So you guys all know by now that I used to be a beauty editor and there’s a part of me that always will be. Two of my behavior quirks as a result of this are that I will forever over-analyze skin and that I’m a total ingredient whore.

There are always certain shows (like Calvin Klein) where the dewy freshness of the skin makes me literally, utterly joyful and also compulsive about finding the next great product to try in an effort to make my own look even half as youthful.

Enter the ingredient addiction. I’m drawn in by new things, but I have to see them in action before I can become a true believer. (Past fixations include: diamonds, gold chips, stem cells, and caviar.) There are currently two very disparate things that have caught my eye: Acai and Volcanic Ash.

Not to sound too Seinfeld-ian, but what’s the deal with the sudden surge of skin care companies sponsoring shows this season? I was backstage at Charlotte Ronson when I saw a sign for Skyn Iceland, the “official skin care sponsor” of the show. Now I hear that, among others, Decléor is sponsoring Reem Acra and Carita is doing Carmen Marc Valvo.

On the one hand, I kind of get it: The shows need money, the brands need exposure, and models need good-looking skin. On the other hand, it’s skin care. I mean, no one is raving about how soft the models’ skin looked at Charlotte Ronson. If they’re talking about the beauty look at all then it’s about how badass that smudged in, brown-y red lip looked.

It just seems pretty pointless for a skin care brand to sponsor a show. Most makeup artists already come armed with their favorite skin savers anyway because they know that by the fourth or fifth time slot, models start to show some wear and tear in the form of blotches, ruddiness and - gasp!- blemishes.

But if any skin potion gets real, unforced publicity, it’s Caudalie’s Beauty Elixir. I’ve seen that ubiquitous bottle on at least one makeup station at every show I’ve attended thus far. Seven down, seventeen to go, and I’m sure there will be plenty more Beauty Elixirs, the “unofficial skin care sponsor of Fashion Week,” along the way.

—MEGAN MCINTYRE

We have no idea why, we have no idea how, but here’s what we do know:

50 Cent is starting his own skin care line.

Yahoo’s reporting that he’s putting the finishing touches on a grooming line for men, for which we sincerely hope he’s created a product called In Da Scrub.

Of course, Yahoo casually mentions that their original source is the Daily Mirror, so it may take a couple days for 50 to appear at a press conference where he denies this incredibly silly sounding rumor and announces his inevitable denim line instead.

In the meantime, can anyone else think of good product names for 50’s line? Bonus points if you can work in Magic Stick.

Remember when you were little and you could hear the ice cream truck from a couple miles away before you started sprinting in the direction of tinkling music?

Well, get ready, because ELLE’s doing their own version of our favorite childhood memory except with beauty and a bus.

From April 15th through May 4th, ELLE is sending a bio-diesel fueled eco-salon bus around southern California to make one-day stops in a bunch of different locations so you can get pampered for about an hour before they send you off with a little bag of goodies.

They’re celebrating their Green May Issue, but we’re sure you just really need a pedicure before all out summer hits your foot wardrobe.

Click to find out where they’ll be…

Let’s get one thing straight - I’m not really a facial kind of girl.

But when a friend tipped me off to what she swore was the best face fix on the planet, I had to investigate.

And that’s how I found myself wearing heated plastic mittens with my face mummified in clay, and actually wearing cucumber slices on my eyes, basically steaming like asparagus on East 52nd Street at the Mario Badescu Salon.

I’d heard the name before, but only sparingly. You can get their products only in higher-end stores and their Midtown East location is the only place in the world where you can get their facial.

But they seem to be largely ignored by magazines, and now that I’ve been there myself, I’m pretty sure it has a lot to do with their lab-like packaging (doesn’t exactly read well next to La Prairie and Dior.)

The experience: Totally clinical, which actually makes you feel less guilty about someone fawning over your face for an hour asking you questions like, “And how often do you scrub?” with the same severity of an oncologist. After your “procedure,” you even go to another little room where you sit across the table and are given the run down on your skin’s health, what you need to do to change it, and the products that will help you do so - a lot like a post-check-up consultation. The girls even wear all white.

The result? My face looks rather dewy today, and it actually feels clean, which I didn’t even know was possible.

And I have to say, getting what is basically a massage for your face? Amazing.

Tuesday’s launch of Armani’s first beauty line for men has us thinking - who buys this stuff?

It’s been our experience (ahem), that men tend to just borrow their girlfriends’ products, often times a surreptitious act while in the shower.

But we keep reading about beauty lines intended specifically for men, especially by non-drugstore companies.

Clinique, Frederic Fekkai and Bliss are just a few beauty brands with products intended specifically “for men.” But we’ve never known any guys to actually buy themselves men’s beauty products. In fact, when we have seen guys buy skin care/hair stuff, we’ve seen them in Duane Reade, buying gender neutral options like Neutrogena.

We don’t know if this is an embarrassment of doing something “girly,” or if men’s products are sort of pointless, as if men’s skin and hair is really so much different from women’s, for whom most beauty products are made.

Do you buy men’s beauty products, either for yourself, or for a boyfriend? Or does it strike you as the same stuff but in darker packaging?