Best Lipstick Formulas 2019

As I'm sure you've heard by now, Bite Beauty has almost finished releasing a series of twelve Amuse Bouche lipsticks inspired by the signs of the zodiac. Bite started with Aquarius in January, and they're now two signs from the end, having just revealed Scorpio on Thursday. (If you're curious about Sagittarius and Capricorn, Trendmood has leaked all twelve shades here .) Like any other enamel-pin-collecting queer millennial, I enjoy astrology. I don't believe in it, per se, but I'm a Scorpio with Pisces rising and Aries moon, and that combination of signs is pretty damned accurate for my personality. (I didn't identify with Aries until I caught myself saying to my boyfriend, "I don't have anger issues; I'm just angry all the time.") So I've been following Bite's releases all year, initially with eager anticipation, then with increasing bafflement, and now with outright annoyance. The Astrology by Bite series was a great idea that co...

Almost exactly four years ago , I posted my recipe for pumpkin-walnut-chocolate-chip cookies, which I've made at least once every autumn since, including this morning. These cookies are my humble attempt to replicate the ones that used to be (and still are, for all I know) sold at the coffee shop in my college library. Here's today's iteration: I've tweaked the recipe a bit since 2014, so I thought I'd post an update for those of you interested in making them, which everyone should be. Note that the walnuts and chocolate chips aren't mandatory at all (though they are, of course, highly recommended). INGREDIENTS: 1 cup plain canned pumpkin (this is a little less than a standard 15-oz. can) 1/2 cup sugar (you can use a bit less or more, depending on preferred sweetness level and presence/absence of chocolate chips. I used 1/2 cup today and wish I'd used less) 1/3 cup vegetable oil 1 egg 2 cups all-purpose flour 2 tsp. baking powder  1 tsp. baking soda 1 tsp. m...

Since I'm moving this month and need to limit both my spending and my accumulation of new crap, I've put myself on a replacement-only beauty no-buy until the end of August. It's been pretty easy so far: I've been so consumed with other problems that I haven't had much brain space for makeup. But since there's no telling what temptations I'll face in the second half of the month, I thought I'd write up a list of the techniques and mantras that have helped me through previous no- and low-buys. (Disclaimer: I don't have a shopping addiction, which is a serious disorder, and I'm not qualified to counsel people who do. This advice is designed for those who, like me, occasionally impulse-buy things they can live without.) 1. Know your triggers.  Here are mine: a. Feeling (even) more broke than usual. I've spent my entire adult life as a graduate student and underemployed academic, so money has always been tight. But I've noticed that when it...

Despite the flood of new eyeshadow palettes in the past few years, I own just a few: Modern Renaissance, Naked2 Basics, a nine-pan custom theBalm palette, and a magnetic palette containing, among other things, slightly less than half (five shades) of a depotted theBalm Nude 'Tude. The newest palette in my collection is Modern Renaissance, which I bought in December 2016; the others are all at least three years old. Of course, by normal-person standards, this is a lot  of eyeshadow. But by beauty-blogger standards (which is what we're using here, right? cool), it's almost nothing. No, actually, this is  a lot. There are a few reasons for my (relative) restraint in this category. First, though I wear eyeshadow almost every day, I'm more of a wash-of-one-neutral-color person than a seven-different-shades-plus-liner-and-falsies person. I also prefer cream and liquid formulas to powders, especially in the current heat and humidity. And even if I were someone who made time t...

If there's one thing I've learned from living in central New Jersey for the better part of a decade, it's how to choose humidity-resistant makeup. (I would say "humidity-proof," but nothing is truly humidity-proof except mosquitoes.) In a part of the world where the humidity index routinely hovers above 90% and occasionally creeps up to 100%, it's essential to know which formulas won't slide off my face before I even leave the house—or, at least, will look semi-decent as they slide off. In addition to living in the muggy armpit of the United States, I'm also a person who sweats a lot, particularly on my face and scalp. After my 20-minute walk to work, my face is dripping and my hair is as wet as if I've just showered. All this is to say that if I vouch for the tenacity of a formula, believe me: it's tenacious. When choosing my makeup on particularly humid mornings, I look for formulas that a) stain the skin, b) dry down completely, or c) fade g...

I've fallen behind on my promised Glossier reviews (surprising no one, I'm sure), but here's the first of two Glossier-centric posts that I hope will make up for my dereliction. I've been testing Glossier's new mascara, Lash Slick, for the past month, and I finally set foot in the Glossier ~*~showroom~*~ earlier this week. This post will be an account of my time in the showroom, and I'll review Lash Slick later this week. I promise! It's behind glass because it's a SHOWROOM, GET IT? The Glossier showroom started as a pop-up shop, but became a permanent fixture in NYC's trendy Soho neighborhood at the end of 2016. Despite my fairly frequent visits to New York, I always found an excuse not to see the Glossier mothership. First, I almost never go to Soho, because I'm not a teenage model, a fashion journalist, or a trust-fund "DJ/actress." Second, I suspected that the showroom experience — because everything is an experience these days — w...