Get Lippie

Friday 18 April 2014

Spring Blushers with Clinique, Hourglass and Tarte

By Get Lippie

Spring really has sprung now, the days are lighter and longer, and, whilst I've not actually turned off the central heating yet (we have foot-thick walls, and 8ft ceilings, it takes Lippie Mansions a while to warm up), it's definitely getting warmer. As a result, I've swapped out my darker winter blushes for some lighter, brighter shades for the longer days ahead.

Clockwise from top left we have Clinique's Cheek Pop in Berry Pop, Hourglass Ambient Blush in Luminous Flush, Hourglass Ambient Blush in Radiant Heat and Tarte Amazonian Clay 12 Hour Blush in Fearless. The top two are on the cooler side, and the bottom two have warmer tones.

Swatched heavily in sunlight, in the same order as above.

The Clinique Berry Pop is hella pigmented - you need the tiniest, tiniest bit of this to get brightly coloured cheeks. It lasts astonishingly well, too, as do all the colours in the cheek pop range. Just use a light hand, and an extremely flexible blusher brush when applying. This is gorgeously pretty packaging too, the gerbera daisy imprint is a delight, and it seems to be lasting well, too.

The Hourglass Ambient Blush in Radiant Flush is a cool pink with beige veining in the pan, and on the skin is much paler than the Berry Pop. I find it works well if you build up the colour in layers, rather than relying on one thick sweep to last you through the day. The shades are on the sheer side, but you can build them up. Ambient Blush in Diffused Heat is a warm coral veined with the yellow Ambient powder in Diffused (which was one of my products of the year in 2013), and is a paler peachy tone when swirled on the skin. As with Radiant flush, you can build this up to a quite significant shade on the skin. I've read quite mixed reviews of the Ambient blushes, but I like them a great deal - their rather sheer formula, and built-in highlighter effect make them ideal for the less dextrous amongst us. Like myself.

Tarte Amazonian Clay blush in Fearless is a more or less straightforward matte coral, with some pinkish undertones. It's wonderfully flattering on, and lasts quite well. I'm really happy to see Tarte finally arriving in the UK (even if it is via QVC), and, from what I've seen of the range, I don't think fans will be disappointed. Having read the ingredients list, however, I'm a little underwhelmed by the formula for this, as it's not that different to practically every other blush on the planet in all honesty, but this is a darn fine blusher, particularly if you want a matte shade. Currently the shades on offer on QVC are rather limited, but I'm assured that more colours will be available later on in the year. Personally, I like the foundations more than the blush - which I'm slightly surprised to discover, to be honest - but more about that later.

What changes are you making to your routine for the changes in the weather?

The Fine Print: Mixture of PR Samples and purchases. Hourglass are going to bankrupt me at this rate.

Empties!

By Get Lippie

I'm having one of those weeks when all my favourite skin care items run out at the same time, and it's INFURIATING!

Champneys Spa Skin Super Rich Cleansing Balm:

Slightly grainy (and a little exfoliating as a result), I took this pot of balm on my honeymoon with me because I didn't want to use a chemical exfoliator, what with their sun-sensitivity issues and all, and I couldn't be bothered packing two products when only one can do all the work, and I've not looked back since. A lovely rich balm with excellent cleansing properties, this is a brilliant (cheap!) cleanser, particularly if you totally ignore the instructions on the jar, and remove it properly with warm water and a face cloth, like what you are supposed to do.

Zelens PHA Bio-Peel Resurfacing Facial Pads

God, I love these. Gentler than straight glycolic acid, but still packing a tingly punch of exfoliating goodness, I start to panic every time I get past the halfway point on a jar of these. Used after cleansing, these pads gently help your skin reset itself, and make you glow. PHA is also humectant, so it binds moisture to your skin too, as well as resurfacing. Only drawback is the price, which is £65 for 50 pads. I have been known to cut them in half to eke them out longer ...

Hydraluron

My love for Hydraluron is fairly widely known, this is either my third or fourth tube now, and I can't imagine life without it. Which (bearing in mind that I was totally underwhelmed with it when I first started using it) is going some! This is one of those products that doesn't really appear to do much whilst you're using it, then, when you've run out, you can really tell the difference - my skin is just more dull when I don't have this in my routine. I use it to layer extra moisture into my skin, and I apply after my serum/oil, and before my moisturiser. I panicked the other day when I realised the tube was empty, I don't mind admitting. Yes, I am a big sad.

