 |
 |
 |
« July 2008 | Main | September 2008 »
To escape, reinvent, and excite.
DuWop Moon Venom Lip Plumper, $17; Chanel Joues Contrast Powder Blush in Narcisse, $42; Givenchy Phenomen'Eyes Mascara, $27; Shu Uemura False Eyelashes in Slant Black, $20; M.A.C Nail Lacquer in Illegal Purple, $11; NARS Eyeshadow in Night Flight, $22; Fresh Twilight Freshface Glow, $36.
If you've taken a little too much sun this summer, you'll need to treat yourself to this soothing After Sun Mask by Kanebo. It's sure to change your life (or, at least, your skin).
The Sensai Silky Bronze After Sun Mask is a pre-treated sheet that helps to replenish lost moisture, reduce inflammation and redness, and prevent dryness to maintain a beautifully bronze tan (sans peeling or irritation). Each 3-ply sheet fits tightly over your face to allow for maximum absorption of Kanebo's exclusive essence, which works quickly to restore suppleness and give your skin a healthy glow.
So, within about ten minutes, you can help reverse sun damage, prolong your tan, and boost the overall radiance of your skin. As you've probably guessed, this product is also highly addictive.
Retailer: Kanebo.com
Cost: $100.00
I've always found it difficult to find a travel kit that's as functional as it is fabulous, and it seems the R&D team at This Works felt the same frustration.
Their unisex Travel set helps with everything from pre-flight anxiety to jet lag and bloating, all whilst managing to fit into that ridiculous little baggie (with room to spare for all your other in-flight beauty supplies).
Included in This Works Travel:
Turbo Balm
A cocoa butter and rose based balm that can be used as a lip gloss/cuticle softener/brow tamer/hair texturizer/eyeshadow base/burn cream... You name it.
Quick Spritz
A refreshing facial and body mist w/palmrosa and rosewood.
One for All
A soothing roller ball of lavender and coconut oils, which help to calm and relax.
Breathe In
An uplifting roller ball featuring Frankincense and Eucalyptus.
Stay Cool Eye Serum
A must for puffy, tired eyes. Made with a soothing blend of aloe vera, arnica and cucumber.
Enjoy Really Rich Lotion
A powerful, rich and beautifully scented
lotion with eight essential oils and pure rose
water.
Deep Calm Bath and Shower Oil
A deeply soothing oil to help you
relax, unwind and sleep well.
Energy Bank Bath and Shower oil
The perfect morning pick-me-up. Made with a fusion of Ylang Ylang, Patchouli and Geranium.
Retailer: ThisWorks.com
Cost: $59.00
...You must stop by the Earnest Sewn clothing & grooming boutique (90 Orchard St.) for a glass of homemade lemonade & treats from the Sweet Things Bake Shop.
With your ice cold drink and sweets, comes a little discount on Earnest Sewn products, too.
Proceeds from the lemonade stand will go to the Lower Eastside Girls Club of New York, so feel free to nibble, nosh, & shop sans guilt (how rare is that?).
August 9th & 10th 2008, 12pm- 6pm. 90 Orchard Street location only; 212. 979. 5120.
Exciting news!
A recent interview I'd done with Natasha Singer, a lovely editor at the NY Times, has been included in her latest piece entitled 'En Garde! The Great Mascara Duel'.
From today's Style Section:
CALL it the Battle of the Battery-Operated Mascaras.
On July 17, Estée Lauder introduced TurboLash, a mascara with a battery-operated vibrating brush, at Saks Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The night before, the company’s Web site, esteelauder.com/turbolash, sold out of its stock of about 1,000 mascaras, said Elana Drell Szyfer, the senior vice president for marketing at Estée Lauder.
On July 31, Lancôme, which had been scheduled to trot out its own battery-powered wand in November, fired back with a one-day advance sale of the mascara, called Ôscillation, in a handful of stores nationwide.
By the end of the day, more than 5,000 mascaras had sold out at outlets like Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan, Neiman Marcus in Houston and sephora.com, said Kerry Diamond, the vice president for communications at Lancôme USA.
Both companies said the purpose of an electronic mascara wand is to better separate and more evenly coat lashes than a traditional brush would.
Estée Lauder said TurboLash, $30, produces 7,500 vibrations per minute.
Lancôme said Ôscillation, $34, produces 7,000 “micro-oscillations,” or pulses, per minute.
“It has been a question of who would get to market fastest,” said Karen Young, the chief executive of the Young Group, a beauty marketing firm in Manhattan, who has worked at both companies. “It is the mascara wars.”
