Game changer

Apologies for the Image Searched photo - my camera was uncooperative this morning.

My best friend gave me the most amazing box of delights from Kit Cosmetics, aka baby Mecca, aka the one store we actually breathlessly talk about when we’re out for a drink or two. Oh, the love for Kit is strong amongst my friends. We love their superlative nail polishes, their great range of brands, we love Korres, Mario Badescu, Too Faced, theBalm, everything Poppy King has ever done, ever, we love the friendly staff and great store fit-outs, we love it all.

Anyway, my best friend gave me theBalm’s Hot Mama, a peachy, blush with a gold shimmer often described as a dupe of the ubiquitous Nars Orgasm. Now, I teach 18 year olds, 18 year olds with liberal access to their parents’ credit cards, and this has given me an aversion to Sass & Bide jeans, spray tans, aggressively GHD’d hair, Lancome Juicy Tubes and Nars Orgasm, which they positively baste themselves in before coming to class, but my BF has fine taste, and is also a very pale girl like myself, so I gave Hot Mama a red hot, if skeptical, go.

I also have offensively oily skin, so I am a total shimmerphobe, fearing the slightest hint of iridescence might transform into a greasy mess. When I first brushed a little Hot Mama onto my cheekbones I was apprehensive. There was definitely shimmer, verging on shine, and I didn’t know how it would go during the day. Then, as I was walking to the tram stop, I caught sight of myself in a window and, goshdarnit, that shine was pretty. I finally understood that ‘glow’ all those beauty editors are always going on about. What’s more, I found myself embracing my natural grease glow. While I still blot my nose and forehead of an afternoon, I let the rest of my face do its own thing, and I’m also on the look out for more shimmer products.

So thank you, Hot Mama, for helping me to accept my hideous oil slick of a face youthful dewiness.

I’d have called it Suspiria

Don’t ask me why, but Cupcake, this peachy Sportsgirl polish with the finest of champagne blonde shimmers, really reminds me of a Dario Argento film. Standing amongst the fast fashion chaos of your average Sportsgirl, it made me want to run terrified down the hallway of a ballet school in a filmy nightdress, curtains billowing, menaced by some unseen presence.

But that’s just me.

Sportsgirl polishes continue to perplex me. I really don’t buy into the hype that price = quality, especially with nail polish. I’d rather one of Rimmel’s beautiful, unique polishes over Chanel’s overpriced, chippy disasters every time. For me, polish wear is determined largely by the base and top coat combination (for me, Seche Vite and CND Stickey), application technique (tip wrapping and the Stickey Sanwich), nail length and shape (short, faintly below the finger tip, and square) and maintenance (slicking on another coat of top coat a couple of times a week, wearing gloves to do housework, opening Coke cans with your house key), and my manicures typically last a week before they get too scrappy to handle.  But Cupcake just killed me. It refused to dry. Refused to. It remained soft and smudgy and wrong for hours, even under my usual fast drying coat of Seche Vite, and I could dent it days later. I really adore this odd, 70s-ish colour, reminiscent of Giallo films and the girdles your grandmother wore, but the formula really spoils it for me. I’ll be on the lookout for a better peach.

I’m so into you, Nerdboyfriend

You so have the best taste in men, and in clothes, and in finding men and clothes. I just wish there was a lady version, and I wish that lady version would include…

Jane Birkin

Isabelle Huppert

Marlene Dietrich

Pam Grier

Medieval

Is it a bad sign that every time I reach for my new favourite everyday lipstick I get this song in my head?

Lipstick Queen’s Medieval is my new favourite thing.  It’s a beautiful, creamy, silky balm with the most perfect cherry red tint. Once again, Poppy King has hit it out of the park. At only $34 from Kit, it’s affordable and luxurious and very, very wearable. With winter coming it really is a must-have.

I never thought I’d love you so

You know how in romantic comedies some adorable, clear-skinned, bouncy-haired lady might bump into a tall and infuriatingly arrogant man in a beautiful and clean street, and perhaps he knocks her shopping out of her hands and she immediately swears that she hates him, and then, after a series of unlikely and quirky events, she realises she looooves him?

That’s how I feel about Kiehls Ultra Facial Cleanser. But first, allow me to backtrack. I like to use a separate cleanser for morning and night, simply because my nighttime cleanser has to deal with all the sunscreen and foundation and powder and whatnot I wear during the day, and my daytime cleanser has less to worry about. For a long time I’ve been using straight sweet almond oil to emulsify my makeup, then cleanse with warm water and Neutrogena’s most excellent and truly gentle Fresh Foaming Cleanser. I like having a little surfactant action to get rid of all the oil and makeup, and it has yet to dry my skin out in all the year’s I’ve been using it. Also, it comes in a satisfying blue pump pack.

For a while, morning cleansers were a little harder. I bounced from Priceline brand to Priceline brand, this one too harsh, this one too oily, this one too foamy, this one irritatingly full of menthol. One day I wandered in to the Kiehls boutique in David Jones on Bourke St and thought, hell, at least Kiehls will look cute in my shower, and I picked up Ultra Facial without much thought.

And, you kow what? Kiehls Ultra Facial Cleanser truly is the greatest morning cleanser I’ve ever used. It’s a heavenly, creamy gel, completely unscented and non-irritating, with enough cleansing power to remove anything that needs removing, without drying your skin out. And at around $34-$36 for a large tube it’s totally economical. My tube is just starting to run out, and I know that I simply cannot live without my beloved.

