LipsNspritz 24 January 2016: The Lavender List

Lots of people don't like lavender, and I have no real idea why. Its distinctive scent is unusual in having both floral and herbal facets to the scent, and the smell can range from menthol, to balsam, or (just a little, if you get a screechy batch) like cat pee.  But a good lavender fragrance is a thing of beauty, and this week, I thought I'd wear my favourite lavender fragrances and show just how many different faces lavender can wear.  

On Monday, I wore the dirty lavender of Jicky by Guerlain.  Every perfume lover who considers themselves a bit of a perfumista owns a bottle of Jicky,  because it is a classic, created in the late 1880's, and one of the first fragrances to include synthetic ingredients,   When I first discovered Jicky, it was long before I knew anything about perfume, and I just thought it didn't smell like anything else, it smells of coal tar, and leather soap, and it actually took me several years to figure out that the herbal-fresh scent that plays amongst the leather scraps in the coalyard was lavender, and that's when Jicky finally made sense to me.  Less a perfume, and more a statement of intent, Jicky's the lavender scent that won't remind you of your granny.  Ironic really, as your granny probably did wear it at some point.  My bottle dates back to the early 90's and it's a full-throated roar of a fragrance, even now.

Tuesday brought the spicy, warm lavender of Diptyque's Eau de Lavande.  Unlike most of the lavenders on this page (Jicky is the main exception) which have a cool, or fresh-seeming quality, Eau de Lavande is warm and cosy, positively inviting cuddles and becoming a beguiling skin scent at the end as a result.  Opening with cardamom and ground coriander root alongside nutmeg, the menthol of the lavender is somewhat muted, and it's only after wearing it for a while does the lavender reveal itself. There are some lightly bruised woods at the end, which comes quickly because this is an eau de toilette, and it's simply a pleasure to wear.  I'd love this in an EDP concentration, and I'd probably never wear anything else, if it did come in just a little stronger formulation.

On Wednesdays I wore the woody-chocolate of Creed's Aberdeen Lavander (sic),  which to me starts off quite funky-smelling and rather animalic, but which softens slowly over time to reveal an unexpectedly creamy-chocolate aspect to the lavender flower, atop a leathery base. I've seen it described as a "modern Jicky", and, whilst I wouldn't go that far (it's cleaner and far more definitively "lavendery" than Jicky), it's certainly a very interesting lavender to wear.  Interestingly, it's the only one on this list that I could easily convince MrLippie to wear, having more elements of the "fougere"-style of fragrance than many of the perfumes on this list.

Thursday brought the gender-bending citrus lavender of Tom Ford's Lavender Palm.  A fragrance I've written about before, and enjoyed, I described it back then as smelling like "a burly granny with a mean right hook", and, whilst I wouldn't go quite that far this time around, I can see what I was getting at.  A lively dance of bergamot and lavender in the opening gives a slightly misleading fresh quality to the first few moments of wear, before the scent opens out, and becomes a darker, smokier proposition, filled with vetiver and olibanum.  Somehow meant to evoke California,  it's more of a damp English garden, and a little tweedy.  A lavender you wouldn't be surprised to find Miss Marple wearing, showcasing the steel trap mind behind the affable appearance.

On Friday I wore the classic lavender soliflore of Caldey Island Lavender. Much closer in form (though not in execution) to a classic lavender "toilet water", and most certainly a bargain, Caldey Island lavender begins with a photo-realistic peppermint whoosh, like you've just inhaled an entire packet of polos in one go, then swiftly settles into a cool menthol-herbal lavender which smells precisely as if you've crushed a few fresh lavender blooms in your palm, and that's how it stays, right until it disappears.  Simply beautiful.  A few drops of this added to the water in your iron, by the way, is divine, and can make even that most-boring of chores more of a pleasure.

This week, I also work lipstick (as pictured), but, who wants to talk about lipstick when there's lavender to discuss?