Aromatherapy Associates Soothing Cleansing Balm

For days when I don't really fancy a slightly scrubby cleanse with the Champneys Balm, this gloriously silky and gently fragranced balm cleanser does the job. It melts makeup and grime on contact, and never leaves my skin feeling dry or stripped. There are no bells or whistles to this balm, it is just a good, gentle, and even beautiful product. Oh, and it's in a tube. I fupping LOVE balms that come in a tube. Love them! MORE TUBES IN BEAUTY PACKAGING, PLEASE. Have I mentioned how much I hate sticking my fingers into a jar of runny goop? Well, I do. A lot. I actually keep a teaspoon in my bathroom to actively avoid having to dip my fingers in stuff. It's a bit weird, I know, but we have a million teaspoons for some reason.

I've had a lot of compliments on my skin recently - and I've just got through an entire winter wearing only tinted moisturiser (or the occasional CC cream -more about those soon) which is entirely unheard of! I'm normally caked in foundation from October to April, every year, so this is massive for me, and it's (almost) entirely down to the products featured here.

What are your most repurchased products?

The Fine Print: Mixture of PR samples and repurchases

This post: Empties! originated at: Get Lippie All rights reserved. If you are not reading this post at Get Lippie, then this content has been stolen by a scraper

The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier

By Get Lippie

To say I don't really "do" fashion would be a mild understatement. I simply don't "get" fashion. Part of this is because I'm what is euphemistically known as "plus size", of course, but mostly it's down to the fact that high fashion isn't really useful to those of us who either don't earn millions of pounds or, aren't six feet tall, or have, like, proper jobs and that. Also, I'm an accountant. Cutting edge accountancy fashion is making sure you've put the right buttons into the correct holes on your cardigan, frankly.

All of this is a roundabout way of saying that I'm not really the target market for the current JPG exhibition at the Barbican, I basically only know Jean Paul Gaultier because of Eurotrash. Oh, and his perfume, of course!

But ... this exhibition is absolutely bloody astonishing. Luke and myself were lucky enough to be invited to the press preview of the show the day before it opened to the public, and I found myself enthralled by the sheer size and scope of the exhibition, and the really amazing detail on the clothes themselves.

Basically, every era of JPG's career is represented, from his iconic work with Madonna's stage oufits, his film costumes, his catwalk haute couture, and, of course, his :ahem: pioneering work on Eurotrash, and there is even his Spitting Image puppet:

Frankly, terrifying.

There are holographic mannequins, who gurn, giggle, and even sing to themselves, which genuinely have to be seen to be believed as the technology, even close up, is amazing (and much, much better than these next couple of quite frankly shonky photographs make it look):

We only had an hour for our view, and it wasn't, in my opinion, nearly a long enough amount of time, there was a lot of stuff that we simply didn't have time to see properly, and I missed the significance of some of the exhibits, as we were racing around before the main event of the day.

There was also a fragrance symposium after the exhibition, where it was revealed that there will be a new "intense" version of the JPG Classique fragrance released in the UK in July, which is great news for lovers of the original. We were treated to a tiny sniff of the new formula at the symposium, and it's ... fruity. Apparently, Francis Kurkdjan has been dying to make a fruity floral for a long time now (my heart sank at those words, I must admit), and he was delighted to be able to bring that to fruition. I've no idea how the formula will translate on the skin, but I'll keep you posted once I've smelled it properly.

If you get a chance to pop along to the Barbican before the exhibition ends in August, then I recommend that you run to see it. I'll definitely be going back - did I mention that it's amazing?

Because you can't talk about JPG without mention of THAT corset ...

The Art of Male Makeup by David Horne and Mark Bowles

By Luke

“The only way I'd be caught without makeup is if my radio fell in the bathtub while I was taking a bath and electrocuted me and I was in between makeup at home. I hope my husband would slap a little lipstick on me before he took me to the morgue.” - Dolly Parton.

Make up is a funny thing isn’t it? The quote above is the way a lot of women feel about makeup, or more pertinently, how they feel about themselves without it.

I don’t know when it was exactly that women or society more likely hijacked makeup as being an almost exclusively female activity, but until fairly recently, certainly in my short lifetime *ahem* men with makeup on has always been viewed as a bit of a freakshow. This is with the exception of drag per se, that has little ambiguity about what is going on.

