Best Lipstick Formulas 2019

Greetings from San Francisco, where I've spent the past few days recovering from jetlag and dissertating at neighborhood coffee shops. With three days of the old year remaining, it's time to post a list I've been compiling for the past month or so: my 14 favorite beauty purchases of 2014! A few notes before we begin: These are new-to-me products (not repurchases) that I bought in 2014. Only three of them actually came out this year; the others belong to their brands' permanent collections. I don't chase the limited-edition rabbit unless his pocket watch is especially shiny. And I find that when I buy makeup because it's new, I'm more often disappointed than not. These are not necessarily the best-performing beauty products I bought this year; they're just the ones that I've enjoyed the most. Of course, nothing truly bad made this list, but some of the products listed below have minor flaws, and there are some technically flawless products I bought i...

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 ...

Yeah, you try coming up with a synonym for "nail polish" that begins with "S." Also, please note that this post contains way too many photos. After an especially brutal winter, spring toyed with us for weeks and weeks before settling in. Throughout March and early April, we suffered through alternating two-day periods of "hmm, maybe I can put away my wool coat until next winter" and "LOL NOPE." Last week the temperature dipped below freezing again, and some areas even got snow. So I'm a little reluctant to write a post with "spring" in the title; I don't want to jinx what looks like the official, irreversible, no-really-this-time end of winter. But today's perfect weather has me feeling optimistic, so let's talk about corals and pastels and glitter topcoats. In ROYGBIV order (more properly ROGBVV, plus two misc.): Left to right: Chanel Tapage, Essie Resort Fling, Milani Showy Sea-Green, Essie In the Cab-ana, Essie Pla...