Project Perfume - an update

Oof, it's been a little while since I did an update, I have to admit!  It's not been because I've had a lack of things to think about, rather the opposite in fact.

If you take a look at the Project Perfume page itself you'll see that I've sniffed, or obtained samples of around about 50% of the list now, which is due in large part to three websites: Luckyscent, one is Scent and Sensibility and last, but by no means least, Escentual.com.  

Luckyscent (based in the US) and Scent and Sensibility (based in the UK) both specialise in niche, or hard to find perfumes, and I've been purchasing samples from both of them for a while now, I ordered a bunch of Andy Tauer perfumes from Ronny at Scent & Sensibility at the end of last year, and they turned up very quickly and beautifully packaged, and there was a little treat of a sample of Hilde Soliani's Vecchi Rossetti perfume included too, which is about as perfect a scent for a beauty blogger as can possibly be, as it's inspired by the scent of theatres and theatrical makeup.  Violets, roses and beeswax combine to make this smell of the makeup your grandmother used to wear, ladylike and powdery, and just a tad old fashioned, it's a gloriously glamorous scent which evokes the forties and fifties and just needs a beautiful powder compact to make the image complete.  It's not something for everyday wear - it's definitely a fragrance that requires a bit of dressing up to accompany it, but for those days when I prefer my pearls to my edgy silver jewellery, it's wonderfully evocative.

I'll talk more about Luckyscent and Scent & Sensibility next week (look out for a special post next week where I've teamed up with S&S to bring you something I'm very excited about indeed), but I wanted to talk about some scents I've been sent by Escentual.com this week.  

I'm hugely indebted to the lovely Louise (are there any other kinds of Louises?  I rather think not - however long term readers of this blog may have views that differ ... ) at Escentual who saw my list of perfumes and got really on-board with the project, thanks to Louise, I was sent samples of fully a fifth of the perfumes on my list, and it's been wonderful over the last few weeks having a "lucky dip" of some wonderful - and some er ...slightly less so - perfumes to choose from every day!  I suspect my workmates have been a little confused by some of the scents I've been wearing recently, but hey ... 

First off, Calandre by Paco Rabanne:

On first spray this is metallic, and flowery.  And, as is the way of these things, I had an initial impression of tinned peas.  The perfume doesn't, in fact, smell anything like tinned peas, but everytime I wear this, they're what I think about, at least for the first few minutes.  There's a tinny, metallic accord on first spray, which will tickle the back of your nose - and in my case, get the old brain cells working overtime - but, once this ticklish phase is over, there's a beautiful (and I do mean beautiful) essence of roses and glorious full-bodied florals, which leaves me sniffing my wrists in ecstasy.  It's perfume-y, but not at all old-fashioned, which is rather a wonderful trick to pull off, particularly for a scent that was first released in 1966. It's fresh and floral, and rather lovely, I've worn my sample of this one a lot since it arrived, to the detriment of a few other samples that appeared in the same batch.

It wasn't until I went back to Luca Turin and "the book" that I realised where the tinned peas thing came from. Luca talks about Rive Gauche a lot in conjunction with Calandre (allegedly, the two are almost identical), and Rive Gauche is a perfume that my mother wears.  As for the tinned peas, well, there's a very metallic note in Calandre, and my mother ... well ... my mother fed us a lot of tinned vegetables growing up, and that's the scent-memory my subconscious dragged up ...  

Lippie Rating: Lovely.

