The Makeup Mole

This bad boy has been floating around in my brush roll for awhile, but it was only this weekend that I realized how genius it really is. It’s superseded all my other concealer brushes. Laura Mercier? Out the door. Make Up Forever? Too unwieldy. MAC? Relegated.

Why have I fallen in love with it in such a big way? It’s the perfect size for applying undereye concealer as it is just the right size to fit in that hollow under the eye where those dark shadows breed and play. It’s made of nylon, which as a synthetic is just right for moving concealer to where you want it to go, and not smearing it everywhere.

Cosmetica is a genius Australian brush line available from the chemist – the chemist I tell you! – and it has a full range of brushes, I think 23 in all. These brushes I could comfortably take and do the European shows with, the shapes are so good and the line so comprehensive. Most are natural hair although some are synthetic, and the best part is the price – at least half what you’d pay at MAC, three quarters less than you’d pay for other prestige lines such as NARS, Laura Mercier or Shu Uemura. So especially for people looking to build a decent set of makeup brushes without forking out thousands, these are the perfect way to do that. (I’m always amazed by the number of private clients who will show me Vogue and say why can’t I do that? When I ask about their brushes and they show me 5 fingers and a manky cotton bud, I can tell them right now, It’s Not Gonna Happen. Not until you get some decent brushes!)

And these are decent, they are more than decent. The other thing I love about them is they have brushes that are hard to find everywhere else. The spooly brush to comb through brows? Even MAC goes out of stock on this, and do you know how much the Cosmetica one is? $3. That’s less than a latte.

They do the equivalent of MAC’s duofibre blending 188 brush, for $17.95, which you’d need to have been living with a swami in the wilds of Tibet to not know is the best blending brush ever. AND (this is the big one) they do an eye blending brush (called Rounded Blending Brush) that is almost the same as the MAC 217. But less than half the price.

I’m sorry for my overseas readers as you can’t get this range online, but if you ask nicely in your best Australian accent, a friend in Oz may send them to you. To help you with your Aussie accent, here’s a video of Kath and Kim – if you don’t speak like that, we can’t understand you.

Available at Priceline, Big W and selected chemists in Australia.

After lots and LOTS of relaxation, and wine, and food, and lounging by the pool with novels so trashy I would be downright mortified if I lost my Kindle, and more relaxation, it’s back to normality.

Which is good because I have a new mascara that I’ve fallen in love with! I’m quite a tough mascara tester and have been through a LOT over the years, but the new Revlon mascara, Grow Luscious, has rapidly taken pride of place in my kit.

It’s my favourite type of mascara – it’s soft and pliable and strokes on like a dream, creating full, fluffy lashes. It can be layered without clumping and I’m yet to do a makeup where it goes into Stick Lash (where your lashes all coagulate into nasty little points so instead of lush fringe, you have three sticks, ugh). It doesn’t flake or smear, and the brush is nice and big – not as big as DiorShow, which in my opinion for a lot of makeups is too big, but it’s a generous size with good soft bristles that coat every lash.

Now the other amazing thing about Grow Luscious is supposedly it makes your lashes grow longer! For anyone who has lashes that could do with some extra growth (er-derr, like pretty much every woman on the planet) this is the mascara for you.

Unfortunately I can’t test this on myself as I have developed an allergy to my cats so mascara is off the menu for me at the moment – which is awesome, I can’t tell you how thrilled I am about it. But thank goodness I can still use mascara at work as I would start hyperventilating if it was out of my life completely.

Now the next mascara I can’t wait to get my sticky paws on is the Revlon Grow Luscious Plumping mascara – all that lovely lash growth PLUS fat fluffy lashes, I think I may already be in love with it.

revlon.com

 And because I’m a sucker for Revlon commercials – it must be all those years of Cindy Crawford and Brooke Shields telling me that they’re the most beautiful women in the world (and they aren’t wrong) – here’s the lovely Jessica Alba for Grow Luscious:

Happy New Year Everyone! I hope you all had a lovely and relaxing festive season and start to 2012. It has been harder than anticipated to prise myself away from the pool (or the beach, just to mix it up a bit). The lure of sunshine, sand, swimming and that feeling at the end of the day when you know you’ve had just enough sun has proven too difficult to resist. However the beauty of relaxing is it makes the mind unwind, and of late my thoughts have been turning to getting back to work. Yesterday my kit got a total overhaul and I was able to think about upcoming jobs. There’s also some new products that I am itching to get a lot more use out of in the next couple of months – Here’s a rundown of the products I can’t wait to get back into:

Bobbi Brown Beach Bronze Cream Eyeshadow

I do love Bobbi’s cream eyeshadows, they are some of the best on the market. This has to be my Numero Uno favourite one. It’s a gorgeous gilded bronze-y colour which is magnifique on its own, or thrown into the mix with other browns and coppers for the ultimate, summer-y smoky eye.

Clinique Black Honey Almost Lipstick

I have had this in my kit FOREVER, and it used to be one of my favourite lipsticks back in the day (let’s just say that TLC’s Creep was featuring heavily on my mixed tapes when I used to use this particular number). But it is the strangest thing – it’s a deep wine colour that really does look good on every skin tone! Now due to its iconic status, Clinique have expanded the Black Honey range to include a new Black Honey powder blush. And I think it’s time for Black Honey to come out and play again. (Maybe not the mid-90’s RnB, but you never know).

