Now that exactly half of 2015 is behind us, I thought it might be interesting to revisit the beauty resolutions I made at the end of last year and see how many I managed to keep in the last six months. I can’t actually remember all of them off the top of my head, which… Read More So, How About Those New Year’s Resolutions?
When ColourPop released a line of 15 highlighters early last month, I didn’t take much notice. I’d never used a highlighter before, and since this hot, humid weather gives me a perpetual…let’s call it “glow,” I didn’t think I needed any extra radiance. If anything, I needed the opposite. But curiosity and the usual flood… Read More ColourPop Highlighters in Lunch Money and Monster
Just call me Virgil. To save some money in the coming school year, I’m moving at the end of the summer into a two-bedroom duplex apartment. As moves go, this one will be almost comically easy, since my new building is next door to my current one. But I’ll be sharing the apartment with a… Read More A Journey Through Purge-atory, Part 1: Lipsticks and Glosses
Early this month, just after returning from England, I started my summer job in the university archives. These archives house documents related to the history of the university, over a century’s worth of senior theses, and the lifelong correspondence of some prominent alumni. My job for the summer is to reprocess the papers of one… Read More FOTDs: From the Archives
In my review of Sephora Formula X Enigma, the nail polish that sparked my love for teal, I mentioned that I wanted to try a teal eyeshadow. It didn’t take me long to find a suitable one, so here we are with my second London beauty buy: Kiko Infinity Eyeshadow #264, a green-toned teal with… Read More Beauty Abroad, Part 17: Kiko Infinity Eyeshadow #264
I like buying makeup to commemorate happy occasions. Lipsticks and nail polishes and eyeshadows function as little pins that secure my memories to the material world. That’s why I started my Lipstick Chronology (which reminds me, I haven’t added to the chronology since March). And that’s why, when I learned two weeks ago that my… Read More Beauty Abroad, Part 16: Topshop Rio Rio and London Beauty Shopping
1. Spend several days wondering whether twenty-seven is too old to wear a topcoat containing holographic microglitter and large pastel daisy-shaped glitter. Entertain paranoid visions of one of your advisors running into you in the department office, noticing your daisy-covered nails, and immediately losing all respect for you. 2. Decide that twenty-seven is not too… Read More How to Apply American Apparel Glitter Nail Polish in Daisy Field
I’m an ocean away from the product I’m about to describe, writing through a haze of jet lag. Let’s see how this post turns out. For the longest time, I avoided any hint of orange in my face makeup. My desire for knowledge of colors and undertones turned into a harmful strictness, and I assumed… Read More La Vie En Corail: Milani Rose Powder Blush in Coral Cove
In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been a bad early modernist: I’ve watched the BBC miniseries of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall without first reading the books. I did start reading Wolf Hall two years ago, but I just couldn’t get into it, despite my childhood obsession with Tudor history. There’s something about grad school… Read More Beauty Abroad, Part 15: Inglot Eyeshadows in 08 and 433
Many thanks to everyone who gave me Canadian beauty advice! As it turned out, I bought three beauty items in Toronto, none of them from a Canadian company: an American Apparel nail polish, a Face Shop sheet mask, and an Inglot custom eyeshadow duo. I almost never wear glitter topcoats, but I made a (possibly… Read More Beauty Abroad, Part 14: Notes from Toronto
Auxiliary Beauty 