☆ We've reached peak wellness, easy tips to train your brain, the weird state of the activewear industry

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Hey lovely,

Jasmine here, Editor of Daily Rituals, back with your Wellness Dose.

Thank you to everyone who has referred their friends, family & work besties to The Wellness Dose. I'll be sending out your goodies & Sephora gift cards this week!

We're also down to our last few tickets for our Manchester event on Friday 21st November - we've got one space left in the 5pm class and a couple of afterparty tickets to come and enjoy the vibe, try out the Fold bed for yourself & enjoy a drink or two in good company.

And before we get into it - if your Monday is feeling a little flat or overwhelming (it happens, November is a weird one!), here’s 2.5 minutes of free therapy to bring you back to you.

As always, thank you for being here. I'm so grateful for you.

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The best stories & updates that caught our eye this week → 

• 💰 The time is now: Last week, L'Oréal bought basically every luxury fragrance brand from Kering (the masterminds behind Gucci, Balenciaga, Bottega) in a $4.6 billion deal. Huge beauty conglomerates snapping up brands to expand their portfolios isn't new - Estée Lauder, Puig, and Shiseido have been doing it for years. But now? There's no luxury fragrance left on the table, a tried-and-tested category. So where will they look when they can't go up? They'll niche down (brands aimed at perimenopausal women, for example) and you guessed it - wellness. If you're building right now, consider creating something at the blurring lines of wellness and beauty, add a sprinkle of longevity and AI if it aligns with your skillset (like this), don't forget community-first marketing, and best believe you could be on their acquisition radar once you've got traction. 

• ⚰️ Don't Die: What do Kim K, Paris Hilton and Logan Paul all have in common? Apparently a love for biohacking king Bryan Johnson. They've all just invested in his longevity company Blueprint (to the tune of $60mil) to help him create a platform that will "combine medical testing, nutrition, prescriptions and advanced therapies with an AI health companion." Translation? You'll take another test, and it'll likely direct you to one of Bryan's many supplement lines to purchase. His goal? To make his "Don't Die" protocols accessible - and well, we're curious to see whether his definition of accessible lines up with ours. 

• 🧖 We've peaked: If you've ever been to a communal sauna experience (like ARC or Othership), you'll have witnessed someone dramatically wafting a towel around to push essential oils around the room. A little odd at first, but no less mesmerising. Well, those people are actually sauna masters. And the best just competed at the World Aufguss Championships - aka, the Olympics of sauna. The towel wafting (called Aufguss) is a sauna ritual blending heat, aromatherapy, rhythm and performance. Winners are judged on everything from heat distribution and technique to team spirit. Rumour has it that this soundscaped fresh snow room ritual stole the post-sauna show too. What a time to be alive when creating the best sauna experience is officially a competitive sport. So next time you witness the towel wafting, know that what looks effortless might actually be championship-level technique. Peak wellness is here.

• 🧠 Hot girls train their brain: If you're in the business of living a long and glowy life whilst staying as sassy & sharp as you are now, don't skip brain training. Some tips? According to neuroscientist Dr. Thomas Wood on the Perform Podcast, we need to try complex & novel tasks each week - like learning a new language or dance (extra points as it's often social too). Just like you train your glutes, he suggests splitting your workload into a training schedule for a better brain boost. Think: blocks of deep focused work, "zone 2" steady-state admin and emails, and dedicated rest in between. And then it's all the usual suspects: regular exercise, deep sleep, managing stress and staying hydrated. Listen to the full episode here. 

• ✨ Gimmick or glow? Apparently, there's not a category that Shark can't conquer. After their first foray into skincare tools with the CryoGlow mask earlier this year, they're back with a new at-home facial system - the FacialPro Glow. But not everyone's convinced. It's designed to give you a 5-step facial in just 10 minutes: suction, extraction, hydration infusion and some contrast therapy for good measure. Comments on TikTok suggesting it's anything like a Hydrafacial had some up in arms though, where the girlies were keen to point out that whilst this is a solid choice for maintenance, it's not going to give the same transformative results as an hour with a facialist. Some rightly worry about user error too - suction done incorrectly can cause broken capillaries. If you're trying it, keep your skin taut and start on the lower settings. Our hot take? We're most excited about the Depuffi tool (aka the contrast therapy party) that gets instantly hot or cold for some ultra-lux sculpting, and Shark just answered our prayers by launching it on its own too.

★ Also caught our eye: This claims to give you an hour of rest in just 20 minutes. A lollipop, for your vagina… (no comment). You can now compete in a 5k treadmill championship and a puffer jacket that de-puffs on demand. ★

The athleisure reckoning

It's been a busy few weeks in activewear. NikeSKIMS finally debuted, Lulu collabed with boujee LA grocery chain Erewhon, and every brand worth their weight in nylon released another burgundy/brown collection for AW.

Let's start with NikeSKIMS. Without attempting to speak for the entire population, one can assume we were expecting the best of both brands - Nike's innovative fabrics with SKIMS's ultra-flattering designs. We half got that. One line uses Nike's Dri-Fit fabric and the designs are very SKIMS, but nothing had us running to checkout. There's also stock still available - rare for SKIMS. So either they loaded up inventory to support the long-awaited (slightly anticlimactic) launch, or it didn't quite hit the mark. According to Puck, there's a trainer launch coming soon too, designed to be what the Jordans once were for Nike. No pressure, Kimmy.

Now to Lulu. Their Erewhon collab has been called try-hard (ouch) - slapping the grocery chain's logo all over pieces in an attempt to create, and thus become, the cool-girl LA aesthetic. Whilst we love this colourway, we personally wouldn't have bought them if the Erewhon branding was any more obvious, which is telling. A little ironic too - Erewhon is arguably the epitome of wellness culture, yet their activewear collab uses the same plastic-based fabrics Lulu's always used. If any partnership should've pushed boundaries on non-toxic performance wear, it was this one.

Why does it matter? Well, their target customer - the health-conscious woman in her late 20s and early 30s (ahem, you!) - is pretty clued up these days. She knows her ashwagandha from her apple cider vinegar. She also knows, most likely, that her workout gear is made from plastic soaked in chemicals… Whether she's actively looking to replace it is another thing. But the awareness is there. So whilst Business of Fashion will tell us that the humble black legging is dead - we'd instead suggest that the plastic-based version is. Or at least, it's soon to be.

The problem? The alternatives are slim. Options tend to be organic cotton blends (MATE, Organic Basics, new contender Layere), bamboo or hemp. But whilst these brands are doing great things, the sculpting feeling & stand-out flattering designs aren't quite there yet because of fabric limitations. So we're stuck in this weird limbo - knowing our Aligns are made from plastic but not quite ready to let them go.

Maybe that's why the NikeSKIMS and Lulu drops feel a bit flat. It's just more of the same when the market is slowly starting to seek something different. So with that, it's time to have your say...

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