The battle is so intense that manufacturers are borrowing the promotional weaponry of cellphone companies. They compete over technological iterations, stoke expectations by favoring certain bloggers with advance information, and tightly control initial distribution so that people who pride themselves as being early adopters can buy the product first. Beautymaverick.com, a blog written by a former cosmetics publicist, referred to the Lancôme mascara as “possibly the iPhone 3G of the beauty realm.”
“If you miss the boat, you are unable to be one of the people who have the It product, who are in the know,” Lily Nima, who started the blog 18 months ago, said last week in a phone interview.
“If a mass-market brand were to put a vibrating mascara on the shelf, it would look more like a novelty you would expect a drugstore to do,” she said. “The limited edition at the beginning makes it cooler, unattainable and more glamorous.”
A mass-market wand has been on the shelves at stores like Target and CVS since March. Called Spinlash (spinlash.com), the battery-powered gizmo costs about $14.99; more than 100,000 have been sold, a company spokeswoman said.
But, whatever the price, will women embrace a device that requires greater meticulousness to use than a manually operated mascara, and which emits a hum as annoying as a vibrating cellphone?
Beauty companies are positioning the power mascara and the power-free mascara as the difference between automatic and stick-shift.
But even beauty bloggers predict the electric mascara may find only a niche audience.
“An electric battery-operated mascara can be a tricky thing to apply in the back of a cab or on the go,” Ms. Nima said. “The beauty junkies may take to it, but the average beauty consumers may have a harder time with it.”
Still, Jennifer Nobriga of Woodbridge, Va., one of a pair of self-described average beauty consumers and stay-at-home moms behind the blog Beauty in Real Life (beautyinreallife.blogspot.com), said she had already tested Spinlash and was eager to try its higher-end competitors.
“Once we get our own hands on them,” she said, “we are going to be doing a comparison.”
TurboLash is available at Saks; Lauder is working seven days a week to produce more, Ms. Szyfer said. For those who must have Ôscillation, there’s a waiting list at Lancôme counters.
I'm a big fan of using beauty products to keep cool during the hot, humid summer months. A cold shower, a cooling scent, or refrigerated body products... They're all guilt-free ways to beat the heat (though a mojito has its perks, too.)
My favorite products to keep cool:
Korner Skincare Mystify Exotic Flower Dew
An uplifting mist for your hair/face/body that moisturizes and soothes. Keep it in the fridge for a refreshing midday pick-me-up.
Skyn Iceland Hydro Cool Firming Eye Gels
A ten-minute, de-puffing treatment that leaves your eye area looking brighter and more toned.
(Malin+Goetz) Peppermint Shampoo
A refreshing shampoo that awakens your senses. Suitable for all hair types, including color-treated.
DuWop Lip Venom 2nd Sin
Like the original, but twice as powerful. This minty-cool concoction plumps your lips without overheating.
Korres Yoghurt Cooling Gel
The perfect after-sun facial/body moisturizer. Try storing this gel-creme in your refrigerator to amplify the chill.
In the latest issue of NY Magazine, Jonathan Van Meter discusses the new new face (aka plumping, not pulling) of Hollywood's leading ladies.
Overall, the article is quite sharp and makes a few v.good points, but there are a couple of quotes from renowned dermatologist Patricia Wexler that leave me questioning how far we'll go for a shot at eternal youth:
“ [The previous new face is] what I call the Beetlejuice phenomenon,” she says when we meet. “You keep pulling and pulling, and your head gets smaller, and your body gets bigger as you age, and so you wind up with this little head on this big body. But we now know that you need volume to keep a face looking young. Volume means a face that goes out. And it’s all about the cheeks and the jawline.”
When I tell her that making the face bigger or “fatter” seems counterintuitive, she says, “I know, that’s why no one was doing it twenty years ago.” “How did you figure it out?” I ask. “Because I was doing lipo and I don’t like to throw anything away.”
...Wexler is a die-hard believer in the power of injectables. “If you are sunken-in and hollow under your eyes because you haven’t had an English muffin in three years, you are going to look bad. You need to have a certain amount of that juvenile plumpness to look young,” she says.
I think Patricia Wexler is a cosmetic genius (with a fabulous product collection to boot), but are we really getting to a place where we avoid carbs, suck-out the effects of any that slipped by, and then inject the remains into our face to look youthful and radiant?
Then again, perhaps we're just modernizing what it means to age gracefully. Maybe all those women we thought were doing so were simply ahead of the curve, being plumped-up on the Upper East Side while the masses looked to the face lift as their only option...