 Carrying on with the vegetable theme, I next tried Fahrenheit 32 by Dior.  Described as an unpretentious "minty vanilla" by Luca Turin, this is exceptionally difficult to find in stores, I tried everywhere before it turned up.  Yes, it's very definitely a minty vanilla, it's both herbal and sweet, cool and comforting.  For some reason, I do find a lot of vanillas rather too reminiscent of custard, and I'm uncomfortable in them for that reason, but this is very green, and I'm occasionally reminded of watercress (this isn't a criticism, I love watercress, and would eat it every day if I could), with a hint of orange blossom, and the vanilla just takes the edge off the sharp, green herbs, and rounds off the orange blossom a little.  If I want to sharpen it up, I add a little "fizz" with a drop or two of Commes des Garcons Rhubarb (from their "Sherbet" series), and the minty rhubarb'n'custard that results is perfect for carefree weekend days, and wearing with jeans and sitting down the pub in.  
Somehow though, I can't convince MrLippie to wear this, the big wuss.  Although, that might be because I've refused to hand it over to him since it arrived.


Lippie Rating: Weird - but good.


More on Project Perfume coming soon ....


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

Dior Addict Lipstick 578 Diorkiss

Apparently, some people think I'm a bit obsessed with lipstick.  I cannot imagine why people might think this.

[looks up at logo]

Oh.

Alright, they might have a point.  But, I'd like to make clear that I only own three drawers worth of lipsticks/glosses and balms.  For the purposes of the point I'm making, I'd like to - of course - ignore the box of lip products in the bathroom.   And the fact that I always have at least 10 lip products in my handbag at any one time.


Where was I?  Oh yes, Dior are relaunching their Addict range of lipsticks, and they very kindly agreed to send me one so I would stop sending them begging letters could take a look at them for you.  I was sent 578 in Diorkiss which is a pink.  I think my search for the perfect pink has overtaken my search for the perfect red over the last few months, which is a surprise!

This lipstick is also the shade you'll see Kate Moss wearing the advertising campaign.  In the bullet, this looks quite a deep shade:

But be not scared if you're wary of dark lipsticks, for in what appears to be an increasing trend this year (like the Guerlains and Chanels I've shown you recently), these have a gel base and are perfect for a more sheer look:

As you can see from the swatch, this is a soft and gentle pink on the skin, a little less "bright" than a lot of the other pinks I wear, and it feels very emollient on the lips.  If you like a deep, opaque look from your lip colours, then it's likely that the newly released (they're currently in Selfridges, but you will be able to buy them nationwide from 11th April)  Addict line isn't for you.

On the lips, it's a gentle wash of glossy colour, perfect for no-fuss looks.  Lasting power is about average for a glossy sheer - about three hours if you can abstain from eating or drinking for a while, less if you must indulge in a coffee in the morning.


I love the pearlescent packaging, and, even though it took a little while for me to figure out precisely to get the lid off (look, I'm old, and opening things seems to not be my forte these days), it's a lovely bit of kit.  I think I might have to indulge in a couple more.


Dior Addict lipsticks will be available nationwide from April 11th and will cost £22.  Which is cheaper than the new Chanel Rouge Coco shines (by 50p), and a good few pounds cheaper than the Guerlain Rouge Automatiques which will be released later in the month.


The Fine Print:  I was sent this to review.

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

A Week in Lipstick

So, after last week's accidental all-pink lipstick extravaganza, let's take a look at what I've been carrying around with me this week:




From top to bottom:

Max Factor Xperience - Pink Opal
Chanel Rouge Allure - Incognito
Bourjois Effet 3d - Brun Rose Academic
Chanel Rouge Coco Shine - Boy
Tarina Tarantino - Cameo
Chanel Rouge Coco Shine -
Bonheur
Dior Addict Lipstick - Diorkiss

And so, what colours did this week's lips entail?




Sigh. Nearly all nudes.




Swatches in (almost) the same order - the Dior is the odd one out, but there's a in-depth review of that one coming up tomorrow.

Random Sunday Stuff

It's been a pretty emotional week on Get Lippie, I was astonished by the reaction to my post on Thursday, and just wanted to say a quick thank you to everyone who took the time to comment, tweet and email me with their experiences, and support.  My readers are amazing, and I'm glad you're here, thank you all for not making me regret publishing that piece, rather the opposite.