The Fine Print: PR Samples and purchases


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Skincare of the Week 24 January 2016

 This week was another Tata Harper-heavy week, I've totally fallen in love with one of the products, and I *like* the others, but for me, the Refreshing Cleanser really is the outstanding product of the range so far.  There's a full review of just why I like it so much coming up later this week.  I also went for a Tata Harper facial, at the always-excellent Content Beauty and Wellbeing in Marylebone this week, and you can look out for a full review of that later this week too.

It has been a very cold week this week, and I've found that the Tata Harper Rebuilding Moisturiser, whilst being otherwise excellent, hasn't given quite enough protection from the weather as I would like, so I've been using the wonderful (again, a full review upcoming this week!) Omorovicza Miracle Oil as a base for my foundation, which adds just a tiny extra boost of hydration, and weather protection, without adding an extra layer of skincare.   I'm still formulating my thoughts on the Dr Dennis Gross Ferrulic + Glycolic Eye Cream, but thoughts are mostly positive so far. 

Even though I've mostly dropped acids from my routine this week, skin has been quiet and smooth and less red.  Result!  Just a short roundup this week, because I'm doing a few in-depth reviews to supplement in the coming days.  How's your skin been?

The Fine Print: PR Samples and purchases.


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Clinique Sweet Pots

Packaged like macarons, and available in the sweetest of shades, the Clinique Sweet Pots are rather cute and lovely. This is Candied Cassis, Orange Blossom and Pink Frambois.

Yeah, I broke the cardinal blogging rule and swatched before shooting!

Consisting of a finely-textured sugar scrub and a gently tinted balm in either side, these are Clinique's answer to Lush's Lip Scrubs.  The idea is that you take the macarons apart, scuff your lips with the scrubby side, then apply the balm to keep your lips soft for hours afterwards.

The scrub is really finely textured, and I found I had to dig through the top layer of balm to get to the sugary stuff below, but it's not too grainy and hard once you're scrubbing. The balms are soft, and sweet - I can't discern any particular flavour, but your mileage may vary on this, owing to my smell problems - and I find them very hydrating, they remind me of the really good Superbalm that they do. Contrary to the rather dramatic shades in the pot, the balms are very very sheer, and add only a whisper of colour to the lips when you wear the balm.

 Now, to the price, they're undeniably expensive. They are £15 each, and the amounts of both scrub and balm that you get is quite small, considering the size of the pot - the majority of the bulky, but very pretty, packaging is the ring that holds the balm and scrub in one place. Compare this to the £5.50 that a Lush Lip Scrub will cost (which, of course, doesn't come with a matching balm), and the price seems a little extortionate.  That said, I have just bought the Red Velvet and online exclusive shade of Black Honey to round out my collection ...

Now, Clinique, just what does a blogger have to do to get the Black Honey Superbalm made permanent in the UK, please??? 


The Fine Print: PR samples

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Givenchy Rouge Interdit Vinyl - Rouge Rebelle, Beige Indecent & Rose Transgressif

I know it's not right to fall in love with a lipstick simply because of its packaging, but boy, a sexy case can make up for a lot as far as I'm concerned!  I'm shallow, I know.  On Monday of this week, the latest addition to the Rouge Interdit lipstick collection from Givenchy was released, the Givenchy Rouge Interdit Vinyl, and I love, love, love the packaging.

L-R Rouge Rebelle, Beige Indecent & Rose Transgressif

Essentially a sheerer version of their classic lipsticks, the Rouge Interdit Vinyl is a brightly pigmented and very glossy balm-formulation lipstick.

Yeah, I used Rouge Rebelle before I took the photos.  Sorry.

I have three shades, Rouge Rebelle, Beige Indecent, and Rose Transgressif.  Rouge Rebelle is a sheer clear red.  Beige Indecent is a browned-caramel-beige and Rose Transgressif is actually a brighter cool pink, not quite the candy-baby pink you see here.

