Laura Geller Vanilla Nudes Collection

Following this tip-off from the lovely girls over at London Beauty Review, I cracked and bought my second Laura Geller set from QVC.  I bought one last year, loved it, and totally forgot to review it, so I'm not making that mistake again!

The set comprises:

• Balance n'Brighten Foundation (choice of Tan, Regular, Fair and Porcelain - I bought Fair)
• Baked Cheek Dream blush and highlight compact in Neapolitan
• At Long Lash mascara in black
• Italian Marble Lipstick in Banana Berry
• Baked Eyeshadow and Eye Rimz in Vanilla Toffee and Black Cherry

 Here's a closer look:

Laura's range is based around baked minerals, and I've always found her products to be really high quality.  Last time I bought a Laura Geller TSV, I bought the foundation in Regular, and have found it to be just a tad too dark for year-round wear, so I selected fair this time:

I love the camouflage appearance of this in the compact!  It's a mixture of pigments, designed to correct and cover flaws, and it's delightfully soft and silky on the skin.  It gives light-to-medium coverage, I've found, but you can also use it as a very nice finishing powder.

The highlighter-blush combo is very nicely done too:

These have been swatched very heavily in order to show up on the photo, you have a pale yellow (it's not gold as I anticipated) a strawberry pink, and a browned-berry shade, which makes a good contour colour if used alone.  Mixed together, you get a nice, sheeny medium-pink which is very flattering, but I couldn't get this to show up in swatches.  Suffice it to say that it's a lovely healthy pink shade, which will be suitable for cool skin-tones and paler warm-toned ladies.  If I had a criticism of the palette, I'd suggest that it would have been nice to have a wider strip of the pink so it could be used alone, but it's a minor quibble really.

The Vanilla Toffee  and Black Cherry Eye Rimz is a lovely product with a dreadful name.  On the skin, Vanilla Toffee is a creamy copper shade, perfect for a polished but not too over the top daytime look.  Black Cherry has a slight hint of pink micro-shimmer in with the black base.  It's not too pigmented though, so, again, is perfect for a softly smokey daytime liner look.  Both shades can be applied wet for a more intense "foiled" look.

The Italian marbled lipstick is the one product that gave me pause before ordering, as Laura was making a big song and dance about how the lipstick contains banana extract, and I was worried that the lip colour would be banana-flavoured as a result.  I'm happy to say that the lipstick is actually both scent- and flavour-less.  However, it's a very nude shade on me, owing to all the yellow in my stick, and, as a result, it's about as flattering a thing that is not very flattering.  At all.  It has a nice, light balm-texture though, and is very moisturising, so if concealer-lips are your bag (baby) then you'll love this.

At Long Lash mascara is very wet, and very thin, mascara - I normally prefer my mascaras a bit drier - but it has very good lengthening properties, and it doesn't flake or run during the day.  There was some hoo-ha on the show I was watching that made a song and dance about the mascara having a semi-permanent colouring effect on the lashes, but I can't say that I've noticed my lashes being any darker after removing the product.  The brush is nice and thin, and is shaped well to coat the lashes though, but it is not very volumising, so for me, this is very much a nice "day-time" mascara, for a nice natural look.  You will need to use an oil-based remover when taking it off though, as it's stubborn and likes to stay put ...

Overall, I'm really glad I picked this up and, some minor quibbles aside regarding not enough pink in the blusher, and the lipstick making me look like death warmed up, this is a really nice kit, and well worth the £33 or so I paid for it.  Laura's makeup is always well worth a look, and you can find a collection of her cosmetics on QVC, 

This post originated at: http://getlippie.com All rights reserved.

Braun Oral B Triumph 5000 Toothbrush

Gotta love a toothbrush named after a motorbike, right?

Well, I do, anyway.  After years of slogging away with the cheapest and least powerful of Oral B's electric toothbrush collection (an Oral B Professional Care 500 - which is still pretty darn good, more about that later), and then finally indulging in tooth whitening, I decided it was time to upgrade my toothbrush too.  I'd seen the Triumph 5000 system at a press event last year, and thought it was time to make the switch.