In other news, I also had my contribution to a brand new online magazine published this week:

I'm writing about high-tech beauty products - click on the picture above and flick through to page 68 if you want to read what I have to say.  It's a gorgeous magazine and I'm really proud to have been asked to take part! 

Also, the lovely, wonderful and amazing people at Escentual.com (without whom my Project Perfume wouldn't be possible, but more about that later on) voted me their blog of the week. They had some really lovely things to say about Get Lippie, which made me feel all warm and fuzzy.  You can see what they had to say here:

So, that's what's been going on here this week, there's loads more shallow stuff coming up on Get Lippie this week, so please stay tuned!

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

Katie: My Beautiful Friends.

I was approached to write this piece, and it's a little different to what I'd normally put on here - it's certainly a lot more personal, for which I apologise in advance - so I do hope people won't mind too much.

On Tuesday evening, I sat and watched the Channel Four TV show Katie: My Beautiful Friends and found it extraordinary. Normally, I find TV shows about disfigurement exceptionally difficult to watch, and I very deliberately avoided watching Katie: My Beautiful Face (which was the precursor to this show) a Cutting Edge documentary shown in 2009 about Katie Piper's recovery from being attacked with sulphuric acid by a man she met on Facebook, as I knew I would find it painful. 

Let me tell you why.


My problem - if you can call it that, I suspect that it's more a form of "over-identification", as you shall see - with TV programmes like this stems from my own - very minor - experience of disfigurement.  I was never what you would call a pretty child: pudgy, verging on ginger, and I had a gap between my two front teeth you could park a bicycle in.  When I was five, I went to bed perfectly normal, and woke up with strabismus.  Essentially I went cross-eyed in my sleep, which is pretty rare to happen so suddenly, especially when you wake up so severely cross-eyed that only the white of the crossed eye is visible, which is was happened to me.

I had to undergo major eye surgery several times to correct it, and endured brain scans, blood tests, and vision tests many, many times during my childhood, as they were worried about brain tumours and cerebral palsy, amongst other - scarier - things.  In the mid-70's, none of these tests were a minor undertaking (if you've ever seen the brain-scan scene in The Exorcist, it's based - almost entirely - on the actual medical procedure of the time).  Quite where my mum found her resources of strength to deal with all this, I will never know.


My childhood wasn't really a fun place.  Added to my gappy teeth, the pudginess, the nearly-gingerness, and the constant medical tests and surgery, I then had to endure a year or two of wearing eye-patches, and the adhesive on those things (no sexy black patches on elastic for this kid, no!  Industrial strength Elastoplast all the way, baby!) ripped my eyebrow out, every single time.  So, I was a one-eyebrowed, cross-eyed, chubby ginger child with teeth pointing both east and west, usually to be found wearing smeary pink NHS glasses.  I still have nightmares about those glasses to this day.


I was not popular.  I was not cool.  And I was bullied, unmercifully all the way through school, even after the eyepatch disappeared.  Possibly unsurprisingly, as I was also rather unpleasant.  Whiny, needy, and something of a smart-alec (some things never change).  I was rather isolated, and convinced I was horrific to behold - so I separated myself from people.  Usually via sarcasm (as I said, some things never change), but normally just by being by myself. I read a lot, and wasn't really good in groups of other kids.  Still not, as it happens.  Anyhoo.

I remember, on a family holiday not long after my first surgery, hearing my mother say to one of the holiday camp photographers (we were at Butlins and they followed you everywhere back then) not to take pictures of me as she was "ashamed" to see them. Once in a while she'd yell "no pictures!" if anyone else tried to take a picture too.  Even now, Mum will still make jokes about how terrible I looked back then, and the word hideous is usually used. It still hurts, the fact that my mother thought she couldn't look at me, even when my realistically, my "disfigurement" was very minor, and, as it turned out, purely temporary.  It wasn't quick though, I didn't really grow into my looks until I hit my late teens, and I have days where I'm still not sure I have.

