What Kelly Ripa Can’t Live Without

I grew up going to the Jersey shore where, as teenagers, we put baby oil on our skin and thought it didn’t work unless we were burned. So I am now paying the price for that phase of my life. My kids got my husband’s coloring — thank god — but I always tell them that just because you have this beautiful, bronze coloring doesn’t mean you can’t and won’t get skin cancer. Because of the damage I did as a teenager, now, every time I go to the dermatologist, I cross my fingers and hope everything will be okay and go well. And I also double down on sunscreen. What I like about this sunscreen, first of all, is that it’s full-coverage. It’s that broad-spectrum, UVA-UVB and whatnot sunscreen, but it’s tinted in a way that sort of makes you look sun-kissed and not a weird color. A lot of tinted products tend to make you look orange or way too dark, to the point where you don’t even look like yourself. This is just like a light coverage, so it looks like maybe you put on foundation, maybe you didn’t, who knows?

I started using it when I got a sample in the hospital right before I brought home my son, Michael, who is now 22 years old. Before you leave, they hand you your baby and a leaflet about how to care for your baby. Seriously, a leaflet. I got way more instructions with my Persona vitamins than I did with my baby. Then, they hand you this soap and are like, “This is a good soap for the baby, use this.” Every time I use it, I have this scent memory of bringing home Michael. Even if I’m staying in the most luxurious hotel that gives you all the fancy soaps and shampoos, I bring my own bar of Dove soap. It just sets my mind right. It’s the best.

The bottle is so chic and it smells so good. Do you ever get on the subway and smell something that’s not so great? You’re not sure what it is, but it’s just there and it’s bad? You can just spray this and it instantly makes things better. I’ll spray it into my jacket and then put my face into my jacket and inhale it. It takes me away. And it works. Except I just found out that it apparently doesn’t kill norovirus or coronavirus. They say you still need to use good old soap and water to take care of those, but I’ll keep using Jao for the smell.

I fell asleep with makeup on for, I want to say, the first 28 years of my life. That used to be a thing, I swear. People told us to sleep in makeup. Experts or whoever would be like, “Oh, this is good for you. It’s got all these wonderful chemicals in it that are amazing for your skin.” But it’s so different now. Young people know so much more than we knew. My makeup artist Michelle and I talk about what would’ve happened if we had only known how crazy some of these things were when we did them. I wish we were told how bad it is to sleep in makeup and not to wear sunscreen or slather yourself in baby oil. But we didn’t know! Nobody told us. Now that I’m wiser, I guess you could say, I am telling you: It is urgent to take your makeup off. Every night, no matter how tired you are, no matter how fun the club was, you have to do it. These wipes from Alcone are so efficient. You don’t have to scrub your skin to get the makeup off, and they don’t leave your skin feeling greasy either. The older you get, your skin becomes like a piece of paper, so you want to really be gentle with it.

I guess this is my anti-aging secret — this and Botox, if we’re being honest. (Botox is the real anti-aging secret here.) But sure, this oil is fantastic. It’s my one luxury. It’s pricey but worth it. And compared to the price of something like La Mer, it’s not that bad. I think oil works really well for my skin. Every time my kids see me put oil on, they’re like, “You’re going to get pimples!” I’m like, “Kids, it’s different.” It’s different skin at a different time in my life. And I feel like this face oil is exactly what I need for my skin right now. First of all, it’s beautifully scented. Like, my husband wants to kiss my face after I put it on. Second, it feels great. I apply it first thing in the morning when I’m fresh out of the shower, and then right before I go to bed. And when I wake up in the morning, my skin still feels moisturized. It hasn’t evaporated into the abyss in the middle of the night.

This fragrance is really a non-fragrance. If you were to smell it, you’d get it. I know that’s not helpful, but it’s true. It smells like clean soap. When I put it on, people will say, “You smell so good, like you just got out of the shower.” That’s the whole point. One of the Mara girls wore it on my show years ago — I think it was Rooney. It smelled so good, so I bought it. Now I know so many people who use it — men and women — because it’s there but not there at the same time and it really works for everyone. Every person smells slightly different, but everybody smells clean, like their own version of what getting out of the shower smells like.

Before this deodorant came into my life, I actually stopped wearing deodorant in general because deodorant just smelled funny on me. Even some of the best deodorants that smell good on the stick always smelled weird after I put them under my arms. They were making things worse instead of better. But Each & Every is different. It’s organic and has real rosemary and real lemon and just everything real. It smells good, not like chemicals, and it actually works. I have my whole family using it — I turn my entire family onto everything that I do. I tell my kids, “This is good for you, listen to mommy.” But my son is a wrestler and he’s like, “Mom, I had to reapply that deodorant.” I was like, “Well, that’s fine. Sometimes you should apply deodorant more than once, especially when you’re sweaty.”

I remember when my kids were younger, I would go get whatever supplements their pediatrician told me to go get. But once you reach a certain age, doctors don’t ask you, “Are you sleeping at night? Do you have enough fish in your diet?” It’s like once you grow up, you’re on your own. One time, I went into a GNC to get fish-oil supplements because I read that I should be taking them. I walked in and there were literally 3,000 different brands of fish-oil supplements. I got so overwhelmed, and when I asked the person standing there for help, they gave me a lot of conflicting advice. So I bought one of those sugary protein bars and left. And that was sort of it for me with vitamins, until Persona. I took the assessment and really figured out that the gaps in my nutrition were not severe, but they were significant enough where I felt the full benefit of having these small gaps filled. I’m sleeping better. I don’t have indigestion all the time. The best thing is that the supplements come in these little packages that tell you exactly what to take, how much to take, and when to take it. It’s the most efficient and the most convenient. Sometimes I just want someone to help me and tell me what to do. Persona has done that for me.