making faces :: product review [armani, chanel, estee lauder, nars]

oh yes, everyone is coming out with new things these days. so here's a great, big omnibus review of a bunch of things i've accumulated over the last little while. some are here for a limited time, some will be around for the long haul, so pace yourselves accordingly.

armani "eyes to kill" eye shadow :: it's not often that i find something in the cosmetic world that makes me think "wow, that is really different", but these shimmery shadows are one of them. they come in pots, like cream shadows. they apply super-smoothly wet or dry, like cream shadows, but they aren't messy or prone to smudging. really, they're powders with multiple colours in one.

the colours are all quite breathtaking and, when applied, while they smooth into a single, nuanced shade, you can see elements of all the different colour "components" inside. who doesn't want an excuse to have people look at their eyes? the fact that they are quite shimmery makes them quite dramatic to look at, but there is a good range of colours from light to dark, with a few medium shades thrown in.

READ MORE REVIEWS AND SEE THE PRODUCTS IN ACTION!

lust red

the real magic in these is in their "technical" aspects, though. i got "lust red", a black shade replete with purple and red shimmer, and i had some trepidation because i'd been let down by such colours before. with other shades that have this effect, i find that, unless you really pack on the colour, they tend to just look like slightly muddy shades of black. worse yet, a lot of them are prone to fallout, so you end up with a lot of sparkle on your face, but very little on your eyes. when i first applied "lust red", i noticed a bit of sparkle spreading and was worried, but i brushed it away and persevered. once applied, i was amazed at the fact that the shade showed its base and shimmer perfectly and i was even more amazed when it looked exactly the same hours later. these shadows don't fade, don't smudge and don't move. however, when you clean them away with water or a moist cleanser, they come right off. i was skeptical when armani's publicity claimed this but this is one of those few times where the product deserves the hype.

the photo of the pot is more accurate...

these are permanent, which is good, because the price tag is a little hard to swallow. they're $32usd, which is bad enough, but some genius has determine that this should equate to $42. huh??? our dollar has been above par with the american dollar for weeks. how is it even possible that we should be paying $10 more?? someone needs to look at this, pronto.

the lady at the armani counter [only at holt renfrew in canada, as far as i'm aware] warned me that it's important to keep these babies tightly sealed when they're not in use, including keeping the small plastic inner cover in place. this helps them retain the amount of moisture that lets them do what they do.

yes, they're pricy, particularly if you're canadian, but these are innovative gems and, i'm not kidding, worth the investment.

chanel "rouge coco shine" lipsticks :: it seems that everybody is coming out with lip products that are a hybrid between a lipstick and a gloss and the most recent entrant into the category is chanel. as with all new chanel products, these have been hotly anticipated, especially as they did a limited release of one shade for valentine's day.

antigone

i'm a big fan of chanel's rouge coco lipsticks, but these don't really bear any resemblance save the name. these shades are quite sheer, whereas the rouge coco's are extremely pigmented. the coco shines are super-soft on the lips and don't have the stickiness one normally associates with glosses. the formula is like a very moist lipstick- comparable to mac's lustre finish, but without the tendency to bleed around the lip contour.

i picked up "antigone" [partly because of the name, i'll admit], which is a strawberry reddish-pink. although it really just augments the colour of my own lips, it's one of the more pigmented shades, which leads me to believe that the lighter ones wouldn't show up at all on me. it's the kind of lipstick i can wear for anything and i imagine that it'll be a particularly nice option for summer, where i don't want to feel like i'm wearing anything heavy.

for $39cad [$32usd... growl], though, i don't know that i'd find it necessary to buy a variety of shades. generally, i find them too sheer for the differences in the colours to show up in a lot of cases. the colour doesn't fade overly quickly, but, being a gloss-like formula, any amount of friction [from eating, drinking, etc.] will wipe it away. i'd recommend finding one colour you like and choosing that one.

sea star bronzing blush

estée lauder "sea star bronzing blush" :: this is one of those things that you want to have simply because it looks so cool. it's a bronze-y powder with a pink starfish debossed in it. the starfish is not an overspray, but an intrinsic part of the product. while i've heard it suggested that you could use the colours separately, i think that the pattern would make that very difficult and would require more patience than i can muster.