I still don't like having my photograph taken to this day, and I can never ever take a compliment seriously - these things stay with you.  I am less than I look.  Or, rather, I feel that I am less than I look. Objectively, these days, I'm a perfectly ordinary-looking woman, but there has ever been a little corner of me that is still that ugly and unloved little mite, and I carry her everywhere with me.  My little blog about "beauty" is partially a response to that, I guess.  

I, myself, may never be a "beauty", but there's always the hope, every new cosmetic release, that there's something that might help lay the ghost of my five year old self to rest.  I think I use skin cream in the hope that I'll suddenly wake up "beautiful" or even just plain "pretty", instead of the "merely passable" being I see in the mirror every morning. These last few paragraphs have been the single hardest thing I've ever written for Get Lippie, and it's possible it makes no sense as a result - or worse, makes me look like an idiot. Or both! But, I'll take my chances, I think.

Because, my experience is nothing, literally nothing compared to some of the stories on display Tuesday evening, particularly the story of Chantelle and her AVM - a condition which causes blood vessels to expand uncontrollably, and because it is Chantelle's nose that is affected, her condition threatens her life.  Such a beautiful - in all senses of the word - girl, unable to hide her affliction, and dealing with everything that life had to throw at her, including the break-up of her marriage on the eve of her life-saving operation.  Katie Piper, too, dealing with finding out about her attacker's appeal against his life sentence with such dignity and grace, these women were strong, graceful and inspirational.


Having watched the programme in full, I feel a bit ashamed of my tale further up this post, it's such a little thing compared to some of the situations some people go through in their lives, but I know that even small things like those can leave a lasting impression, and I know too that my little blog makes a difference to some people's lives from the emails I get from my readers.  Cosmetics, whilst seemingly frivolous, are a serious matter for some people, which is why I'm here, still blogging away.  And, whilst I may still upon occasion complain about my looks, as a result of this show, I'll be thinking about how I relate to my face somewhat differently.


I'm glad I watched.  Looking beyond someone's appearance (even our own) is difficult, and the programme taught me I can face up to my own issues, and I'm grateful for that.  I'm nothing like as brave as Katie or Chantelle, and I'm very glad I haven't had reason to be, and that is a lesson I'm glad to have learned.  That Katie has turned around her tragic experience and it's made her reach out to people similarly affected is astonishing - the show is following her life as she sets up the Katie Piper Foundation, which aims to set up communities in order to support people similarly affected - and the fact that she's such a lovely, unpretentious and warm girl made the programme feel like a real slice of a life shared, and that's been a real inspiration.


Thank you, Katie.  I shall now watch My Beautiful Face, and really put my issues in order.


Watch the first episode here on C4 on demand and tune into the next episodes every Tuesday at 9pm on C4.






The Fine Print: This has been a sponsored post, however, I shall donate part of my fee to The Katie Piper Foundation.


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

Accessorize Molten Truffle

People were asking me recently to post more about affordable beauty products ... well, how does £1.50 for one of the most beautiful eyeshadows I have ever seen* grab you?

Wandering around my local Superdrug recently, I finally spotted the Accessorize makeup stand.  I realise I'm the last blogger on earth to have discovered the makeup, but hey ho.  I picked up the nail varnishes in Aztec and Bronze which are as beautiful as I've been lead to believe (and an utter bargain at £4.50 each), but more about those later.  I noticed a little sign saying the pigment pots were £1.50 each, and picked this one up, it's a cool taupe, one of those perfect greybrownpurple shades, and I was instantly smitten.

However, it wasn't until I swatched it that I realised just how beautiful it was.  The powder is gloriously soft, silky, smooth and so complex a shade that it's actually incredibly difficult to describe.  So here are some really terrible photographs in an attempt to explain:

The second picture actually picks up a hint of the multi-tonal microshimmer - alongside the greybrownpurple of the basic pigment itself, there are hints of pink, bronze and green shimmer.  It puts my beloved Le Metier de Beaute Le Circ palette to shame.

