Best Lipstick Formulas 2019

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 taupe. It belongs to the same family as OPI You Don't Know Jacques and Chanel Particuli è re, though it's rosier and less gray than either of those. Normani didn't catch my eye when I was looking at swatches of the Naturel collection online, but the color leaped out at me when I saw it on the shelf. Further proof that I need to limit myself to makeup I can see in person first (of course, I'm lucky enough to live in a country overflowing with Sephoras and Ultas and such). Normani turned out to be a three-coat nail polish. On my nails, it was darker than I'd expected, but I loved it no less for that. It looked clean and modern and elegant, and I have ...

If you've watched as many geisha documentaries as I have (she said, too casually), you'll be familiar with the clichéd close-up shot of a geisha or maiko painting her white-powdered lips with a brush dipped in rouge. The inevitability of this shot, in both Japanese and foreign documentaries, makes me roll my eyes every time it comes up; there's something fetishistic and exoticizing about it, especially when the wielder of the brush is a sixteen-year-old maiko. But the allure of the ritual itself is undeniable. Applying lipstick with a bullet can be sexy, but it's more often matter-of-fact: swipe it on and go. Applying lipstick with a brush is never anything but artistic. It forces you to slow down, to think critically about shape and precision. Until recently, though, I'd never felt the need to own a lip brush. The good old bullet, it seemed to me, was a perfectly effective technology for transferring color to my lips. And if a bullet failed to deliver a cris...

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" bridge built in 1932 (California has an interesting sense of what constitutes "historic"): We stopped for coffee and a strawberry-banana smoothie at a cafe perched high in the cliffs of Big Sur. See those tiny white umbrellas in the distance? Some pretty wildflowers nearby: We ended the drive with some elephant-seal watching. Seals are strange creatures. You'd think they'd feel sorry for themselves, forced to undulate awkwardly across the rocky beach, but they seemed to be doing just fine. This photo severely underrepresents their massive size (the males weigh about 5000 pounds): We arrived in San Luis Obispo in time for the "farmers...

Damn it, Milani! You've done it again. Lured me in with the promise of a revolutionary makeup formula at an implausibly low price point, only to deliver mediocrity. Will I ever learn? (These containers remind me of portholes on a ship.) Look, Milani's new Bella eyeshadow singles are perfectly decent. I'd give them a B or B-minus; they're like the student essays on which I write, "You make some interesting points that don't quite cohere." I don't feel that I've wasted my money. Each eyeshadow costs $4.69 (though I bought these two during a BOGO sale at CVS), and they're actually better than what I'd expect for that price. What does annoy me is the misleading name of the product. "Bella Eyes Gel Powder Eyeshadow" leads you to expect some sort of cream-to-powder formula with a moist consistency, and Milani's ad copy heightens that impression: "What makes it a gel powder? Well, the formula starts as a gel and then is transf...

For a long time now, I've thought of myself as someone who takes risks with beauty. I know relatively few people who wear color makeup regularly, and even fewer who wear unconventional colors regularly. When you're the only one in your group of friends who owns multiple purple lip colors, you start to feel smug about your offbeat taste. Recently, though, I've been reconsidering that smugness. It started on Monday, when I was making myself up before what proved to be an abortive trip to the Asian Art Museum to see this summer's special exhibit , an exploration of the idea of "gorgeous." (The museum is closed on Mondays, which, true to form, I realized only after taking the train all the way across the city.) I'd been feeling guilty about neglecting the Kiko eyeshadows I bought in London two months ago, and had resolved to use one of them in that day's look. I patted NARS Lhasa eyeshadow all over my lids and blended my glittery purple eyeshadow stick fr...