mixed shade

mixed together, the two shades form a lovely warm rosy peach shade that definitely functions as a blush more than as a bronzer [there are proper bronzers available as part of lauder's summer collection for that purpose]. it can be built up to a fair intensity, although it's never going to be super-dark. i definitely think it's better suited to fair-skinned complexions, since the colour is fairly subtle. i had no problem seeing the colour it added to my cheeks, but i'm definitely on the pale side of the skin spectrum. i like anything that makes me look radiant without making me look brown or orange.

this is limited edition and, i think, will sell pretty fast. it's $40cad/ $34usd [better, but still more than it should be], which is higher than a regular blush, but it is a fairly large compact.

nars "copacabana illuminator" :: finally, this is a product i tried from a fairly generous sample. it's part of a line of skin illuminators that nars has launched. these products are designed to give skin an all-over glow with just a hint of colour and can be applied either on their own or mixed with foundation. there are four shades- orgasm, which is a natural peach, super orgasm, which is a similar shade with a slightly golden tone, laguna, which is more bronze and copacabana, which is a white-gold highlighter.

the texture is like a fairly light lotion and i found it easy to blend it in quickly with foundation. the effect is extremely subtle. my skin looked a bit brighter, but i don't know that i would pay the asking price [$29usd/ not sure on the canadian price, but undoubtedly higher] for the effect it gives. i found that if i added more than a little of the illuminator, it had the effect of making my face a little too white in comparison with the rest of me.

used on its own, over bare skin, it was more visible and definitely added a pale sheen to the skin. it reminded me a lot of benefit's high beam or moon beam highlighters, in that the effect was pretty enough, but i found that it had a tendency to make my pores more obvious. i think that whether or not you like the effect is very much a subjective thing. i liked it mixed with foundation, but i don't know that i'd pay upwards of $30 for it. the illuminators are a permanent part of the nars line up and there will likely be more shades to come.

and, to give you an idea of what these things are like in the field, here are a few things i've tried with them in the last couple of weeks.

"eyes to kill"
i decided i wanted to try something dramatic to test drive the armani shadow and i only wish that i'd remembered to snap photos when i got home, so that you could see that my makeup basically looked exactly the same as when i went out. of course, i'm not sure the face underneath fared so well, but i'll have to wait a while for armani to come up with a fix for that. the since it was night time, i had to use a flash for the photos, which i don't normally like to do.

face ::

nars sheer glow foundation mont blanc
mac prolongwear concealer nw20
mac prep & prime finishing powder

eyes ::
armani eyes to kill shadow lust red
mac pigment new fixation
mac pigment pink opal
mac fluidline eye liner blacktrack
ysl faux ciles mascara

cheeks ::
estée lauder sea star bronzing blush

lips ::
chanel glossimer myriade




"not quite cute"
last week, i reviewed mac's "quite cute" collection and, having done so, it occurred to me that i had a lot of products already that could easily give me the same look as the new ones i opted to skip [for varying reasons] from the new collection. so this is something i threw together to remind myself that sometimes what's new bares a striking resemblance to what's gone before. i'm wearing the nars illuminator in this one, but i don't know how different it would look if i weren't.

face ::
nars sheerglow foundation mont blanc
mac prolongwear concealer nw20
nars copacabana illuminator
mac prep & prime finishing powder

eyes ::
mac crystal avalanche e/s
mac aquavert e/s
mac smudged violet e/s
mac mating call e/s
mac blacktrack fluidline eye liner
ysl faux cils mascara

cheeks ::
mac azalea blossom blush ombre
mac hang loose mineralize blush

lips ::
inglot l/s 151

"antigone"
as you can probably tell, i've gone on a bit of a kick with red eye shadow lately. inglot has a program whereby you can build your own shadow, blush or combination palette for well less than you can get a palette anywhere else, so i made myself a custom job with a matte, neutral highlighter, a matte coral and an amazing tomato red shade with a stunning gold shimmer. sadly, the shimmer doesn't really show up when the shadow was applied, although the colour is quite intense [and it's damn difficult to find a good red shadow]. all inglot shadows tend to be a bit powdery, which makes them difficult to work with- you can see from the shots that i couldn't get the colour perfectly even. my advice would be to work patiently [which is a problem for me], mind the excess and pat rather than swipe. the colour payoff is intense, which is a relief at least.


