In the summer of last year, while browsing the venerable Bookshop in Chapel Hill, NC, I made a curious find. Published in 1996, long before “basic” became an insult, Cindy Crawford’s Basic Face is a “makeup workbook” co-authored by Crawford, the makeup artist Sonia Kashuk, and Kathleen Boyes. “What’s a basic face? A five-minute confidence… Read More Lipstick Chronology #27: Back to 1996 with Cindy Crawford’s Basic Face
It feels like I’ve been waiting forever to post these reviews. When Ulta had a 40%-off sale on NYX and Revlon two weeks ago, I seized the chance to order a few things I’d been wanting for a while. (I came in $.77 over the $25 free-shipping minimum, which made me inordinately proud.) My order… Read More Ulta Sale Haul: NYX and Revlon Swatches, Reviews, and FOTDs
Name: Revlon Super Lustrous Shine Lipstick in Plum Velour Date of Purchase: July 2013 Grade: A- Notes: I’m usually indifferent to sheer lipsticks. No, let me phrase that another way: I like to think of myself as indifferent to sheer lipsticks. I’ve been wearing bold lip colors for over three years now, so putting on… Read More Lipstick Chronology #26: Revlon Plum Velour
BABY, ALL I WANT IS TO LET IT GO AIN’T NO WORRIES, NO WE CAN DANCE ALL NIGHT… Ahem. On my previous trip to the UK, I limited my Topshop damage to two nail polishes and an eyeshadow. This time I was eager to try one of Topshop’s many lip products, and I settled on… Read More Beauty Abroad, Part 13: Topshop Matte Lip Bullet in Get Me Bodied
I’m generally reluctant to buy extra tools to make a beauty product work. I delayed buying an eyeshadow primer and lip brush for ages, because “I shouldn’t have to.” A good eyeshadow or lipstick, I thought, wouldn’t need extra help. My stubbornness in this matter has softened since I started this blog, but there was… Read More Beauty Abroad, Part 12: Experiments with & Other Stories Droguet Purple and Barry M Lip Liner in Plum
I’ve always heard great things about the makeup line from & Other Stories, an upscale offshoot of H&M that has somehow managed to acquire the URL stories.com. & Other Stories hasn’t made it to the US yet, so I was excited to visit the store on Regent Street Wednesday evening. &OS skews toward an older… Read More Beauty Abroad, Part 11: & Other Stories Lip Colour in Droguet Purple
I have a very specific packaging fetish: I like things in small round tins. But really, could you resist this particular tin? Vaseline Lip Therapy in Rosy Lips is only the latest in a series of Tins I Have Loved. My first makeup products, when I was a young teenager, were Perfumeria Gal redcurrant and… Read More Beauty Abroad, Part 10: Vaseline Lip Therapy in Rosy Lips
Greetings from Londinium! I’ve been trying for the last few days to write a post about the makeup I brought to England this time, but I’m never at home during prime picture-taking hours, and I’m very picky about color accuracy. Today, though, I remembered that I wrote most of a review of Milani Bella Charcoal… Read More La Vita è Bella, Take 2: New Milani Eyeshadows in Bella Charcoal and Bella Navy (Updated with a Tragic Footnote)
Today, as a reward for finishing an article draft and setting up a meeting with my adviser, I headed to the local Bluemercury to check out the new NARS Audacious lipsticks. I limited myself to seven swatches (as many as would fit on my hand), since I’m not audacious enough to swatch a collection of… Read More NARS Audacious Lipstick Swatches and the Allure of Audrey
Since all but one of the nail polishes I wore in August were new to me, I thought I’d write up a month’s worth of mini-reviews! My first polish of August was Zoya Normani, which I bought at the Birmingham Ulta in July. The darkest shade in Zoya’s nude-based Naturel collection, Normani is a brown-gray-purple… Read More August in Nail Polish
Auxiliary Beauty 