And I'm very glad I have, as this is an excellent toothbrush.  Even from the first brush I could tell the difference from the older, cheaper brush, and I do feel a get a better, fresher clean from the Triumph.  Certainly, it's a lot more powerful!  I also feel it's doing its bit to keep my teeth white, which is all kinds of aces.

The little monitor you get in the kit - aside from being a bit bossy, and telling you where you should be brushing and when - is very handy, as I have a habit of overbrushing certain areas, and also (much worse) I have a tendency to brush far too hard. The "smart guide" has a warning light that lets you know when you're brushing too hard, and I've been astonished at just how little pressure you actually need to apply to brush properly.  As a result, my gums bleed a lot less than they used to, and my teeth still feel good and clean.  The "smart guide" also makes a great bathroom clock.

Having upgraded my toothbrush, I also took the libery of introducing Mr Lippie to the concept of using an electric toothbrush in the first place, so he's been using the Oral-B Professional Care 500 for the last couple of months, and, after some initial scepticism, he's now a total convert.  During a recent weekend away (where we took normal, manual, brushes) he announced that he couldn't wait to get home so he could brush his teeth "properly"!

The Braun Oral B Triumph 5000 toothbrush retails on Boots.com for around £179.00, and the Professional Care 500 retails for £45.95, but is currently on offer for around £22.98.

The Fine Print: PR samples, but the original purchase was my own.  Likewise all my teeth are my own.  Apart from the one that's not.  Do I need to declare this? I have a false tooth.  So there.  To take your mind of that, here's a joke: "Why is 4,840 square yards like a bad tooth ? Because it's an acre".  It's the way I tell 'em.  No really, it is.

This post originated at: http://getlippie.com All rights reserved.

What's In My Kryolan Train Case?

I frequently get asked about my makeup storage, so I thought I'd finally acquiesce and show (some) of it to you. Last week, I finally splashed out and bought myself a medium Kryolan train case from Charles Fox, and I am absolutely loving my new precious:

As you can see, it's a top-opening case, and it's lockable.  Inside there are two layers of shelves with a variety of storage compartments, and in the bottom section, there are six spaces for bulkier products.  Would you like to see inside?  Oh, who am I kidding, like there's a chance in heck I'm not showing you what's in here:

It's currently filled with a selection of old favourites, and products that have made it in there for testing (if you enlarge the picture by clicking on it, you'll be able to see the contents in a great more detail).  You'll notice that it's decidedly foundation, eye makeup and blusher-heavy.  That's because I keep my lipsticks separate, as there are so many of them! I realised, quite early on, that if I filled this with lipsticks there would very soon be no room for anything else ... I actually have a section empty at the top right there, and I'm wondering what to fill it with!

So, these are the products I currently reach for day-to-day basis (shade spotters will see a lot of taupe.  I'm nothing if not predictable), and the rest of my collection resides elsewhere, in other receptacles, I'll show you these over the next couple of weeks.

A couple of thoughts about the case itself first though: mainly, this is heavy, even when empty, it must weigh a good couple of kilos, when filled it must weigh the best part of four kilos, or almost ten pounds.  It's a pretty hefty bit of kit.  The top shelves are very shallow, you only really have room to pile up two compacts on top of each other, but you can very the size of the compartments very well, as you can see I did to fit in some pencils and mascaras.  These shallow pans aren't padded at all though, so I'd worry about things getting damaged in here if they were knocking around in transit.  As the only transit I'm planning to take this on is moving it to the bathroom in the new flat I'm moving to in a couple of weeks, this isn't an issue for me, but it might be for someone using this professionally.


I like the bottom compartments though, they're surprisingly deep, even fitting in my Burberry foundation, which is one of the tallest cosmetic bottles in my collection. They're very well padded too, and items tend to stay put.  It's not tall enough for hair care products though, but you'd be able to get a fair bit of skincare in there if you wished.  

My Kryolan Train Case came from Charles Fox in Covent Garden, and cost £55.   

