturising. An old trick is to slather on cream just before bedtime then pop on a pair of socks and in the morning your feet may just be unrecognisable (Lotil have a great offering for feet and Vaseline also does the job). Another option is to invest in a foot mask. We love Masque Bar’s Intensive Moisturising Foot Mask – same drill as the sock, but worn for just 30 minutes. Once the time is up, instead of rinsing off the excess, massage the remaining Shea-butter-rich

serum into your feet and enjoy the revitalising zing of peppermint and apple. £9.99 for two pairs,

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Once your feet are buffed and baby-soft, clip and file the nails in a horizontal, going across the foot – any sort of shaping could risk ingrown toenails (not glamorous).

Make sure you’re not dragging the file backwards and forwards across the nail as this can cause splitting, but instead firm sweeps from one side to the other.

Finally, a lick of polish. Although darker shades are perennially chic, take advantage of the summer months to lighten up. Sorbet shades have been popular for the past couple of years but we’re all about hologram nails, courtesy of Diego Dalla Palma Polish (£9.50, marksandspencer.com). Toe separators help in attaining a smudge-free pro-effect, a clear base will keep the nailbed stain-free, and a good top coat will help the look to last – we like Nail HQ’s Gel Top Coat (£6.49, fragrancedirect.co.uk). Don’t forget a drop or two of cuticle oil or, if you’ve none to hand, olive oil will do the trick.

Sophie Elkan

THIS MONTH I’M INSPIRED BY… BILLIE EILISH

If my lockdown had a soundtrack, Eilish’s melodious vocals would be a constant, meandering through suspended days. My teenage daughter and I aren’t just sharing a house, but also a music app, meaning her downloaded tracks fi ll my internal space via headphones on my daily walk.

The run of good weather has been largely unbroken, and my evening perambulation a form of daily salvation: a marker that the working day is over. I’ve found myself drawn to music which fi ts the golden hour, when the light is soft but the sun still bakes my skin. There’s been some Roxy Music, a little George, David Sylvian, bits of Dylan and – when a more upbeat tempo is required to power me along the fi nal stretch – bursts of Beyoncé, Snoop and yes, some Streisand. But it’s Eilish whom I savour. Storing her up for the most beautiful parts of Cutteslowe Park, knowing that the combination of the sun’s gentle heat, the dreamy, almost somnambulant, vocals and the beauty around me will deliver a high as palpable as that of my Friday night G&T.

Back to the teenager. Her Instagram story was dominated for a while by a short fi lm, ‘Not My Responsibility’, made by Eilish and originally produced for her 2020 tour. Bathed in soft light, the singer slowly strips. For anyone who hasn’t spent the past few months in teenage company, BE is famously draped when appearing in public, having stated an intention to defl ect attention from her corporeal self. When news of the fi lm broke in our house my fi rst question, ‘why take her clothes off?’ was followed up with a brief rant on why female artists are so often seen (near) naked; it’s never Sheeran’s schlong on show. Once I’d got it out of my system, I watched what must be acknowledged to be a pretty powerful fi lm in which Eilish’s otherworldly voice challenges the viewer: “Do you know me? ... Is my value based only on your perception, or is your opinion of me not my responsibility?”

I may not be in Eilish’s legions of young fans, but it never hurts to be reminded at any age that taking on others’ opinions is a choice we make; to accept or reject. At a time when so much has been restricted, the space to consider the choices I make has been a gift and one I hope does not relinquish once the tempo of daily life speeds up again.