As you know, I’m going on the academic job market for the first time this fall. Accordingly, I’m now interviewing lipsticks for the position of Interview Lipstick. Am I doing this to put off compiling my job materials? Maybe, but there’s no denying that first impressions are important. Academia has no set dress code. In… Read More Professionalesque, Part 2: Urban Decay Rapture
As a preteen and young teenager, I had a brief flirtation with witchcraft. There was something in the air at the time: The Craft had come out several years before, the Harry Potter series was gaining worldwide popularity, and bookstores were full of titles like Spells for Teenage Witches. Growing up in San Francisco made… Read More In Search of Lost Witchcraft: NYX Simply Vamp Lip Cream in Enamored
By ordering Eugenie, a matte plum lipstick from the six-piece MAC x Giambattista Valli collection, I broke four of my cardinal makeup-buying rules: No limited-edition makeup, and especially no limited-edition products from MAC No makeup that I haven’t seen in person first No makeup that isn’t certified cruelty-free No near-dupes of anything I already have… Read More I Have a Plum Problem: MAC x Giambattista Valli Eugenie
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
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
Until recently, teal was one of my least favorite colors. It unsettled me in the same way that fuchsia used to: both are amphibious, ill-defined colors. But one swipe of fuchsia lipstick in the summer of 2011 banished my unease forever, and I’ve just experienced a similar conversion to teal. It started when I looked… Read More Let Us Now Praise Formula X Enigma
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