More often than I care to mention, when I explain to someone what I do for a living, it is quite often, and rather ignorantly, met with questions about whether I wear makeup, or even if I ‘do drag’ myself. The assumption being I suppose that if I am a dab hand at a bit of lipstick, and a brush, and I love a bit of glitter, that I must covet the most feminine of all things that is makeup, and want to decorate my face with it, ironically in a female parody sort of way.

But makeup and men do have a very long lineage. There have always been men, who still wishing to look like men, have worn makeup. I am not talking about those possibly too vain men that pop on a (very lightly) tinted moisturiser, or slick a little Touch Eclat under their eyes after a heavy night, and god forbid it should look like you are ACTUALLY wearing makeup for fear of ridicule.

Men who wear makeup, but to all the world don’t fit into this little box of drag, or camp, or androgyny, or feminine or all the other rather emasculating vocabulary you can throw at them because they are wearing something other than sweat on their faces.

Makeup, for me is a gender neutral product. Out of the pot onto a face, be it male or female, it’s the same. In this respect, there is a subculture of men that do wear makeup because quite simply it pleases them to do so. But, when looking at male makeup, there are few reference points. Until now. This week, I was invited to the launch of a new book The Art of Male Makeup. Its creators are the two prolific and frankly fabulous David Horne and Mark Bowles.Both makeup artists, and both incredibly clever.

The book was born from this lack of reference to makeup from a male perspective, or worn by men that wasn’t as I said earlier draggy, or trans, or feminine. Far from detracting anything from these particular styles, the book seeks to demonstrate that male make up is an art form all on its own.

An important and rather insightful analysis took place as to what exactly *is* feminine about makeup? A very particular eye was cast over the various techniques that we are all so familiar with and examined to see what exactly feminised them.

An example of this would be eyeliner (guyliner *shudders* I loathe that term). A straight, unbroken line is feminine; a flick for example is also feminising the eye. Matte, for example, is deemed more masculine than a shimmer, or a shine. Glamour is not the goal here. Any ‘traditional’ cosmetic tricks are pulled right back so as not to overdo, and become about the makeup, and not the face.

And fundamentally, what is masculine makeup? It’s not about decoration, so much as it is enhancement. It’s less about correction, and more about character. The Art of Male Makeup presents 28 characters to us, that are all familiar male types, and shows us with these rules how makeup emphasises the masculine traits of the face and body. There is not one that isn’t intriguing, and doesn’t drag you into the story of that particular character, and some will even surprise you. It is beautifully photographed by the extremely charming Daniel Ellyot Moore.

Flicking through, not one of these men has been feminised by the makeup, or the hair. And each time I go looking at a different page, I notice something new in the picture. They are all very beautiful indeed. A true collaboration of creative talent, there were a number of artists who worked on this book including the amazing Julia Townend (on body makeup this time), and Spob O’Brien on hair duty.

So what does it mean?

Well for me it’s a welcome relief on many levels. Not only is it a perfect reference for the way maleness is perceived by Mark and David, but it also signifies a new perspective in the world of makeup, and artistry as a whole. We are seeing a lot of the same type of thing all the time. Another smoky eye, another cut crease, another contoured face that we’re all supposed to mimic and get excited about, when actually, these are not new concepts but just lazy populist re hashes of the same thing over and over. The Art of Male Makeup articulates a whole new world of possibilities for you to look at, and equally for me as an artist.

A stunning book, and an incredible body of work. I leave you with some beautiful illustrations of the looks by Achraf Amiri. If you are at all serious about makeup, you need to own this.

The Art of Male Makeup is available by emailing hausofhorne@yahoo.com and is £25.

This post: The Art of Male Makeup by David Horne and Mark Bowles originated at: Get Lippie All rights reserved. If you are not reading this post at Get Lippie, then this content has been stolen by a scraper

Big Hair Round-Up: Eco Tools Hairbrushes, Josh Wood for M&S and Her Volumising Powder

By Laurin

We have a saying in my homeland: “The higher the hair, the closer to Jesus.” From her hair alone, I think that we can deduce that my grandmother and her poodle were both very close to Jesus in 1979. My relationship with the Holy Spirit is on decidedly shakier ground, so I have to rely on modern artifice to give me the volume I crave. Here are a few products I’ve rated recently:

Eco Tools Hairbrushes

Eco Tools, who already have a high quality range of affordable make-up brushes, are launching their first collection of hairbrushes next month. They're made using repurposed aluminium and renewable bamboo, which is great if you care about your carbon footprint, but you should still check them out if you don't. The range contains five different types of brush, so there is something to suit everyone. I'm loving the Quick Volume Styler for adding volume to my shoulder-length fine hair in the mornings, and the Sleek + Shine Finisher is great for blow-drying a fringe, as the tightly packed bristles hold the hair firm beneath a hot air blast. The cream and blonde wood finish means they’re stylish enough to display on your dressing table, and they're well-priced at £10.99 each. Advantage cards at the ready.

