The 5 best tricks of the slow beauty movement: how to rediscover your 'old' products

Natalie Hemengül

7.1.2026

Translation: machine translated

Pictures: Natalie Hemengül

Attention! Decelerating beauty content follows. You might be crossing a few things off your shopping list after reading this article.

«New is always better», claims series character Barney Stinson (How I Met Your Mother) for the entire nine seasons. His credo is particularly popular in the beauty corner of the internet. One novelty chases the next, hauls are clicked better than the good old make-up tutorial and trends beat flick flacks. Sometimes I join in (yay) and sometimes I just get dizzy from the fast pace.

That's why I've decided to put the brakes on a bit and focus on what I already have. Keyword «Slow Beauty». It's not easy with so many distractions. Because the new is definitely more exciting - at least when it comes to make-up. But how can you resist this tingling sensation? My approach is to nurture the relationship with what I already have with care and attention. It has to stay exciting, fresh and spicy. Almost like a long-term relationship. A look into my bag of tricks.

1. regular cleansing

What is used a lot often looks like this. Even if I use my make-up rather carefully, after a certain amount of time it looks like it's been battered by fate. Coils smeared with lip gloss, jars and mirrors dusted with powder, greasy brushes, dull lip liner, fingerprints on bottles and so on. A little «spring clean» for the dressing table will make the old shine in a new light.

2. the game with magnets

Magnetic pans allow eyeshadows to be lifted out of a palette. This allows you to rearrange them. Or you can swap colours from two different palettes. Which colours sit next to each other and which new colour schemes you create with them can completely change your perspective on the product and perhaps lead to new creative looks. Just give it a try. It's always fun because you can slip into the role of a product developer for a moment.

3rd move

My next tip goes in a similar direction. Do you have a product that you love, but the packaging is giving up the ghost? And do you have a product whose packaging you love, but the contents themselves aren't your cup of tea? Then bring the two lost souls together.

Example 1:
The face palette, a promotional gift. Big and clunky. I only like one shade: the highlighter. So I remove it from the palette. That saves space. You can read how to do this here. I keep the highlighter in a jar for the time being - until I find a better home for it: the case of a lip care product, a goodie from the advent calendar. It's the perfect size and I have an abundance of lip balm anyway. So I scrape out the balm, clean everything and stick the highlighter pot in there.

Example 2:
I love the neon pink packaging of my Cushion foundation: sturdy plastic and a mirror round off the product. Only the foundation colour doesn't match my skin tone at all. At the same time, in the same drawer, my favourite Essence powder is complaining about a plastic lid that has separated from the hinge. So I carefully remove the powder. With a little fiddling, I transplant it into the pink-coloured case.

4. test new combinations

Finding new colour combinations is not only fun, but also opens up a wide range of options. Let's take a standard brown cream eyeshadow as an example. If you top it with a glittering eyeshadow or powder highlighter, your look will look completely different. Or you can mix it with another cream eyeshadow to create a new shade, use it as eyeliner, bronzer or who knows what else.

Over the years, I've discovered lots of cool combinations and ways to use them for different purposes: Cheek blush with highlighter, highlighter with lipstick, lipstick as blush. I think you understand where the ship is sailing. By the way, you can test colour pairings on the back of your hand beforehand.

The same principle also applies to your nail design. Paint a few spots of nail polish on a white piece of paper and let them dry thoroughly. Then brush different top coats or different coloured polishes over them and see what beautiful shades emerge.

5. make-over

With a little patience, you can repaint packaging designs that bore you, wrap them in pretty paper or stick stickers on them. This is what happened with an eyeshadow palette whose brand I no longer want to support. A few stickers in the right places made the branding disappear without further ado. I haven't finished yet. New stickers will follow soon.

Natalie Hemengül

Senior Editor

Natalie.Hemenguel@digitecgalaxus.ch

As a massive Disney fan, I see the world through rose-tinted glasses. I worship series from the 90s and consider mermaids a religion. When I’m not dancing in glitter rain, I’m either hanging out at pyjama parties or sitting at my make-up table. P.S. I love you, bacon, garlic and onions. more

Follow

---

Beauty

Follow topics and stay updated on your areas of interest

Follow topic

---

Guide

Practical solutions for everyday problems with technology, household hacks and much more.

Show all

These articles might also interest you