Bathing Beauties

FEMME FATALE'S BUBBLY DECADENCE FROM DOWN UNDER

Need a pick-me-up? Well, forget feel-good. Try feel-bad. Really bad. Let's face it. All that New Age beauty nonsense has been hogging the vanity table for too long. Here to up the va-va-va-voom quotient is the headily fragrant and deeply unspiritual Femme Fatale, a new line of bathing and body products from vixenish Aussie sisters Kerrie and Megan Hess. Inspired by their very glam grandmother, an avid fan of the lavish bath prep, the girls unapologetically embrace old-school pampering: rich creams, lathericious soaps, and their trademark "satin soak"—a bath powder that leaves one feeling as rich, luxuriant, and dangerous as a gold-plated revolver.

Available in five fragrances, all of them a whiff of yesteryear updated for the modern nose (and debuting this fall at Henri Bendel in New York and Fred Segal in Los Angeles), Femme Fatale is an ode to the sirens of the 1940s—Rita and Lana spring to mind. Indeed, a warning may be in order: the stuff might leave you feeling dirtier after your bath.

DAVID COLMAN