Psst - your hairspray has something to say to you...

...and it's, like, deep. The latest cosmetics and accessories won't just improve your appearance - they'll tackle your pre-millennial tension, too. Alicia Drake reads the small print

I work with a bottle of hair conditioner on my desk at all times. It's not that I suffer from a chronic hair condition, I've only used the spray twice. Called the Big Blow Off, it protects my ego, not my split ends. The bottle reads: "When you don't get the job, the call back, the date or the invitation, the message isn't that you didn't deserve it. The message is simply, you deserve better. Think of the big blow off as the big opportunity."

If fear of rejection isn't your hang-up, American beauty brand Philosophy has 96 other products all adorned with comfort messages, or what Philosophy creator Christina Carlino calls "universal feelings". It is simply a question of matching the product phrase with your personal vulnerability or emotional problem.

Carlino isn't the only one producing fashion with a message. Donna Karan has started gushing sincerities on her shopping bags with "Skin that is cleansed, protected, smells divine, what more could a body want?" London jewellery designer Lara Boeing 747 is engraving chokers and bracelets with mystic messages such as "The safest option is not to", and "I'll tell you the truth whether you like it or not". And American designer Sarah Schwartz is printing inspirational words and phrases on perfumes, candles, soaps and rubber bands.

Words have been hip before. In the Eighties, Katharine Hamnett got didactic with slogans of "Save the Whales" and "Stop Acid Rain", but politically correct soon turned cliche. Then, a few years back, there was an outbreak of thrusting female sexuality across tight T-shirts screaming words like "babe" and "pussy".

Now we have been struck with the fin-de-millennium jitters. Feeling edgy and insecure, we are grabbing for words as a comfort blanket. In our current mood of introspection, any sentiments that are new-age nice or self-empowering and spiritual hit the mark. It's no longer a question of "Save the Whales", we're too busy trying to "Save Ourselves".

Lara Boeing believes: "We're feeling lost and confused in a big city, so we're all looking for a personal message, a code that means something specifically to us." Carlino agrees. "People are needy for positive messages in their life right now. They are hungry for a sign that everything will be all right and they will take those signs from anything in life - a cab driver, a word on a shop window." What, even a cosmetic product? Carlino bites back: "I have no choice, I do not have a literary agent, I have only got my jars to write on."

New Yorker Sarah Schwartz is dyslexic and felt that certain words needed "their definitions made more elastic". So, three months ago she started stamping words like "Desire", "Courage" or "Wisdom" on rubber bands in the colours of varying shades of flesh.

Schwartz has now sold 3,000 of her Proverbial Pure Rubber Bands, which are turning into a cult item in New York and Paris. Even Schwartz is rather at a loss to explain the popularity of these modest items. "They seem to be hitting people's guts in an interesting way," she ponders. "People are reaching to them like they are some kind of pseudo spiritual guidance - a fortune cookie, their destiny or at least something to meditate on for the next three days."