Best Lipstick Formulas 2019

After my little spending spree in the UK last month, I decided to go on a replacement-only makeup/polish no-buy for the month of July. I'm happy to report that I didn't need any makeup or polish replacements and had no trouble avoiding new purchases. I don't know why, but it's much easier for me to stick to a no-buy than to a low-buy. If I restrict myself to two new items per month, I'll inevitably end up with three or four. But if I restrict myself to zero items per month, I'll buy zero. Granted, I don't have a huge breadth of experience here — I've never tried to maintain a no-buy longer than two months — but in general, moderation is not my (black-and-white-striped) bag. Anyway, here's the damage for July: New Makeup/Polish: none, bitches! Gifts:  My mom picked up an e.l.f. lip stain in Nude Nectar at some point in the last several months. She can't remember when or why she bought it, but she has never used it and conjectures that "I pr...

My love for k-pop is no secret. And as luck would have it — good or bad luck, you decide — I started this blog mere weeks before I fell down the k-pop rabbit hole. Many of us can blame Kate of Drivel about Frivol for one obsession or another; for me, that obsession was k-pop, which I'd never encountered before reading her post about Spica's retro-fabulous "You Don't Love Me" music video . For a beauty junkie like me, k-pop was a wonderland. Spica's makeup was so thoughtfully designed and immaculately executed that I imagined they must be one of the most successful groups in the industry. But as I soon discovered, Spica has been trying to break into the mainstream for several years and is best known for being "underrated." The visual aspect of k-pop is so important that even a group as cash-strapped as Spica will hire a nationally famous makeup artist to design their '60s-inspired cat-eye liner. The music videos from richer entertainment co...

Early this month, just after returning from England, I started my summer job in the university archives. These archives house documents related to the history of the university, over a century's worth of senior theses, and the lifelong correspondence of some prominent alumni. My job for the summer is to reprocess the papers of one such alum, a New York-based lawyer who was involved in the founding of the League of Nations, though he later resigned in disgust at the American government's reluctance to get involved in anything resembling international cooperation. My task is to sit in the basement and reorganize a huge collection of letters written and received between 1917 and 1951. I've spent 15 hours with this collection and am up to the summer of 1922, and I've been working pretty efficiently, so you can imagine how many papers are involved. This might sound like a tedious job, but I've been enjoying it immensely. As most of you know, I specialize in Renaissance l...