ALEXANDRA SHULMAN: After a glorious week in Greece – and after seeing Jennifer Lopez, Sienna Miller and Leonardo DiCaprio’s MANY summer companions – I’m convinced tanning is back in vogue

The usual tired, somewhat pale reflection I’m used to seeing in the mirror is gone and replaced by something glowing.

This has nothing to do with the piles of brightening skincare on my dressing table and everything to do with the sunscreen I brought back from a week’s vacation in Greece.

Now I’m not being naive or careless or ignorant, and I’m fully aware of the increasing incidence of skin cancer that can be caused by sun exposure, but the fact is that a tan – even a soup of one – won’t matter to us not only look better, but also feel better.

And I’m not alone – a bevy of celebs on vacation clearly feel the same way, if Jennifer Lopez on a yacht in Amalfi, Sienna Miller vacationing in St-Tropez or some of Leo DiCaprio’s summer companions are anything to go by. to go.

The appeal of the tan is clearly back, after a few years in the doldrums.

Wearing deeply tanned skin peaked in the early 2000s during the heyday of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears with flat ballerinas and oversized sunglasses.

The most sought-after fashion models were the permanently tanned Brazilians such as Gisele Bundchen. But with the ubiquity of the look, the overuse of fake tans and mounting evidence of ill health consequences, tanning began to lose its classy allure.

Not that it stopped most of us from spending as many hours on a sun lounger as we could cram into our 20 days of annual vacation. That was halted by the pandemic, which forced those of us trapped in the low pressure of the Northern Hemisphere into a forced pallor.

But even Hollywood’s finest with the benefit of California’s climate chose to go pale. Suddenly, a Snow White complexion was the number one accessory on the red carpet.

But now things are all different and the color has made a comeback. Aided by the sheer number of heavy-duty SPF products available and countless thin beachwear that can shield us from the midday rays, we can worship at the Sun Altar more safely than ever.

We are trained and alert. No one would do what I did again, soak my body for hours in oily Ambre Solaire and Hawaiian Tropic who had never heard of SPF.

In the 1970s, sunscreens were there for one reason: to make your tan progressively darker, not to prevent sun damage or cancer.

There’s little that compares to the wonderful feeling of coming in after a day in the sun and seeing that light deepening of the brown lines.

Or when you return from holiday feeling sun-brushed, whether that be the ruddy color of a British coastal sun, the olive of the Mediterranean or the chestnut of the Caribbean.

If tanning was about looks, fake tan would tick the box. But they are not. Real sunshine with its vitamin D boost has an irreplaceable benefit.

On the recent holiday we were joined by a toddler dressed by her mother as an Edwardian bathmaid, covering every inch of the flesh. The adults, on the other hand, sprawled out in bikinis and shorts, lapping against the sun’s rays.

I wondered, 20 years from now – when the little girl is old enough to make her own sunwear choices – what style of behavior will be fashionable