Nails this week

Gosh, it’s been a long time since I’ve done one of these, hasn’t it? It’s not as though I haven’t been doing my nails. I have, a lot, and in a great deal of colours. It’s such a shame I didn’t post Dirty Sexy Money from my latest Misa haul because, holy cow, what a great weird murky greeny blue that was, but I shall swatch soon. This is CND Regal Revenge, definitely a top 5 polish. I’m not even sure if this is in the permanent CND collection or not. CND is such a strange brand. I couldn’t live without their Stickey base coat, and while I’m starting to prefer Poshe AHA cuticle care to Cuticle Eraser, Cuticle Eraser is still a great product. But they don’t seem to be making seasonal collections any more, and I also heard they slashed their permanent collection, which makes no sense.

Either way, Regal Revenge is a beautiful, deep, glowy pink of the sort that makes my heart flutter. For someone as obsessed with all things beauty as I am, I’m actually a bit androgynous, style-wise, which is why it’s perhaps surprising that I always fall for the deep, berryish pinks in a collection. The application for this polish is smooth and flawless, and it dries into an elegant, glassy cream. An absolute must-have, if you can find it.

SWINTON

Via Jezebel. God, I love her so.

Also! Be sure to check out my latest guest post over at Primped. This week: how to fix chipped nails so they won’t chip again. Vitally important stuff, people.

‘But what does George Glass think?’

I didn’t watch the Oscars telecast because I genuinely do not care who wins best actor or actress or cinematographer or Best Boy* or Grip,**but I do care about pretty dresses and Tilda Swinton, so I read the various liveblogs with relish while I was meant to be working on the completion of my research higher degree. So here it is, the Good, the Eh and the OMG I Want To Be You So Bad

* I don’t know what a Best Boy is, but I can tell you I want one.

** I also don’t know what a grip is but I could sure use – LAME JOKE ABORT.

The Good

Remember that topless Annie Liebovitz portrait of Miley Cyrus from Vanity Fair that had everyone in an uproar? I totally adored it. I thought Miley looked other-worldly, Vermeer-like, which is an odd thing to say for a Disney starlet. I also adore everything about this look. Her makeup is soft and barely there, hair sideparted and positively relaxed, she’s really just letting this incredible dress do the talking. And what a dress! People have been bitching about the belt, but I think the belt makes the whole thing young, regal and just a bit different. Hands-down the best of the night.

HOLY CATS MARISA TOMEI! This Versace dress is positively magisterial, and her sideswept hair and defined yet discreet make up compliment it perfectly. I adore the hair, the shape, the endless pleating, everything.

I had to Google Taraji P. Hensen to learn that she was in Forrest Gump II, but aside from that I kind of want to be her. The girls at Jezebel have a total crush on her and her classic, elegant style, and so do I. I love the smokey eye with this filmy, layered dress. It’s dramatic but not overpowering in a way that makes me want to bust out the eyeliner.

The Eh

Listen, I love Amy Adams, but that weird pleaty drapey thing in the centre of this dress is just… eh. It looks like someone pinned it up strangely to hem the skirt then forgot to unpin it. Amy is still radiant, though. Viva la palegirls!

Oh, Freida, you are radiantly, stunningly, unfairly beautiful, and this rather dated, slightly frumpy blue number does nothing for you.

The OMG I Want To Be You So Bad

Sophia Loren. SOPHIA MOTHERCHUCKING LOREN. If I am lucky this is a vision of me in 40 years time swanning about the house on a Tuesday in my costume from Gone With The Wind On Ice, gesturing grandly with a martini glass and harrassing my Best Boy.

SWINTON. When I was in uni a friend of mine made a flash animation called ‘The Lonely Skeleton,’ where a crudely drawn skeleton danced briefly then shrieked ‘I do what I want!’ That’s the first thing that pops into my head when I see my beloved SWINTON. She does what she wants. She has two lovers, she never wears mascara, she wears Lanvin as though it were a pair of worn out flannel PJs, I LOVE HER.

Why HELLO, Kitty

To be honest, I’m largely indifferent to the upcoming Hello Kitty collection from MAC, but I am glad they decided to make another loopy promo video. It’s like Hello Kitty done through a Gwen Stefani, S&M lens. I love it.

Oils ain’t oils

First, a proviso. I recently lost my best beloved Canon 350D in a cab (!!), which means I’m relying on a wee Panasonic Lumix to illustrate my posts here. This. KILLS. Me. Photography is one of my many things. I’ve photographed many a wedding, many a band, many a show, I’ve even had a picture on the cover of International Dulcimer Magazine. This is not to say I’m totally obsessed; I just take real pleasure in taking good photographs, just as I take real pleasure in a beautiful lipstick or foxy eyeshadow quad or fulsome powder brush. Fortunately, I’ve recently come across decent employment, so in time I should be back to my picture takin’ ways.

With that in mind, let me introduce you to my New Favourite Thing. Remember how I was trying to find a decent hair treatment? Well, I’ve found it, and it is that glamourous jar above, which can be yours for the princely sum of $6.90. I heard about the deep conditioning powers of coconut oil through the wonderful Primped forums, via ThreeGlossesLady. I’ve been working great palmfuls of the stuff into dry, unwashed hair, massaging it well into my scalp then combing it through the ends. I let my hair stew for a good 40 minutes to an hour, then shampoo and take to my head with my tint brush and Goldwell Soft Color. It’s truly wonderful stuff, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.