face ::
nars sheer glow foundation mont blanc
mac prolongwear concealer nw20

eyes ::
inglot 351 e/s [matte buttercream]
inglot 495 e/s [warm red with pink/ gold shimmer]
inglot 368 e/s [matte peach-coral]

cheeks ::
mac marine life highlight powder

lips ::
chanel rouge coco shine antigone

making faces :: product review [estée lauder pure color lipsticks]

while i was out shopping the other day, i was given a sample by the lady at the estée lauder counter that caught me quite by surprise. it wasn't that i was taken so much by the product- i couldn't tell anything about it- but because the sample itself was so intricate and well-designed that i could immediately see that the company had spent a pretty penny (i always wondered what happened to the ugly pennies... but that's another story) creating this little card that they were handing out to women like me who stopped at their locations. someone at estée lauder wanted my attention.

what i received was a folded card with a plastic insert containing four little pots of lipstick and a mini lip brush to boot. it was quite adorable. all this was to announce the launch of a new  line of lipsticks- and a big launch too. lauder is launching a total of 35 new colours- 25 in their "pure color long lasting" lipstick (plus a few extra limited edition ones) and 10 more in their more sheer "pure color crystal" formula. all of this is being done under the auspices of creative director tom pecheux, who has taken on the challenge of reinventing the brand's image- taking it from the makeup of mothers and grandmothers to makeup for the young and successful that everyone wants to have.

REVIEW AND PHOTOS AFTER THE BREAK...



i'll say up front that i'm generally a fan of estée lauder. i get a kind of kick out of the fact that this high end brand with the snooty name was actually started by the daughter of hungarian jewish immigrants who owned a hardware store in queens. and i like the fact that the company took an early stand against animal testing, before european legislation started to force more companies into it. and of course, i do like the products i've tried from them thus far.

so i was quite happy to try out something new from them, particularly since i'm a real lipstick fiend. the colours in my sample card were all from the "long lasting color" collection, meaning they are more pigmented and less glossy than the "crystal" shades. just so you know, the shots were all taken at the same time of day, in natural light, with no flash. all were applied with the brush applicator supplied. and no making fun of my hair!!! i've been sick for three days and styling has not been a priority. makeup hasn't been a priority either, but i was dying for something to do...

shade #1 :: scarlet siren

this is a cream finish (meaning no shimmer or frost) in a statement cherry red. it's bright shade, but, as i was applying it, i did notice that a light coating made for a lovely "bitten" stain on the lips that a lot of people who might be shy to wear red would probably like. the lauder web site describes this as "medium classic flat red", but to my eye, the colour definitely leans blue. i think that someone with a warmer complexion could wear it, but it's better suited to those with cool undertones.

i'm a huge fan of reds and, of the shades i tried, this one was my favourite. it's not the most original- virtually every company has their own version of this shade (chanel's gabrielle or guerlain's greta come to mind), but i really like the fact that this is a red you could get away with wearing just about anywhere. even with a fairly intense application (what you see here is a few layers with a brush), it doesn't have that "traffic-stopping" brightness that some reds have.

i got dom's opinion on all the colours and this one was his favourite as well...

shade #2 :: blushing

this is another cream finish. its official description is "light to medium clean warm rose". say what? it is a tricky colour to describe, because it's pink, but it also has very warm notes to it. i liked it and i have to say that i was kind of surprised at how much i liked it. it reminded me of profusion, an old colour by mac that was discontinued a few years ago. it's a medium-dark pink with a warm orange undertone, a fine balance that would suit both cooler and warmer complexions, as well as both fair and darker skin. it's a sort of hybrid between a muted red and a deep pink, so i understand why the nice folks at e.l. had some troubles describing it.

one thing that i found was that it immediately seemed to pull the rosy tones in my complexion (couldn't quite capture this in the photo, but i could definitely see a difference), which was quite flattering. dom, however, didn't care for this one as much.



shade #3 :: candy


this shade, while not tremendously light, was the lightest of the four i sampled and also the only one with a shimmer finish. it's a medium-light, very cool pink with a fine white microshimmer that adds a sheen rather than traditional frostiness. it's not the sort of shade i turn to a lot, which is funny, because ladies with my complexion are probably the ones who can best get away with it. i'm not sure how well it would work on warmer or darker tones.

