Grooming Hot Lines

Sauna is a Finnish innovation--one of the few Finnish innovations. Still, what the Finns lack in versatility, they make up for in intensity. With temperatures often in excess of 200 degrees Fahrenheit (and humidities of less than ten percent), sauna is one of the most extreme forms of physical detoxification in the history of the world. You may think you're simply relaxing in that pristine, self-contained, all-wood environment, but your body knows better. Hard pressed to keep its own temperature at an acceptable level, it works overtime to lose heat, throwing open its pores, flash-flooding them with sweat, rushing blood to skin surfaces, where it's cooled by evaporation to 100 degrees.

But a sauna, while purgative in nature, doesn't have to be only purgative. It's also an occasion for unabashed sybaritism, for the appreciation of the body, Which means that a sauna is a good time to pay a little attention to grooming--body-wide grooming. As added incentive, all that sweating flushes impurities--bacteria, oil, old sweat--from your skin. Plumped and reddened, it awaits the scrubbing, the massage and--ultimately--the soaping that will burnish its surface to a healthy radiance.

The tools are familiar. Friction mitts made from hemp and horsehair, and sisal back scrubbers that stimulate skin and muscle aren't all that new, rare or exotic. The point is, they're rendered potent in this atmosphere of intense heat, where skin is most willing to slough dead and dying cells, most susceptible to the idea of tone and most likely to take a polish. Ideally, you'd have a masseur in the sauna with you, but a horsehair scrubber isn't a bad substitute.

In Finland, the sauna is a half-day undertaking, involving not only baking and massage but business dealing and a postbath dinner, too. Chances are, you won't want to spend more than a half hour in and around the experience, but that still represents a considerable investment of time. Use it--and the 200-degree temperature--to treat yourself to one kind of grooming procedure for which there usually isn't enough time. Hair conditioning, at its best, isn't a 90-seconds-and-then-down-the-drain shampooing afterthought but a gradual, give-it-time-to-be-absorbed operation. A sauna provides the opportunity for it. Apply, say, Redken Climatress moisturizing creme and protein conditioner to clean, wet hair, and let it soak in during the minutes you're baking. Your hair will gain in shininess and manageability, and you'll be making dynamic use of down time.

Now, while friction and conditioning are appropriate in-sauna activities, you're going to have to wait till after you've left the (concluded on page 244)Hot Lines(continued from page 131) wilting heat to undertake the rest of your basic grooming. Which brings us to a fundamental point: A sauna is not, simply, spending a little time in a very dry, very hot room. Its very essence demands that the body (and, for that matter, the mind) be subjected to contrast. After the confinement, a swim and a bath or shower--some immersion in cool water--are de rigueur. It's then that the blood vessels constrict, the pores snap shut and the body returns more or less to its normal routine.

It's then, too, that you should complete the cleansing process that the heat of the sauna has begun. A shower invites skin care that's thorough and precise. Bath and shower gels, such as the ones in the Devin, Chanel and Givenchy men's-toiletries lines, provide an alternative to conventional bar soaps but also function effectively as shampoos. Kanon's soap on a rope obviates chasing your favored cleansing agent around the floor of the shower stall. Meanwhile, of course, those who prefer tub to stall can benefit from a product such as Aramis' seaweed- and mineral-rich Muscle Soothing Soak.

For the care of a delicate or temperamental complexion, select the appropriate-strength soap (regular or extra) and Scruffing Lotion in Clinique's Skin Supplies for Men line that's specially formulated for male skin. Skin that's been saunaed also takes a closer-than-usual shave, especially when slathered with a rich shave-foam concentrate, such as the one manufactured by Aramis.

Shaving is, of course, optional--at least in this pronouncedly bearded decade. Moisturizing is not. After a sauna, skin is unclogged and whistle clean; it's also parched. You have to compensate with the liberal application of a lotion that replenishes lost moisture, then locks that moisture in beneath a light layer of oil. To accomplish this, try Doak Pharmacal's Formula 405 or Coppertone's SunGér, both suitable for application to body and face. Also containing a moisturizer, as well as coloring agents to lend the face a healthy day-at-the-beach glow, is Aramis' Sun-Bronzed Moisturizing Concentrate. Of all men's grooming products, bronzers are perhaps the most revolutionary, flirting with the idea of make-up for men while imparting a masculine color.

What completes the postsauna, whole-body grooming regimen? The same elements that complete any grooming regimen: a splash of cologne to make skin tingle for a few minutes and smell good for a few hours and a few quick passes with a compact, portable hair drier. The concept of sauna may be Finnish, but the lifestyle it promotes is absolutely American.