The Fine Print: I bought the case, but the contents are a mixture of purchases and PR samples.  Now, what to go in the empty section ...?

This post originated at: http://getlippie.com All rights reserved.

Andy Tauer Pentachords - Two Reviews (Kinda)

A couple of weeks ago, I asked for a guest blogger to help me write a review of the new Pentachords series from Andy Tauer.  I selected CandyPerfumeBoy because he has a wonderful style of writing, and I knew I'd enjoy his thoughts.  I wasn't wrong.  I also had another reason for needing a guest blogger, and that should become clear as we go along.  I'll let CandyPerfumeBoy take the lead, and I'll interject my comments as and when ...

What I love about Andy Tauer’s fragrances is their ability to surprise. They are never what you expect and the Pentachords are certainly no exception to the rule, all three fragrances in the series are imaginative and each has it’s own distinct and unique character.

White
The Easy One

CandyPerfumeBoy: White is the easiest of the three Pentachords to love and is definitely my favourite. Tauer has already shown us that he is a dab hand at creating a beautiful floral gourmand with Une Rose Vermeille and White is just that. However, where Une Rose Vermeille is huge and crimson, White is soft and subtle.

White is essentially a blend of iris and vanilla with a touch of violet up top to give it a sweet sparkle. The vanilla is considerably more prominent than the iris and it has boozy, rum-like facets that make it irresistible.

The Iris gives White a soft, velvety texture and although it is not in the foreground, it’s always there. The violet is used with a really light touch and it gives White just the right amount of lift in the top notes to stop it from becoming too edible or powdery.

As White settles the vanilla takes centre stage and the other notes fade into the background. The vanilla is lovely, it smells sweet and boozy but at times it can feel slightly synthetic and harsh.
I will most certainly be saving my pennies for a bottle.

Get Lippie:  At the end of his review, CPB (Can I call you CPB, btw?) uses two words that sum up my entire reaction to this fragrance: "... synthetic and harsh."  When I sprayed this onto my skin, I got a gaggingly sweet rush of boozy e-numbers, which was, to my mind, the perfume equivalent of spraying myself with popping candy  and rum. 

It was shrill, it was strident, and, sadly, it was linear, meaning that no matter how long I wore it, the scent never changed.  In its favour, if you like the scent - and some people will, sweet scents sell by the bucket load - it is tenacious, so it will be with you for a very long time.  Mr Lippie hated it.  And, after a time, my stomach decided it hated it too, which is when I decided to scrub it off.  Sorry Andy, I don't normally have such a visceral reaction to a scent, but, man, this caused a reaction!

Verdant
The Clever One

CandyPerfumeBoy: At the end of the garden in my childhood home we had a plot of land that was always overgrown; there were patches of nettles, wild thickets of brambles and lots of old trees to climb. As kids my three siblings and I would spend our summers exploring the land, getting lost in the long grass and gaining more than our fair share of cuts and scrapes from the brambles. 

To me, Verdant smells just like our adventures at the end of the garden, like hot sun on nettles, grass and earth.

Verdant opens with intense green notes, like nettles and a ton of spiky pepper. At first it smells slightly harsh and dry but as it develops it becomes sweeter and earthier. Up close I sense the sweet, bruised leaves of garden mint.

The green notes last throughout the entirety of Verdant’s development and they are a pleasure to smell.  The base is sweet and green with vanilla and a touch of leather, which stops Verdant from ever smelling gourmand.

What is really clever about Verdant is that it manages to smell 99% natural whilst being completely synthetic. It demonstrates the genius of Andy Tauer as a chemist and his knack for creating beautiful, intelligent perfumes.

Get Lippie:  I agree that this smells more natural than White.  To me, however, this is still a shrill and strident, rather linear blend of notes that did not work - at all - with my skin's chemistry.  Less sweet than white, I found it pine-y both in good and bad ways (Mmm, forests!  Urgh, toilet cleaner!) but mainly, I found this LOUD.  And, again, exceptionally tenacious.   I didn't hate it, but ... MrLippie begged me not to wear it near him ever again*.  It's a wish I can probably grant, in all honesty.

