"The most beautiful makeup for a woman is passion, but cosmetics are easier to buy."
—Yves Saint Laurent
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Favored
Art Tattler
the glamourai
The Non-Blonde
Perfume Shrine
Lisa Eldridge
Garance Doré
Smitten Kitchen
Into The Gloss
Grain de Musc
Lacquerized
Res Pulchrae
Drivel About Frivol The Selfish Seamstress
Killer Colours
Bois de Jasmin Glossed In Translation
Jak and Jil
Toto Kaelo
Worship at the House of Blues
I Smell Therefore I Am
Food Wishes
The Natural Haven
Messy Wands
1000 Fragrances
Moving Image Source
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The Emperor's Old Clothes
M. Guerlain
Colin's Beauty Pages
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Parfümrien
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The Straight Dope
Sea of Shoes
London Makeup Girl
Sakecat's Scent Project
Asian Models
Ratzilla Cosme
Smart Skincare
Illustrated Obscurity
A.V. Club
Tom & Lorenzo: Mad Style
Eiderdown Press
Beauty and the Bullshit
La Garçonne Flame Warriors Everyday Beauty
Fashion Gone Rogue
Now Smell This
Dempeaux
Fashionista
The Cut
A Fevered Dictation
Nathan Branch
101 Cookbooks
I first became aware of Beauté Cosmetics through KarlaSugar's excellent swatch blog, The Next Best Thing To Going Shopping Yourself, where she raved about their lip stains. Beauté is a Canadian brand, although its creative director, Beau Nelson, now resides in New York City. Since its founding it has picked up something of a cult following, but I believe it deserves greater popularity: these are lovely, well-thought-out products, at a price point that's very competitive with other high-end brands. At present Beauté offers only makeup brushes and lip products: theLuminous Volume Gloss, the Weightless Lip Creme (which, although I didn't test it, seems like a similar concept to Chanel's Rouge Allure Laque), and its excellent Liqui-Gel Stains.
Above, Fluoron (which looks orange in the tube, but is not) and Fever.
The Liqui-Gel stains are very light, have a beautiful rose scent, tingle slightly going on, and stay liquid only long enough to blend into the lips. After that, they stay put through eating, drinking, under lip balm...almost anything. These stains will stay on until you exfoliate (or until, like me, you indulge in the bad habit of biting your lips).
While I think the Liqui-Gel Stains are terrific, I do wish they were available in more colours, especially warm shades. I expect I could wear Neon, the orange shade, fairly successfully, but my heart would skip a beat for a deep brick red.
Stay tuned for reviews of Beauté's lovely brushes and Luminous Volume Gloss.
Labels: beaute, beauty notebook
5/27/2010 [5]
Julie Hewett is a Hollywood makeup artist, best remembered, in my mind, for doing the gorgeous makeup in 2001's Pearl Harbor and setting off waves of envy in every makeup junkie who spotted Kate Beckinsale's lipstick. Hewett's makeup line is arguably best known for its lip products: the Noir line is well known among red lipstick fans, the Icon of Beauty lipsticks are named after individual Hollywood actresses, and the Camellia lip balm gets frequent mentions in magazines.
Up until doing this Beauty Notebook, I had only tried Julie Hewett's full-pigment Noir lipsticks, which are so superb that I was eager to explore more offerings from the brand.
(For a larger version of the above image, click here.
Julie Hewett's Noir lipsticks and Camellia Balm are probably the best known of their products. The Camellia balm deserves all the accolades it gets: it has little scent or taste, is light and comfortable on the lips, but is significantly more emollient than similarly textured balms like Nivea's. Since I have the balm in lipstick-tube form, I tested it only as a lip balm, but it is also available in a pot for use on face, hands, etc.
I tend to shy away from pink makeup, but though the cream colours in Julie Hewett's Poppy palette (Jami, a rose-toned cream blush/lip gloss, and Mimi, a shimmery sugarplum/lavender gloss) are on the cool side for me, I love the powder shadow/blush shades: Flora is a soft, slightly shimmery, lavender-inflected pink that works surprisingly well with green eyes, and Clementine a bright matte peach that is a near-perfect dupe for Stila Blush.* Both are smooth and well pigmented. Above, Flora and Clementine on lids, Clementine on cheeks, Jami and Mimi on lips. There's little drama here, but it's a pretty look, and well worth trying if you're pale with fairly neutral colouring; I could have punched it up with eyeliner, but I enjoyed the delicacy of mascara alone.
