Style: Beauty spot

Hermione Eyre has a cleansing experience

Why are cleansers so ugly? I mean, I am sure their mothers love them, but really, they ming. Plastic, utilitarian, and apparently designed by the same man who makes Pampers, most cleansers have no place on a lady's dressing table.

Until this Oriental beauty came along (right). It's one of a series of limited-edition cleansing oils (pounds 42.50. tel: 020 7235 2375) created for Shu Uemura by young artist Ai Yamaguchi. Please, a mental round of applause for its stunning design. Take a bow, Miss Yamaguchi, for you have given the beauty industry its first cleanser inspired by cartoons of Edo-period Japanese courtesans. Possibly the last, too, so interested parties are advised to hurry to a Shu Uemura outlet because only 100,000 of the cleansers exist and they are disappearing quicker than cherry blossoms in a high wind.

For those of us who find it impossible to justify spending that much money on a simple skin cleanser, Far Easter-chic or no - there is a rather good bargain from Sephora's own brand: a travel vial of eye make-up remover, blue as a Curacao cocktail and non-sting too. (pounds 1.90, tel: 020 7253 2194).

Which leaves only the really big eye-make-up removal question: tissue, cotton wool or clumps of bog roll? Now, I might be mistaken, but I suspect that your preference in this matter says a lot about you. Exactly what, I will leave to the imagination.