Eco Tools Hairbrushes are £10.99 each and available in Boots from April 2014

Josh Wood for M&S

In case you haven’t noticed, M&S have been seriously pulling their socks up when it comes to beauty. What was once merely a reliable place to buy rose-scented foam bath for your nan is now a spot to pick up everything from hard-working French pharmacy brands to cutting-edge Icelandic skincare to damned fine collaborations with British beauty experts. The latest collection to hit the shelves is colourist Josh Wood’s range of shampoos and conditioners for coloured hair. There are three pairs: one for dry hair, one for frizzy hair and one for fine hair. I’ve been testing the range for fine hair and while I can confirm that it has indeed added volume and stopped my ash blonde hair from turning brassy, what I really want to tell you about is the smell. This is without a doubt the best-smelling shampoo and conditioner I’ve ever used, knocking Herbal Essences off its sixteen year run in the top spot. Instead of the generic fruit cocktail I’ve come to expect from most shampoos, we have instead a warm, spicy ginger. It smells like pressing your face into the bare neck of someone you love deeply. Sexy. As. Hell.

Josh Wood Full-Bodied Shampoo and Conditioner are £9.50 for 250ml and are available at Marks &

Spencer

And, speaking of things I love deeply, I’ve developed a serious crush on the volumising powder from the pseudo-Italian haircare brand Her, fronted by that well-known haircare guru John Barrowman*. This one isn’t for everyone. If your hair is already thick, curly or prone to frizz, you should probably give it a miss. But if your hair is fine and flat, try using it to live out your Amy Winehouse backcombing fantasies (we all have those, right?). It instantly makes your roots into a slightly tacky web that you can then scrunch and comb into skyscraper hair that won’t come down until you wash it out. I realise that won’t appeal to everyone, but I reckon I could trap both flies AND men in my hair when I use it. My only complaint is that you have to shake rather than spray it on, so make sure you have good aim. Use it sparingly: a little goes a very, very long way.

In the picture above, on the left, you can see my hair blow-dried without any product at all (and my make-up free face, while we’re at it). On the right, I’ve added three shakes of the powder around the roots at the top of my head and backcombed ever so slightly. I’m not sure the picture does it full justice, but this is a lot more volume for a very little effort.

Her Volumising Powder is £14 for 7g and is available at www.thisisher.co.uk

Finally, on a completely different note, it’s officially spring! Any day now I’m expecting to catch sight of my first rage-inducing article on how NOT to induce mass cardiac arrest on the beach this summer with my hairy, wobbly flesh. For no reason whatsoever, I’ve spent the last fortnight slapping Nivea Firming Good-bye Cellulite Serum on my cottage-cheese thighs so that you don’t have to waste your money on it when June rolls around. It promises to work WITH my skin “to improve its firmness and reduce the appearance of cellulite in 10 days.” Did it? What do you think? It mostly made the skin on my bum squeak when I touched it and caused my thighs to stick together like slices of sweaty cheese. This is the part where I’m supposed to tell you that cellulite creams don’t work, and I’ve decided to just drink more water and sod what everyone thinks of my “bikini body”. Except that I have no immediate plans for beach-based frolicking, so what I’ve actually decided to do is eat more toast and sod what everyone thinks of me spending my summer holidays in my darkened bedroom, watching Gossip Girl on Netflix while I sit on my well-cushioned bum. Problem solved.

Nivea Firming Good-bye Cellulite Serum is £5.59 for 75ml and is available at Boots. Toast is free and available in your kitchen.

**Yes, THAT John Barrowman. I'm not even slightly joking. Get Lippie had breakfast with him and everything. There are photos, which I'm legally bound** not to share here.
**She'll kill me, and besides, we've run out of brain bleach.
This post: Big Hair Round-Up: Eco Tools Hairbrushes, Josh Wood for M&S and Her Volumising Powder originated at: Get Lippie All rights reserved. If you are not reading this post at Get Lippie, then this content has been stolen by a scraper