although it's not my kind of regular shade, i do have to say that i quite liked it on me. it brightened my natural lip colour and the sheen would catch the light in a very flattering way. i also liked the fact that the shimmer was not at all glittery or flaky, so there weren't bits of it strewn all over my face when i took it off. strange thing is, i was certain that this is the kind of colour i'd seen everywhere before, but i'll be damned if i could find an exact dupe. there are a couple of limited edition mac shades- bubblegum and pomposity- that come close, but both lean more lavender/ purple than this one. dior are generally the great purveyors of pink and they might have something similar. no promises though. it's a surprisingly difficult shade to match. (this was dom's least favourite of the four colours.)

shade #4 :: rose tea

the last of the four is another cream finish and the type of colour that really does seem to be everywhere. it's a rosewood shade, the kind of which became ubiquitous in the nineties, because it mimicked natural lip colour at a time when everyone wanted to look like they were serious, not the sort of frivolous person who wore makeup. i've tried many colours in this shade range and gotten rid of most of them because, personally, if i'm going to go through the trouble of putting makeup on, i'm not doing so to disguise the fact that i'm wearing makeup. i also find that it's the sort of colour that just instantly ages you, but that's just me.

now, that said, when you find the right sort of pink-brown shade, it can be incredibly flattering. (that's why i got rid of "most" but not "all" my collection of this type of shade.) and this one is a deep, rich, highly pigmented version of this colour. it leans more towards the pink side of the spectrum than brown, although that might vary slightly depending on the colour of one's lips. the level of pigmentation means that it could be built up even on darker lips and i do think it's one of those colours that can be worn almost universally.

although this was probably the colour i liked the least, it was dom's second favourite after scarlet siren. 

overall

the formula felt creamy and soft going on and, while i wouldn't call it moisturising, it certainly didn't dry my lips out any. (note on the photos- i have a cold, so my lips are dryer than usual.) once it was on, it didn't slip around any, which is a great relief for me, because i tend to pleat my lips a lot. i didn't use a lip liner with any of the colours and i don't think you'd have to, because there was certainly no feathering. the colour went on nice and even, which has been my experience with any e.l. lipsticks.

all the shades had the estée lauder "fig" scent, which i could smell clearly despite my impaired smell organ. all their lip products have this and personally, it doesn't remind me of figs at all, but that's what they call it. i'm not a fan of the scent, but happily it fades very quickly. i've never noticed a taste to any of their products.

the one area in which i would have to fault them is their claim of "long lasting" colour. once i'd finished taking the photos, i left "rose tea" on to see how it wore. i figured that, while it wasn't the brightest shade, it was deep enough to give an idea of how long the colour would hang on. i had a few sips from a glass of water, avoided pleating or touching my lips and still, within an hour and a half, the colour had faded to a pretty but faint stain. obviously, once i ate, it was gone entirely. we'll give them some leeway, in that the fact that my lips are dryer than usual probably makes them more prone to absorbing moisture, but even with that, they're a long way off a "long lasting" claim. i can get a few hours wear out of regular lipsticks.

this last point doesn't turn me off the product, but that's mostly because having to touch up my lipstick doesn't especially bother me. i figure that i'm going to ahve to go to the bathroom regularly, so it's not that difficult to touch up while i'm there. claims of a lip product lasting for hours have never really swayed me. if you are interested in a truly long-lasting lip colour, this isn't for you.

the colour offering, while on the conservative side, has something that's likely to appeal to everyone and some of the takes on popular colours are more original than they might look at first. so if reapplying doesn't bother you, these are definitely worth checking out.

pure colour lipsticks are $24usd/ $32cad each, available from www.esteelauder.com and at estée lauder counters. (hint to canadians: yes, the web site will ship to you.)

friday favourites 18.03.11

it''s friday friday! time for favourites favourites! why am i saying everything like jacob two-two two-two? well let's just get down to business shall we?

here are a few things that made my smile a little brighter...

the death of the music industry :: sure, people have been predicting it for years, but now we have ark records here to pound that stake through the heart of the last music mogul and nail the coffin shut just for good measure. excuse me, i've not written their name properly: they are actually called ark music factory and a more appropriate company name has never been entered in the ledgers of business registrations. i couldn't make that up, because i know that no one would believe me. they actually call themselves a music factory.

