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The first swipe across a swank, powder-pressed cosmetic is right up there in perverse satisfaction with popping bubble wrap. Thank you, Chanel, for another compact we can bring to delicious ruin. Collection Essentielle ($80), a mix of must-haves old and new in fair-minded colors, contains four devastatingly soft-napped shadows (two shimmery, two matte), four creamy lipsticks and a blush nice enough to gain your mother's nod of approval. A bronzier sister compact is also available. But if frivolity gets the better of you, Chanel's limited-edition Holiday Collection—with its Satan's-apple reds and naughty-bits pinks—is sure to give Santa an eye for Mommy.
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Serge Lutens, famed for his exotic and sometimes difficult fragrances, also has an audaciously small cosmetics line—he considers most make-up to be superfluous—that doesn't get much play. Rumored to be a favorite among flight attendants, who need stylish solutions that go the distance, his creamy pot of kohl eyeliner goes on and stays on. We tested out his latest arrival—a big deal since he hasn't added anything new since its launch—a pretty, ambitious, utilitarian lipliner ($55, offline at Barneys New York) that looks good on absolutely everyone and can probably accrue reward miles. Yet if you hear the call of a Lutens fragrance, we recommend the classic and complicated Chergui. According to nose lore, a few years ago the perfumier was sitting around a bonfire, exalting in its warm, explosive energy and decided to make an eau in ode to it. He took all the molecules left over from his work at the time, threw them all together in a kind of jungle juice and released the dark, opiatic, smoky scent. A range of Serge Lutens olfactory creations can be found on Luckyscent.
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This year everyone’s been all "Ooh, gold this..." and "Ahh, gold that...," dabbing and airbrushing and ingesting the stuff like they’re living in an alchemist’s air castle. Though we don’t normally jump on a bandwagon, this is one fabulous caravan we didn’t want to miss. After dabbling a bit, we bring you three gilded goodies worth caving in for. Chantecaille's Nano Gold Energizing Cream ($420) is a lab coat junkie’s Eldorado, with itty bitty particles of silk microfiber coated in 24-karat gold that promise to suspend the aging process faster than you can say "Eureka!" Bonus: without the use of a syringe, you’ll be able to register facial expressions the next day… From Guerlain’s limited-edition Forever Gold holiday collection comes Golden Lash ($30), which flits over your regular mascara to frost your lashes with pearly auric metal. Like the hair dye cap process of yore, through which you’d use a crochet hook to select strands to be highlighted, the precision brush is specially designed to hit only the tips, if you so desire... Weird proportion and odd balance are the order of the day for Belmacz jewelry. And now the line’s designer, Julia Muggenberg, has applied her aesthetic to the lips: her soft Gold Leaf Lip Gloss (€29, Colette.fr) contains rather enormous flecks of the precious metal, giving you a flushed and wild look like you just took a pirate-sized swig from a bottle of Goldschlager.
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We're not soulless materialists lured by the sparkle of a diamond. Oh no, not us. What we love about a diamond is strictly therapeutic. Thank goodness Natura Bissé gets us, concocting a formula made from essential lavender oil, micronized iron and—here's the kicker—ethically mined diamond dust. Like tile grout whipped into a delicate black mousse, Diamond Magnetic ($270, 10.5 oz) goes on anywhere except your face, then removed—along with toxins in your skin—with a giant wand like that toy where you make a beard on Wooly Willy’s face with little metal shards. The medical establishment, by and large, remains skeptical about magnet and gem therapy, but with skin that glows like the heavens, we're not arguing.
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Shaving—like that which it so bravely fends off—is back, rejoining waxing and laser technology in a woman's hair-removal arsenal. Once for men only, The Art of Shaving is leading the charge, with an extensive new line made with rose oil extracted from handpicked Bulgarian Damask blooms. Among the booty: Pre Shave Oil that won't kill your razor, fancy cake-frosting-like Ultra Rich Shaving Cream, a downy yet sturdy badger-hair brush, Post Shave Soothing Milk that moisturizes with nary a sting, and the coup de grâce, Ingrown Hair Night Treatment Cream, which prevents the late arrival of feather-plucked chicken skin…. You know that old adage about lemons and making lemonade? Well, if every rose has its thorn, why not pulverize it and turn it into a facial scrub? Annick Goutal did just that and added a dash of bamboo powder for effect. Voila! The wildly romantic, optimistic Gommage Splendide Visage. €55 online (Europe only), $70 at Barneys New York.
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These days everyone’s moonlighting for street-level, common-man, ready-to-wear outlets (and we’re not ashamed to warn you to get out of our way for Erin Fetherston at Target this month), but there’s no reason why fashion should have all the fun. Alexander McQueen has teamed up with cosmetics powerhouse MAC to create a limited-edition collection of sixteen products specifically concocted to recreate Egyptian maneater faces, à la Elizabeth Taylor as Queen Cleopatra, just like the ones from his moody runway show. Our favorites include creamy paints in pea-soup chartreuse and cataract blue, a self-propelling pencil to build brows of mythical proportions and Lip Glass in shades to make your pout as pale as a mummy’s shroud. Available while supplies last at MAC. —Angharad Llewellyn
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Shoptart
01, 22, 16. Nope, it’s not bingo night; it's the numerical filing system at Maison Martin Margiela. Adding to the mathematical fun is a new line of fine jewelry in absurdist proportions and scale. Also this month: Comme de Garçons for H&M, Louis Vuitton and more. By Franklin Melendez Message Boards
"Madonna starves herself on a raw macrobiotic kosher vegan kaballah diet and works out three hours a day to maintain the physique of a 12-year-old gymnast boy, and then has the cheeks of a 300-pound woman implanted into her face. And her forehead is like a plastic baby's bottom. It's like Nicole Kidman's forehead at the height of her botox addiction, and we all remember how unfortunate that era was."  Hint Shop
If Rad Hourani were writing this blurb, it would be over already. That's because, for the soon-to-explode French-Canadian designer, it's all about extreme minimalism. Thus, the concept behind this one-size-fits-all, unisex, sleeveless T-shirt—printed with the dates and times of a calendar—is that it can be worn by anyone, anytime. |
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