Posts

Showing posts from September, 2014

Convicted of Purgery

Image
Convicted, rather, of truly painful punning. Sometimes I just can't help it. Welcome to my very first purge post! It will probably also be my last in a while, since it saddens me so much to throw anything out. I'm both a sentimental hoarder and an incorrigible cheapskate--a deadly combination where makeup collecting is concerned. But after I came home from England last week, I embarked on a massive apartment-cleaning project, in the course of which I managed to fill a bag with makeup I should have thrown out long ago... The condemned, in more or less chronological order: 1. Revlon Nail Polish in Silver Screen Date of purchase: 2009 or 2010 Crime: I haven't used Silver Screen in about four years, though it was the first nail polish I really coveted, which gives it a special place in my heart. Throughout college, the idea of wearing nail polish made me uncomfortable. I didn't want to seem frivolous or childish (I was a Serious Intellectual, dontchaknow), and I also had

Beauty Abroad, Part 13: Topshop Matte Lip Bullet in Get Me Bodied

Image
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 the Matte Lip Bullet in Get Me Bodied (£8), a dark magenta-plum. Topshop's Lip Bullets are thin twist-up lipsticks in matte black-and-white tubes with clear plastic caps. The white plastic looks sleek when new, but it can easily get messy if you remove or replace the cap too hastily. The testers in the Topshop store looked downright gory. The Lip Bullets come in two finishes, satin and matte; slapdash Google research indicates that the satin bullets came out last year and the matte ones this summer. They’re not crayons, exactly, because the bullet has the slanted head of a traditional lipstick—and because Topshop has wasted no time in capitalizing on the lip-crayon trend with its own line of crayons, which I'

Beauty Abroad, Part 12: Experiments with & Other Stories Droguet Purple and Barry M Lip Liner in Plum

Image
As I've confessed elsewhere , 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 one thing I still refused to buy until last week: a lip liner. This is the inevitable result of reaching pop-cultural awareness in the late '90s, when the de rigueur lip combo was brown liner and lighter brown lipstick. The reign of MAC Spice has long since ended, but my wariness lingered--that is, until I bought & Other Stories Lip Colour in Droguet Purple, reviewed in my last post . Droguet Purple, a dark blue-based purple lipstick with a shiny finish, presented me with two problems. First, its slippery formula prevented me from getting even coverage on my lips; second, oh god so dark so purple I look crazy

Beauty Abroad, Part 11: & Other Stories Lip Colour in Droguet Purple

Image
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 audience than its parent does, which means that its stores and products have a cleaner, more understated look than you'd expect from H&M. The relationship of the two stores is similar to that of Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie--which reminds me, I walked past the Anthropologie on Regent Street and can attest that British Anthros smell exactly like American ones. I don't know why I was surprised. & Other Stories' extensive (and cruelty-free) makeup line contains lip, eye, and cheek products. Unfortunately, I had very little time to browse before we headed to dinner, so I narrowed my focus to the lipsticks, which were £ 12 each. Glancing over

Beauty Abroad, Part 10: Vaseline Lip Therapy in Rosy Lips

Image
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 violet lip balms in domed Art Nouveau tins: ( Source ) One of my most vivid memories from my first semester of college is of eating Les Anis de Flavigny rose- and violet-flavored pastilles in my dorm room overlooking the campus lake (I was a foppish 17-year-old):   ( Source ) So it's no wonder that the little discs of Vaseline Lip Therapy caught my eye at a grocery store the other day. There were three colors: blue (original), green (aloe vera), and coral-pink (rose). I'd never seen them in the States, so I barely hesitated before buying a tin of Rosy Lips for £2.19, despite my misgivings about the formula: I've been known to smear Vaseline on my lips on especially dry winter