Personally, my favourite is the Rouge Rebelle (surprise!  Some of you will have seen it on my instagram #LipsNspritz feed already), but I find Beige Indecent to be surprisingly wearable, because of the good pigmentation.  Rose Transgressif is tricky for me to wear because there is a lot of white in the formulation, but it's a good summery pink, if you can wear candy-pinks.

There's also a BLACK one, which looks terrifying in the tube, but I discovered at the launch last month that it is surprisingly wearable on the skin.  Mine hasn't arrived yet, but I'll be sure to show you it when it does ... For readers of a certain vintage, if you remember Honey Tea by Shiseido, then this will be the replacement you've been waiting for, so pick one up fast!  It's called Noir Revelateur, and is No.16 in the range.

Givenchy Rouge Interdit Vinyl are now available nationwide and cost £25 each.


The Fine Print: PR Samples


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Get Lippie at the Jasmine Awards!

 This time two years ago, I was over the moon because I'd been shortlisted for a Jasmine Award by the Fragrance Foundation. It was for a comedy piece I'd written about perfumes from the pound shop for Basenotes.  I didn't win - there was no way a funny vignette about perfumes no one in their right mind would have wanted to buy could have won, to be honest - but it was a huge honour to have been selected in the first place. It remains one of the high points of my blogging career!

A couple of months after being nominated, however, I caught a cold, and lost my sense of smell completely.  As my anosmia progressed, and particularly after it turned into parosmia (after around six months), which made absolutely everything in my life both smell and taste like sewage, I thought my life as a fledgling perfume-writer was over.  And, for a while, it was. But, for those of you who have been reading Get Lippie over the long term, you'll have noticed a few perfume reviews pop up every now and again, and particularly if you've been following my instagram, you'll have (hopefully) noticed my quest to wear my entire fragrance wardrobe one by one, documenting the process via my #LipsNspritz project.  

Parosmia is still very much a part of my life (bacon, coffee and chocolate have been the worst casualties, there are others, but those are still the worst parosmia offenders), but I'm happier than I could ever describe that perfume is now back as a part of my life too.  I currently only smell about half as well as I used to - my right nostril still doesn't register smells at all, nearly some two years on -  and it'll probably never get back to where it was back in the days before I damaged my olfactory nerve, but things are better.  Much better. 

So much better in fact that I've just been shortlisted by the Fragrance Foundation for TWO Jasmine Awards!  Three pieces that I wrote last year, two of which have parosmia as a central theme, have been nominated in two separate categories, and I couldn't be a happier blogger if I'd even tried.  To be nominated for a Jasmine Award (sometimes referred to as the "Oscars of the beauty world") is huge honour in itself, but for a perfume writer with a smell-disability - I believe I'm the first anosmic perfume-writer ever to be shortlisted - it is, quite frankly, a bloody miracle. During my darkest days of recovery (and things did get really very dark indeed) I never thought this could happen. But best of all, many of the friends I've made through perfume blogging have been shortlisted alongside me too, so win or lose on March 16th - when the winners are announced - it'll be a fun and happy occasion.  I can't wait! 

The pieces that have been nominated are:

Jasmine Independent Voice Soundbite Award:
Maison Francis Kurkdjian Oud Satin Mood - aka the one where I change my mind about the Oud fad (a bit).

Jasmine Independent Voice Literary Award:
A Parosmic At The (An)Osmotheque - a piece written about a trip to the perfume museum in Versailles, where a tiny purple light began to glow in the parosmic darkness;
and its companion piece:
Paradox by 4160 Tuesdays and Get Lippie - which is the tale of how myself and Sarah McCartney created a perfume that a parosmic perfume writer could not only smell, but love.

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LipsNspritz of the Week 17 January 2016

I spent this week wearing some of the "big hitters" in my collection, and thoroughly enjoyed it!  I began the week with Chanel No19 and Max Factor Marilyn Monroe Collection Ruby Red, and enjoyed the grown-up sophistication (something I'm sorely lacking in naturally) of bitter greenness and aldehydes. Tuesday brought brash spice and a gentle hint of the barnyard in Estee Lauder's Cinnabar, which I paired with the (accidentally) matching Sunset Red of the same Max Factor collection (click the previous link to see what I thought of these lipsticks in full).  Cinnabar is warm and full-bodied and is rather wonderful in cold weather.

