Long time no blog! We reached Los Angeles yesterday evening, after a two-day drive down the Pacific Coast Highway. On the first (and more scenic) day, we covered the PCH from San Francisco to San Luis Obispo. The drive included lots of opportunities to pose for windswept photos on sand dunes: And a breathtaking “historic”… Read More The Pacific Coast Highway and an Antidote to SoCal Dryness: Sephora Rose Mask!
Greetings from Birmingham, Alabama! I’ve been here for a few days to see my boyfriend, who is visiting his parents. This means, of course, that I’ve also been to Ulta. The company has no outposts near where I live, and I have yet to see one in San Francisco, where my parents live, so what… Read More AB Goes to Birmingham (and Ulta)
Finally! It’s humid, guys. I know I’ve mentioned it before, but when the humidity level is 94% at 7:30 am, I can be forgiven for mentioning it again. I don’t understand how those of you who live in hot climates with year-round humidity keep your makeup from sliding off your faces, but I need to… Read More Beauty Abroad, Part 9: Illamasqua Cream Blusher in Zygomatic, and Some Thoughts on British Beauty
Since I photographed Flushed two days ago, think of this post as an addendum, with swatches and a couple of looks. And more than a couple of goslings. In the States, it’s almost impossible to find a high-quality matte blush in the drugstore. Most decent American drugstore blushes have some degree of shimmer or frost,… Read More Beauty Abroad, Part 4.5: Sleek Blush in Flushed (Plus Baby Birds)
Apologies for both my Beirut allusion and my ten-day absence from this blog. I was writing my second conference paper of the month, and then I was in Venice, drinking Campari and soda. I’ll probably never like Campari, even if I drink it while sitting in a Venetian campo watching little Italian boys kick a… Read More Postcards from Italy
Two weeks after I arrived in England, I finally set foot in the huge mall near my boyfriend’s apartment. It’s a ten-minute walk away, so I’m not sure what was holding me back except my congenital fear of spending money. I needn’t have worried, because I wandered for three and a half hours and still… Read More Beauty Abroad, Part 3: Guerrilla Swatches from Topshop, Rimmel, and Illamasqua
The 18th-century novelist Samuel Richardson once described himself as a “poor pruner.” It amazes me that the author of a 1500-page novel could also be the king of understatement, but so it goes. (By the way, if you enjoy totally immersive, psychologically harrowing reading experiences, Clarissa is well worth your time.) I too am a… Read More What I Brought to England
I’ve been carrying my tube of Maybelline Vision in Violet all over the Eastern seaboard this weekend, reminding myself repeatedly to return it to CVS. I’m a poor grad student; a $9.50 lipgloss, especially one that I won’t wear often, is hard to justify to myself. And yet. It’s an opaque blue-toned purple lipgloss! A… Read More FO(lger)TD
Auxiliary Beauty 