Best Lipstick Formulas 2019

I meant to post this earlier, but life (in the form of interview prep, followed by actual interviewing, followed by jetlag) got in the way, so here we are almost halfway through January and I still haven't written about my favorite beauty purchases of 2015. But that's about to change! A few notes before we get started: Few of these are technically perfect products; they're just the products that I enjoyed the most in 2015. This list is not just for new-in-2015 products, but products that were new to me in 2015. I rarely buy limited-edition products or make a purchase before reading lots of reviews, so most of the makeup and skincare I buy has been around for at least a year or two. There are a couple of exceptions on this list, though! I've listed these products not in order of preference (I'm not sure what would make a lipstick "better" than a moisturizer) but in chronological order of purchase. In order to show how much I've used each item, I've...

Before starting this post, I spent a long time five minutes trying to come up with a good simile for the operation of material desire online. The Internet engenders small cravings, then quickly magnifies those cravings until you can't imagine a time when you didn't want X nail polish or Y lipstick, even if you first heard about it only three days ago. Could we call it a whirlpool of desire? A long street strewn with bits of grass that gradually form themselves into tumbleweed, and the tumbleweed is your longing for a certain product, and the wind is peer pressure or something, and--never mind. Maybe I should illustrate this process with an example, instead. A few months ago, I read this article and became fixated on the lavender-pink nail polish in image 5, which turned out to be Chanel Sweet Lilac. This made me aware that I didn't own a light pink polish; the last one I'd bought was Essie French Affair in spring 2011, and that had long since turned gooey and gone to...

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 ...

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 was I to do when I finally found myself in physical proximity to an Ulta? Not go? Come on. The great and unusual thing about Ulta is that it sells both drugstore and high(ish)-end products, as well as a few brands that I normally have to buy online, such as NYX and Zoya. The more expensive brands at Ulta (e.g. Urban Decay, Too Faced) tend to have a young target demographic: no Guerlain or YSL or even NARS, more's the pity. I tend to be less interested in those shelves than in the drugstore stuff and the overwhelming selection of nail polish. Today I picked up three nail polishes and a lipstick:  Left to right: OPI Eurso Euro (a birthday present for my stepmother--I already have a bottle)...