There. I said it.

And breathe. 

Here's another dreadful pic of how it looks on my eyes:

Eyeliner: Illamasqua Abyss, Mascara: Armani Eyes to Kill

 Hmn, my eyelids are unexpectedly creased here, I have been trialling a sealing gel that I'm not hugely impressed with.  So I shall blame that.  DAMN you stupid sealing gel that has given me creased-up eyelids!  

And now, here's an awful full-face pic that doesn't show the eyeshadow at all, but it's my blog, and I like seeing my new pink pearls in photos:

Still aggravated by that sealing gel, obviously.

So, there you go, one bargainalicious beauty product, that even at full-price (£4.50) would still be a bargain.  I'm going back for Molten Khaki tomorrow.




*It's okay if you don't think it's beautiful too.  It's TAUPE, I gettit ... 

The Fine Print: I bought everything I'm wearing in this blog post.  Including the perfume.

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

When Poppy King met No7

A brand new range of lip products were born:

 
I can't deny that I have a bit of a fangirl crush on Poppy King, aka the Lipstick Queen,  she's a stylish lady who is basically dedicating her life to lipstick.  Much like myself but, you know, with style and a lipstick company, and business sense and stuff.  I own something from practically every release she's done over the last few years or so, and, even when I think the ideas are a bit suspect (hello Jean Queen), I can't deny that she's onto something.


Poppy believes that there's a perfect lipstick (indeed a perfect red lipstick) for everyone, even people who hate lipstick, and this, her latest collection of lipsticks - and glosses - in collaboration with No7, which is released this week, is almost entirely perfectly pitched, in my opinion.


The lipsticks and glosses are entirely without shimmer, sparkle and glitter (and expect me to have more to say about glitter in cosmetic products later on in the week), and flavour, which makes a refreshing change.  There are seven shades in the range which runs the gamut from nudes to pinks to reds to browns to berries.


At the recent press launch, I was given Romance and History to try - which are, luckily the two I'd have gone right out and purchased that day, had they been available!

Swatches:

As you can see, both the glosses and the lipsticks swatch on the sheer side, Romance is a nice neutral pink, and History a sheer neutral red, not too orange, not too blue. Now, whilst they are sheer, they are buildable, particularly if you layer the gloss and lipstick together.  

Here, I'll demonstrate:


Romance:

History:

As you can see, alone, the lipsticks are sheer, and have a satin - not too glossy - finish, but adding a slick of the (slightly sheer on it's own) lipgloss intensifies the colours.  


Both the gloss and lipsticks are hydrating, and non-drying, although the wear is about average for such a balm-like product, a couple of hours, and they won't really last much beyond your morning cup of coffee. But they are so soft and hydrating that re-applying them isn't too much of a problem.  Best of all, the lipgloss isn't sticky!


The packaging on the lipsticks is nice, it's very different to normal No7 offerings, which I normally think look a bit cheap - even the special limited editions.  Metal cased, and rather on the small side, they actually contain a full-size lipstick, and they're more than comparable to the original Lipstick Queen lipsticks, including price, as they're going on sale for £12 each.


Sadly, the lipgloss packaging isn't that brilliant - Poppy explained it wonderfully at the launch, talking of Bakelite, Man Ray and Marilyn Monroe, and other such great visuals, and her lookbook was amazing ... but, just adding a spotty lid to a lipgloss isn't really that inspiring, to be honest.  Also, the doe foot applicator doesn't pick up much product - and tends to wipe off that which you do apply -  I'd have much preferred a brush, particularly for layering!  The lipgloss will be available for £11.


The range will be available both in-store and online later this week, I'll be going in to pick up one or two of the other shades, will you?

The Fine Print: PR samples received at press launch, but I'd have happily handed over actual cash-money for merely the opportunity to sit and gas with Poppy and Lisa Eldridge even without the goody bag! 


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