On Wednesday, I thought I'd wear what was the first "fine fragrance" I ever owned (at the tender age of 13!), O' de Lancome by Lancome.  I remember it as being the lemoniest thing on the planet, and, what can I say, my  memories aren't that reliable, because it isn't, of course, that lemony at all.  Yes, there's citrus, but there's also a hefty punch of green herbs behind the citrus, and I loved wearing this, I kept sniffing myself in delight at such a great re-discovery.  On Thursay, I wore Samsara, which was the Guerlain answer to YSL Opium (as was Cinnabar, now I come to think of it), but it has a lighter, fresher, more citrus take on the heavy spice and warm resins of the original Opium.

On Friday I took advantage of the fact that my boss was "working from home" to wear Dior Poison.  Well, why wouldn't you? Applied in a small dose - no more than two sprays, maximum! - Poison is actually a lovable tuberose fragrance, with an appealingly powdery drydown. Applied with a heavier hand however, it deserves all the opprobrium it gets.  It was surprisingly popular in the office, and people were amazed when I told them what it was! I wore it with Lipstick Queen Private Party, which is one of the best pinks ever.

Saturday daytime, I wore YSL Paris, another fragrance I used to wear in my youth. Remembered as a sugar-rich, sweet, sweet, SWEET confection, this rosily pretty fragrance is another done a disservice by my unreliable memory.  It's not the explosion in a candy-floss factory I thought it was and is actually a neon-rose-violet that I actually can't smell in too much detail.  Oh well, I'll keep trying with this one, it's a classic for a reason. I topped it up with Paradox for a night on the tiles with MrLippie, and that worked well.  I wore it with Zelens Lip Glaze in Nude, which is the only "nude" I ever wear...

And what have you been wearing? 


The Fine Print: A mixture of PR samples and purchases


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Skincare of the Week 17 January 2016

Well, as if you can't tell, I spent this week acclimatising myself to the Tata Harper products I treated myself to over Christmas!  Inital thoughts are positive so far, extremely positive in fact, but I need a little more time with them before I review them in full.

I wasn't too sure about the Tata Harper Refreshing Cleanser at first, it's a little outside my cleansing comfort zone, if such a thing could be said to exist!  It's a lightly grapefruit-scented cream cleanser, which utilises enzymes and clay to cleanse your face, and it's the one said to be most suitable for sensitive skin. It's an unusual texture - completely unlike my usual (beloved) balms and oils - but it genuinely does clean the face, and I think it has a slight exfoliating effect, which hasn't - so far - caused any irritation.  I wouldn't use it for removing makeup though, I prefer oils for that, but for a morning cleanse, or a second cleanse in the evening, I really like it.  Now.

I was cautious about adding the Tata Harper Hydrating Floral Essence and the Rebuilding Moisturiser, because the essence contains essential oils (something my skin always has a bit of trouble with), and because moisturisers are always my troublesome area, so I added them into my routine on separate days, seemingly with few ill-effects.  Overall, the introduction to a "proper" Tata Harper routine has gone pretty well! I'm heading off to Content Beauty this week for a Tata Harper facial, and I can't wait!  I will, of course, report back.

On Saturday, I trialled May Lindstrom Honey Mud on Saturday, and again, my experience was a mixed one,  It's quite sticky (and smells of chocolate, which I can't bear at the moment), and I found my skin was a little "tight" after, but I suspect this was down to user-error than anything else.  It needs, for example, wetter skin that I am used to.  May herself was kind enough to comment on the Instagram post I put up with some suggestions, and I'm looking forward to using the Honey Mud again, with some more specific ways to use it.

What's been on your face this week? 


The Fine Print: Mixture of PR samples and purchases.


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