prepare to be rocked

the premise of this business is not to find and promote hot new artists, but to cash in on the eagerness of wealthy families to keep their teenage princesses happy in any way possible. so ark takes their money, flies their little snowflakes out to los angeles (assuming they're not there already) and has a team of songwriters compose something for them to record, fire up the auto-tune and let the music fill their ears (assuming they haven't just stopped them up with cotton or glue or anything else they found lying around). and it doesn't stop there. they then make a video with them dancing with their friends, tossing their hair and generally acting in a way that would thrill any pedophile and should scare the hell out of their parents. remember when britney spears was cute? your kids can't. they don't know how far they can slide.

SEE MORE FAVOURITES PLUS THIS WEEK'S CAT PIC!



the thing is, the music from ark music factory is, as their name would suggest, mass-market generic pop cranked out by a couple of people who can quite literally look at their bank accounts to determine the net worth of their souls and the chances that any of these divas-in-their-dreams are astoundingly slim. until now.

with rachel black, the company has suddenly been rocketed to the foreground as the people behind what many are calling the worst song ever made. personally, i think that's a bit harsh. yes, the auto-tune is ridiculous, emphasising every nasal nuance to this poor girls voice, but the real downfall is in the lyrics, which are the sort of thing those kids from high school who used to wear acid washed jeans and hang out by the back of the gym smoking pot would write for their remedial poetry assignments as a joke. and her video is getting millions and millions of hits a day.

a quick perusal of the ark web site reveals that black's "friday" is in a league of its own, but the rest of the songs are a pretty ridiculously bleak picture of a star factory gone wild. truthfully, any of the others could very well be the next britney or... whoever else those girls with auto-tuned voices are, because there is such a phenomenal stream of traffic to the ark records music factory web site that it's inevitable that some of the other videos will get watched. and i'm contributing to it because i think it's friggin' hilarious.

ark records music factory is simply making obvious what many music fans have known for years: anyone can take a pretty young thing, drop her in front of a camera and write a simple, get-stuck-in-your-head-so-you-want-to-kill-yourself song, fix it up on the computer and throw it out for audience consumption. wash. rinse. repeat.

i think these guys were also responsible for the new boris album.

9 degrees celsius :: sure, in june that would be an insult, but on st. patrick's day in montreal, that's a message of hope. a sweet chocolate of hope floating in a pool of guinness.

free with purchase? please?

freebies :: one of the fun parts of shopping for beauty products (as you may have deduced i enjoy doing) is that, in addition to whatever you buy, these companies are absolutely desperate to stuff your bag with extra goodies in the hopes of hooking you as a loyal customer. i've received about eight vials of perfume to try, a mask, moisturiser and an absolutely divine lavender-scented hand cream from sisley, samples of mac pigments (which require so little to use that even the half-teaspoon samples can last a couple of months), a miniature starter kit of bare minerals foundation (unfortunately in medium tone), a surprisingly gentle eye cream from cle de peau, a rich cream and cleanser from lush, an entire chanel skincare regimen and an ingenious little card from estee lauder that opens up to reveal four sealed blister-packs of their new lipstick formula and a tiny lip brush to use them. it reminds me of what i used to refer to as the "costco brunch". go to any costco on a saturday morningand wander from table to table, sampling the free food. there's generally enough of a crowd that you can go by the best ones a couple of times without being recognised. what's better than free stuff? lots of free stuff. now i just have to persuade john fluevog to start handing out samples...

(i'm also exceptionally happy that i managed to fulfill my quest- not for free, unfortunately, for a nice, opaque white lipstick that isn't part of some marked down halloween kit. seek and ye shall find, apparently.)




the naive beauty of community television :: heck, i used to work in community television. i'm familiar with the relatively loose quality requirements, but sometimes, even those slip by the wayside. still, i have to salute the guts of people who are willing to do this kind of thing. it points to a level of un-self-consciousness that's almost a zen state. here are two favourites.

if you've made it this far, you deserve a really great cat photo, so here's a double-shot of cutness. dom took this wonderful photo of simon and hecubus this week, so all the credit goes to him.

happy friday everyone and i hope this music-dominated version of friday favourites hasn't scarred you too deeply. remember, you have to see the humour in life or else you end up sniffing glue.