Raise your hand if you’ve been there: middle seat of a trans-Atlantic flight, and the “I Don’t Need It” scene from SpongeBob Squarepants is a little more relatable that you would like. Skin feels bone-dry and no amount of duty-free lotions can quench the #thirst. Despite how much we prep for an in-flight beauty session (sheet masks, face oils, tinctures galore) it never seems to be quite enough. This is something that Sunday Riley — both the brand and the person — understands through and through.
Beginning in April, the Texas-based skin-care brand is exclusively joining forces with United Airlines to take the Sunday Riley chic approach to skin care to the friendly skies. As part of the new partnership, the brand is cooking up three tiers of amenity kits featuring a handful of never-before-seen, travel-size products. Passengers flying in United’s Polaris business-class cabin will receive a kit of four products: a lip balm infused with pomegranate seed oil, a lightweight face cream, a shea butter and rosehip oil hand cream, and a toner cloth containing peppermint extract to instantly refresh and balance skin.
Premium Plus passengers will receive a kit with the lip balm and hand cream, and Premium Transcontinental flyers will snag the lip balm. (Premium cabin lavatories will also be stocked with the hand cream, plus a refreshing face mist for instant hydration.) And United customers can still get their Sunday Riley fix even when they’re not at 30,000 feet, at Polaris airport lounges and clubs, where shower facilities will also introduce personal-care products including hand wash, hand cream, shampoo, conditioner, and body wash, all formulated by Sunday Riley.
When it came to curating the product assortment for United, Riley drew from her needs as a skin-care jet-setter, while also keeping in mind the, um, unique journey that skin goes through every step of the travel experience. “I have epically dry skin, and I take a lot of long-haul flights,” Sunday Riley exclusively tells Allure. “I always travel with a small bottle of Juno Antioxidant + Superfood Face Oil and apply it at the beginning of the flight and then halfway through. I then apply a humectant water cream, like Tidal. My lips get chapped just thinking about dry air, so I also apply and reapply lip balm as needed.”
Additionally, Riley made sure that the product curation made sense for a clientele that includes everyone. “More than 50 percent of business-class travelers are men, so I needed to make sure that we included a lightweight, gel-cream moisturizer that would fix everyone’s hydration issues,” she says. “There’s a facial cleansing towelette because when you get closer to landing, you want to feel like your skin is fresh and clean, particularly if you have oily skin. Non-greasy hand lotion and lip balm keep you feeling comfortable and hydrated, so that you can rest, eat, work, and read without worrying about your skin.”
For the time being, you’ll only be able to discover these products with a United business-class boarding pass, but the brand hasn’t completely ruled out bringing these new categories onto store shelves someday. “We are constantly evolving and testing out new products for the brand in our lab,” Riley says. “I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of us introducing a body, lip, or hair-care product sometime in the near future.”
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