Below, a more colourful look: Flora and Emmy shadows on lids, Fig eye pencil to line, Clementine on cheeks, Gem Noir lipstick and liner.
Julie Hewett has recently released eyeshadow singles, which can be purchased individually or loaded into a custom palette. The shades, alas, are only visible on the order page, and then only in rather tiny computer-generated swatches without accompanying descriptions. The shades included in the Poppy palette are of very high quality, and the prices are quite reasonable ($10 per shadow or $48 for a palette containing four), but for customers without a Julie Hewett counter nearby, online swatches and descriptions are the only way to figure out what a shadow looks like, and these aren't that helpful.
The Emmy shadow is an object lesson in choosing the right tools. A true, matte kelly green, it appealed to me immediately, but alas, its pigmentation and staying power are not the best, which is surprising given the excellent consistency of Flora. It requires primer (I used Urban Decay Primer Potion) and a small, dense eyeshadow brush. With these accessories, it went on and blended well; this is not the shadow you should choose for full-on Hedwig and the Angry Inch pride parade makeup, but that doesn't appear to be Julie Hewett's aesthetic, anyway.I expected Fig eye pencil to be dark green; it's more of a teal-inflected charcoal. It applies smoothly, smudges easily but not too easily, and makes a good anchor for shadow; alas, the staying power is only average.
As I mentioned, it was Julie Hewett's full-pigment, semi-matte Noir lipsticks that first drew me to the brand. These are exceptional lipsticks, in every way: creamy, highly pigmented, not prone to bleeding, with colours that stay remarkably true on lips (at least on mine, and I can turn almost anything fuchsia), pretty, retro-chic packaging, and no discernible scent. In particular, Coco Noir, a deep, dramatic brick red, is widely loved and flattering to many skintones (see The Non-Blonde's review for more details). Gem Noir is the first sheer Noir lipstick I've tried, and being sheer, it does not have the intensely creamy texture of the semi-mattes. Instead, it feels light and balmlike. The colour is described on the Julie Hewett website as "rosy cheeks in the snow", which, despite being a bit fanciful, is accurate. It is a sheer rose-red, slightly warm, a flush of colour rather than a Proper Lipstick. It is simply pretty. It should be noted that the matching liner (which, like the eye pencil, is smooth and of high quality) does not, in fact, match, but is a muted pink/red/brown in the same colour family as MAC Spice. The combination of lipstick and liner is consequently warmer-toned than the lipstick alone.
*Yes, Stila makes a blush in a shade called Blush. Oy.
Labels: beauty notebook, julie hewett
6/25/2009 [3]
I have, up to now, resisted NARS duos. For one thing, although beautiful, they're not cheap; for another, I only really got "into" eyeshadow a couple of years ago. Even now, I usually wear a highlight, some eyeliner and mascara, and a wash of neutral shadow (NARS Cairo is my current favourite), nothing beyond that.
Upon seeing the Divine duo ($32), a silky dark chocolate matte shadow paired with a highly pigmented, balls-out fuchsia, my first thought was "What am I supposed to do with this?" A friend suggested full-out, John Cameron Mitchell in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, drag queen makeup, which I have concluded I don't know how to do. Another friend, a bona fide eyeshadow junkie, said "Well, whatever you do, don't put it on your lower lids. I speak from experience."
It must be obvious by now that Divine takes me out of my comfort zone. No makeup routine that involves shocking pink eyeshadow is ever going to look natural, but when I applied the shocking pink as a wash and blended the chocolate shade into the crease, I was surprised at how well it worked.
This is me in Divine (please forgive the silly face, you wouldn't believe how hard it is to take these photos), brows pencilled in, concealer applied under the eyes and everywhere I have a tendency to redness, powder, but no blush, as I didn't want the colour to compete with the shadow. On the lips, I applied just a bit of a sheer chocolate/berry shade (Lipstick Queen Saint Berry), mostly for definition.