Auburn
The Unusual One

CandyPerfumeBoy: Auburn is the odd one in the bunch, it doesn’t really smell like any fragrance I have smelled before. I commend its uniqueness but I’m not entirely sure that I like it, that said I do find myself coming back to it to try and work it out.

Auburn starts with subtle notes of cinnamon and ginger, it’s spicy but not in the conventional way, the spices are muted as if they are hiding behind a veil of milky notes. There is an odd medicinal tinge that hovers in the background throughout Auburn’s development, it never feels intrusive but it feels slightly unsettling on the skin.

At the beginning Auburn smells slightly powdery but as the dry down progresses it becomes warmer and milkier. Just like White and Verdant, Auburn shares the signature Pentachords vanilla base but in Auburn it doesn’t feel as strong.

For me Auburn is just a little bit too subtle, I can’t help but wish the spices had just a bit more oomph and the scent itself had more of a presence. Auburn feels autumnal and the name fits perfectly, I can imagine it being worn as the days become shorter, the weather turns colder and the leaves turn to their wonderful shades of gold, red and auburn.

Get Lippie: Ironically, the one I like most, which I'm sure most of you will be thinking that I'm damning it with faint praise (and I'd probably concede the point to you, actually) right now. But this is warm, a little spicy, and less LOUD AND SHOUTY than the previous two.  Less synthetic and screechy than Green and White, it's more approaching what I would have expected from a Tauer creation, in that it's a little hard to grasp the connections, and it's an interesting puzzler, rather than an in your face concotion.  I'm still not sure I'd wear it again, but it's an interesting addition to my collection, and I'm glad to have smelled it.

Conclusion

Reading CandyPerfumeBoy's thoughts on these fragrances has been fascinating, and it's why I love reading the variety of perfume blogs that I do, no two people ever smell the same things the same way, and, after my somewhat ... extreme ... reaction to two of the scents in the collection, it is why I wanted a co-reviewer!  I was simply physically unable to get past the initial scentings in order to divine deeper thoughts about the fragrances.  I'm very grateful to CPB for his input into this post, and for being able to do what I was unable to.

However, whilst my comments in this post could be construed as negative, it is only my experience, and the things I dislike about the Pentachords may be things other people adore about them. I personally think that what Andy's done with the Pentachord series is a brave experiment, and I definitely think that the fragrances are worth a sniff, but I think that only time will tell whether these end up as classic Tauer material or merely random curiosities.  I'll be interested to see which.

Samples for this post were supplied by Scent and Sensibility. 

* The words "you smell like Toilet Duck" were used.

This post originated at: http://getlippie.com All rights reserved.

Alice Temperly Traveller from Elemis

Can't keep him away at the moment!  Here's another ... um ... classic from Mr Lippie, where he decides to look a gift horse in the teeth.  For the faint-hearted, I suggest you skip the pics ...

*****

 

For my birthday, Get Lippie got me an Elemis travel pack, ready for our trip to Portugal - as my previous washbag died a pretty horrible death and was binned during the move to Lippie Underground HQ. So I was delighted to open it up and examine the various bits & bobs which lay within.

 

Now, I'd seen various Elemis products around HQ, but nothing that were for men -  or anything I personally would consider "unisex" - so it was quite intriguing to see what male-friendly stuff was within the bag.

 

In order of usage - I started off with the "Sharp" Shower & Bath gel. Now, it felt fresh, lovely, and was a good size for a travel sample - it's gone through about 4 weeks of continuous usage, with still about an eighth of the bottle to go. It does freshen you up considerably, and the aroma feels quite natural. However, it is CONSIDERABLY spearminty. For me, the instant smell association is chewing gum - which is not entirely want you want to be thinking about when you've got out of the shower? However, it is just a personal feeling - Get Lippie loves (loves!) the aroma, and a couple of friends think it's quite interesting...so obviously people don't have the warped imagination I have. Which, if you think about it, is probably a GOOD THING.

