Packing It In : Women on the Road Learn to Travel Light and Leakproof With Their Toiletries

GROOMING ON the go isn’t easy--especially without all the comforts of home. Even the occasional woman traveler knows the frustration of forgetting cotton swabs or hair conditioner, not to mention discovering that the hair-spray can has exploded in flight or the cologne leaked.

For many women who fly frequently, packing grooming aids has become a science. Spending almost as much time in a hotel as they do at home, they’ve learned by experience how to condense bathroom shelf and dressing table into convenient, efficient travel bags.

Consider Judy Wade, a Sherman Oaks-based bicyclist who pedals from continent to continent and then writes magazine articles about her adventures. Prepared for at least 25 foreign and domestic trips each year, Wade never unpacks her nylon toiletries kit filled with small sizes of her essentials. She’s pared her makeup down to two lipsticks, eyeliner, mascara and blusher, but takes extra sunscreens and lip protectors, as well as an SPF moisturizer, to meet the demands of varying climates.

Judi Skalsky, senior vice president for marketing and design at the Pacific Design Center, takes an average of four trips each month, “so efficiency is my major premise.” She packs two small grooming bags, one with items for use in the morning, the other with her nighttime needs. “I always pack everything in clear plastic so I can quickly see what’s inside,” she says.

When Los Angeles-based clothing designer Nancy Johnson travels to diverse climates--China, London and South Carolina on the same trip, for example--she packs at least three beauty bags, keeping one with essentials in her purse just in case her luggage gets lost. “I make sure the cases are pretty--since I have to look at them every day on the road--and waterproof, because I can’t afford to have any leaks. I put things that could possibly leak or explode into plastic bags before I put them in the bag. And when I’m going to Third World countries, I always make sure that I take extra cotton swabs and tissue because they aren’t available.”

Manufacturers have found that many women who are loyal to a particular brand of skin-care products or cosmetics will purchase a prepacked kit. Chanel devotees can now buy the $75 Travel Kit, complete with the firm’s signature logo and an assortment of skin-care products. The $50 Traveler by Prescriptives, introduced in March and designed for women with dry to normal skin, was in such demand--even by travelers with oily skin--that a second version, geared to this skin type, will be offered in October.

For some travelers, however, saving space isn’t as important as having everything at their fingertips. Linda Silver, president of Roy Face Care for Men, travels 20 days a month and carries everything she needs with her, including bubble bath and bath powder. “I take the full sizes of everything so I don’t have to skimp; after all, when you travel all the time, you may as well luxuriate in the hotel room. That’s when you need a bubble bath.”