Although this is not a look to combine with a bare face, it turns out the fuchsia in Divine is beautifully judged, its undertones balanced between purple and red, so it does not make the wearer look sickly or tired. Combined with an eyeliner in a deep purple (I used MAC's Fluidline in Macroviolet) and black mascara, it actually makes green eyes "pop". I will not be changing my daytime routine, but I think I may pull this out for parties.
On the left, a close-up. I've applied Divine fairly lightly because that's my style, but the effect seemed to me like a soft echo of early '80s makeup, with its exaggerated crease definition, so I tried a heavier application:
(Ignore the hair; it does whatever it wants, I'm sure you'll read more about that.) The camera washes things out, but perhaps you can see the basic effect. I think it still works, although I doubt I would ever wear this heavy an application; it still looks like makeup and not pinkeye or a bruise, which was really my major concern with fuchsia eyeshadow.
Now I am lemming other NARS duos, which cost the earth up here in Canada. Oh dear.
I love the vague grottiness, cheek and bad taste of music videos from the early '80s. I initially thought of Cyndi Lauper's video for "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun", but, you know, everyone's seen that.
Labels: beauty notebook, nars, tracy ullman
11/27/2008 [4]
I must confess that I've never been a fan of multi-purpose products. I'm used to powder blushes and eyeshadows and creamy lipsticks; I don't like having to mix things. I've been playing with the NARS Multiple in South Beach lately, but most of the time I use it on my cheeks. So when I read about Mistura, I was very skeptical.
Mistura's 6-in-1 Beauty Solution is a fine, mineral-based pressed powder sold as a replacement for/alternative to not only blush, bronzer and eyeshadow, but also foundation, concealer and lipstick. At left, the open compact (which, as you can see, has a mirror). It retails on the Mistura website for $36.99 (I assume that's in American dollars, although Mistura is a Canadian company).Mistura is sold as "one shade for all"; however, the colour is not far off the blush shades I usually wear, a warm, tawny pink-brown. The Mistura website claims that it "adjusts" to your skintone, but it's far from the first cosmetic touted that way, and in my experience, those claims are usually too good to be true. Hence, I'm not sure Mistura would flatter those with cool undertones. Perhaps it's sheer enough to work.
Because of the warm shade (somewhere between blush and bronze), the sheerness and the fine shimmer, Mistura certainly would work on a variety of warm and even neutral skintones; it will add colour to pale faces and highlight darker ones. Can it really do more than that, though? I was skeptical about the "6 in 1" claim, but gave it a try:
On the left, I am freshly showered, in all my makeup-free glory. Oh, the glamour. (Apologies for the weird faces; it's really hard to do these photos). As you can see, I'm rather shiny, I have some redness, and I have pronounced dark circles under my eyes (somewhat obscured by the flash; it was a toss-up which to show you, the circles or the shine, since I usually wear makeup to deal with both).
I normally wear, at a minimum, brow pencil, undereye concealer and powder.
On the right, brow pencil, black mascara, and Mistura, used on eyelids, as blush, mixed with gloss for "lipstick", and brushed all over the face. As usual, the photo washes out the intensity a bit, but the difference is indeed subtle. I do look a bit more alive and awake in the second photo, which may be all you want if you're into minimal makeup.
As a colour cosmetic, Mistura's very good. I'm not convinced that the colour adjusts to every individual skintone (how would it even do that?), but it's very sheer and subtle. As a blush/bronzer, it's excellent for warm skintones like mine; the colour is natural and flattering, and the shimmer adds light without being glittery or obtrusive. It makes a flattering, subtle eyeshadow, especially for blue or green eyes. Even mixed with gloss or balm, it feels a bit powdery on the lips, which bothers me, but might not bother everyone; certainly, the shade is pretty, a shimmery peach-pink.
I can't see Mistura working as a concealer for any but the subtlest flaws. It's more of a highlighter, disguising minor flaws by reflecting light off them. As you can see, it didn't do much for my undereye circles. Likewise, it tones down shine, but doesn't eliminate it. If you were blessed with relatively shine-free skin, or you like the glowy look, that might be okay; personally, I think I need something heavier-duty.
So, is this a real 6-in-1 product? In my opinion, no. But I have been using it as a blush lately, and if I ever find myself looking particularly sickly this winter, I shall use it to restore some of the colour to my face.
Labels: beauty notebook, mistura
11/02/2008 [3]
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