 

Next up, the Deep Cleanse Facial Wash. In keeping with the Shower gel, it comes out minty - but it's not overpowering in the same way - it's very much a background sensation that is refreshing, cooling, and energising. I like it a lot, and can see it being a regular feature of my day.

 

The next item was the Energising Skin Scrub. I approached this with a touch of trepidation, as my only previous experience with a product remotely similar made me feel somewhat sandpapered - although it had some delicious tropical undertones. The Elemis Skin Scrub comes out as a skin coloured cream, but the moment you start to rub it into the skin, it becomes the gritty scrub. There's no real aroma or anything to soften the blow - this is really a very functional hit - you can see exactly why you'd only do this once or twice a week.

 

Now, onto the Ice-Cool Foaming Shave Gel! I had a lot of fun with this, as it's the first time I've consistently used a Shaving Foam - as previously mentioned, my shaving routine would normally consist of a shaving oil or, lately, a cream that I slapped in the general direction of my face using a badger-hair brush! First impression - I just couldn't believe how little of this foam it takes to get me looking like a cross between the abominable snowman and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man (as made famous by Ghostbusters!). 

 

 

It may be the case with most foams - but I was shocked that I ended up washing away so much of the foam off my hands. It felt like a terrible waste - especially when the product itself was great. It was v.cooling when put on, spread easily & quickly, and - in keeping with the rest of the range - has that background minty aroma. It slides off quite easilly, and don't have a slightly wet feeling once it's off - although you do have to reach for the towel to get every last drop off!

 

 

Finally, the Daily Moisture Boost. Mildly scented, cooling, a perfect amount dispensed without feeling greasy or that you're walking around with a wet face. Which is nice!

 

Overall, I reckon that the Elemis range is very useable - functionally each & every product was nice to use and felt comfortable aspart of my morning routine. That said, I personally object to smelling like chewing gum in the morning, so the shower gel is not for me! Still, it's a classy little gift set, and works for a good few weeks, so well worth it.

The Fine Print: Get Lippie parted with actual cash-money for this.

This post originated at: http://getlippie.com All rights reserved.

Project Perfume: Give me Strength

Since I started Project Perfume, I've been lucky to speak to 'Fumeheads from around the world, and I've been delighted to speak to some of the finest perfumers in the world too.  What's been especially great about getting involved in the perfume world has been how inclusive it is, people from all kinds of different backgrounds, just having an interest in something because it smells nice.

Okay, that makes us all look mad now I've written it down, but, speaking of mad, this link was making the rounds on twitter recently, and it made me roll my eyes somewhat.  You don't have to click the link, I'm transcribing the content here:

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: My new boyfriend's place smells suspiciously like women's perfume. At first I thought it was another woman but I'm so hot I don't see how he would have time or leftover desire. Lightbulb! I finally got him to show me where the scent was coming from. He had a whole collection of women's expensive perfumes and he wears them when no one else is around. How weird is that? I don't care so much, except does that mean he's toying with gayness? Do any other guys out there secretly wear women's perfume? Why does he do it? He says his former girlfriend was OK with it, and she would sometimes wear men's cologne. -- Boyfriend Has Girly Smell, Winnipeg 

To which, "Miss Lonelyhearts" replied:

Dear Freaked: Yes, some men do, but it's unusual and means something -- it came from somewhere. Ask him about the origins of his love for perfume. You need to know. Does it have anything to do with his sexuality? Did it start with a certain female in his life: his mom or his sister or his babysitter or an old girlfriend? Is it a method he learned to use for self-stimulation? And finally, does he dress up like a woman and wear the perfume when he's alone? Gently find out what the perfume thing means. It may be nothing or it may be part of a bigger scene he has yet to mention.  

So, apparently, men who wear women's fragrances are gay.  I wonder if the reverse applies?  Women who wear aftershave, are they gay too? Or just ... butch?  It's interesting that this kind of distinction still has a foothold on people's imaginations.  Personally, if I came home and found MrLippie had been raiding my collection of perfumes, I'd be delighted, well, it'd mean I'd finally cured him of his Lynx obsession, once and for all, which has to be a good thing.  Plus, he'd smell AMAZING. I have a great collection these days, it has to be said.  As I'm a frequent stealer of his fragrances too (currently wearing Fleur du Male by Jean Paul Gaultier), I think it would be only fair to let him have his way with my collection.  So to speak.

For a long time through history, there were no distinctions along gender lines in fragrance, there were only things that smelled good - and they were necessary because people smelled bad. Men smelled of flowers, women smelled of flowers, and no one batted an eyelid.  Now, because of aggressive marketing campaigns over the last fifty years or so, apparently men smell of manly things, women smell like womenly things, and apparently the only scent everyone has in common is "sexy".  Or candyfloss.  But never the twain shall meet, it seems. 


Do you think "Miss Lonelyhearts" had a point?  Personally, I'd like to know who she thinks wears unisex fragrances.  I'm sure it'd be  ... interesting.

This post originated at: http://getlippie.com All rights reserved.

Project Perfume - Joy by Jean Patou

 I'm aware that I haven't written much for Project Perfume in the last month or so, but that doesn't mean I've been resting on my laurels!  Quite the reverse, in fact ... 


If you have a look at my project perfume page, you'll see that, I've been extremely successful in tracking down a lot of the scents I'd listed at the start of the year, and some of the ones left on the list are the ones that are more ... er ... hard to find.


Oddly, of all the perfumes on the list that are trendy, and niche, and hard to find some of them are surprisingly unmemorable.   Also, for a couple of them, I've been wondering if perfume fumes have gone to Luca and Tania's head.  For example: Let it Rock by Vivienne Westwood. Described in "the book" as comparable to Shalimar Light (I have an entire blogpost about Shalimar coming up soon), and goes on: "a bright, resinous citrus-peel top note, plus a combination of coumarin and heliptropin like a toasted almond biscotti.  A beautiful easy-going, well-made fragrance." I'll say it's an easy-going fragance alright.  It's so easy-going that I sprayed it onto myself just five minutes ago, and already I have no memory whatsoever of what it smells like.  It is, in fact, easy-gone.  I'm sure it's very nice, but I do wonder what the Perfumes The A-Z Guide authors had been ingesting on that particular day.  Lippie rating: Complete and utter nonentity.


But I'm digressing.  One scent that is about as far from unmemorable as can be is Joy, by Jean Patou.  I've wanted to wear it a lot since it appeared, which is strange, as it's actually about as old-fashioned a perfume can be, but its beauty transcends its image, and for me, this a scent I'd like to bathe in.


It's a floral fragrance, and an unabashed one at that. It opens with a bunch of "perfume-y" aldehydes which die down very quickly, leaving you with a bouquet of perfect full-blown roses and jasmine on your skin.  What I find beautiful about this is that sometimes it's just a rose you can smell, and then, it's a perfect jasmine soliflore scent.  What you don't get is just a "flower stew" affair, as in so many modern florals, where you can't pick out any of the individual scents.  This is very definitely roses and jasmine, without being a "rosejasminefloraljam".

Luca Turin says that "to call Joy a floral is to misunderstand it", thereby inferring that picking up on this aspect of the scent is to damn it with faint praise.  I disagree, it's a celebration of flowers, a masterpiece of floral, and an amazingly constructed scent, to boot.  It has moderate sillage (other people will smell you from across the room if you wear too much), and excellent lasting powers.  A small spritz will last you the day.  If all "flowery" fragrances smelled this good, there would be nothing wrong with calling it a floral perfume at all ...


This has made it to the front-line of my scent collection, unexpectedly, and all the more delightful for it.  It's a wonderfully womanly fragrance, comforting in it's way, but ... MrLippie has dammed it with his own faint praise, calling it ""interesting" then going on to say "flowers" in a disdainful way.  I'm guessing it's not his cup of tea...


The Fine Print: Fragrances were provided from a variety of sources, tested on skin.  With my nose.  And the "help" of MrLippie.

This post originated at: http://getlippie.com All rights reserved.