Tom Ford Illuminating Face Powder

This is a fantastic pressed face powder for those with oilier skin (such as my good self). It is heavy enough to blot down what it needs to take down but without dulling the skin. I’m actually using it in place of foundation most days, as without powder my forehead looks like it’s been laminated (such a good look!) It also has a yellow tone to it, which I”ve always liked to carry in my kit, and I’ve found it’s like a better version of T Le Clerc’s powder in Banane. T Le Clerc might be needing to find a new place to live this month.

Blistex Lip Balm Ultra Protection SPF 30+

This high protection sunscreen lip balm really comes into its own on beach shoots when it’s 30 degrees and keeping the model from frying like a lobster (and her makeup looking pristine) is of paramount importance. This is my favourite lip balm with sunscreen that I’ve found recently, and I’m hoping I’ll get to use it on a few more beach shoots before the end of the season.

Estee Lauder Verite Calming Fluid

This is my current go-to moisturiser as it’s a very light fluid that hydrates the skin beautifully, leaves a gorgeous sheen on the skin and is the perfect base for sunscreen – which is just mandatory at this time of the year. This is from Estee Lauder’s fantastic Verite range for skins with rosacea and a tendency to redness (such as mine), so it helps subtly correct your skintone at a skin care level before you even get to foundation.

Chanel Blazing Gold Single Eyeshadow and Liquid Liner in Or

I’m totally keeping these for a beauty story as I’m really feeling gold at the moment (and shimmery stuff in general). The liner is an opulent liquid gold liner which is perfect for adding a festive sparkle to the inner eye corners or for a more dramatic statement liner, and the gold shadow is a pressed powder eyeshadow and just right for layering over cream gold eyeshadow for statement eyes. Apres-beach or après-ski, tres sexy!

NARS Joyous Red lipstick

This colour didn’t actually grab me when I first tried it, but it’s been growing on me over the holidays. It’s a bright red with an amber tone to it – normally a colour that I don’t gravitate towards (depending on your skin tone) as it can be difficult to wear. But there’s an oddness to this colour that has been haunting me, and I’m desperate to do some editorial that I can bust it out on. One of the things that I love about NARS colours is they do all the standard “beauty” colours – great reds, beiges, peaches etc – but also incredible shades that are outside the mainstream and just not like anything else. Bravo NARS for consistently pushing the beauty boundaries and including so many lovely different types of colours in your range.

Ooooh now I’m all excited and raring to get back to work and get deep back into the makeup mines. There’s more than just gold to discover!

PS I’m on holidays again next week, but just for a week (such a lady of leisure!) So MM will be back on the 24^th of January.

I’m going to tell you a secret – it’s probably not that exciting unless you’re a proper makeup head, but if you’re on my blog then chances are good you might be – I love a good brown eyeshadow. So much so that I have to have regular meetings with myself and get quite stern in order to cull the tidal wave of brown shadows that seems to wash up into my kit on a regular basis. I sit there, surrounded by eyeshadows and argue with myself. The conversation goes something like this:

“Really? Really Christabel? Another mid-toned brown eyeshadow with sparkle? Do you need it?” To which I reply (in my head of course, not out loud because that’s what crazy people do. Isn’t it?) “But that one is so good as a liner when you layer it with a pencil. I’ll get rid of the others.” Sure enough though, when sparkly brown eyeshadow 2, 3 and 4 roll around, what do I get but more justifications:

“This one is perfect on green eyes as it has the right amount of red”.
“I layer this one for editorial looks”.
“This is good for a quick smoky eye when I don’t have time”
“That one’s in a palette that I like so I can’t get rid of it” And so on and so forth through shades of tan and camel, mid tone and dark, shiny and matte etc etc.

And yet, with all those brown eyeshadows (in the dozens, I’m ashamed to say, although I have my reasons to love all of them) I have a new one that I can’t get rid of either. It’s MyFace EyeTouch Trio eyeshadow in Whole Latte Love. It has a neutral matte cream colour (always handy in your makeup kit), and a great nutmeg-y colour which is perfect as a base shade, and then the piece de resistance which is a shimmering brown/plum taupe. It’s delicious on all eye colours although I’m yet to bust it out on a very dark skin tone. However it’s been in pretty heavy rotation in my makeup bag lately on private clients and beauty shoots.

This little gem has not had to justify my love. And just as an excuse to slide in a bit of vintage Madonna, here’s the clip for … well you know what it is.

myfacecosmetics.com

I haven’t posted about mascara for ages, and I’ll tell you why – I can’t wear it anymore. There, I said it. From being a mascara wearer all my life (or from where life really begins, when makeup-wearing does, at say, fourteen), I have gone to a nude-eyed egg face. I comfort myself with pictures of Tilda Swinton’s bare-eyed alien beauty and tell myself it’s something along those lines, but I don’t know if it is. To compensate, I wear lots of gorgeous blush and have whole-heartedly embraced a red lip when I go out. As Gwyneth Paltrow famously said, “Every woman needs a kick-ass red lipstick”.

Why no more mazzy in the House of Mole? My eyes have rebelled, and they hurt when I wear it. No more contacts, no more eye makeup for me. Which was sad for awhile but now I find it strangely liberating. And of course I still get to layer it on at work, so that does compensate. As a consequence I’ve not been inspired to blog about mascara or much eye makeup lately, but I was cleaning my kit yesterday and thought it was high time I told you about my latest staple mascara – Sublime de Chanel.

This is the one I reach for when you just want perfect lashes. Not major false fringes or uber natural, but perfectly lifted, curled, and darkened. Classy lashes. Left Bank lashes. The types of lashes one might take to the Spanish Steps in Rome, or the Guggenheim in New York. Every girl needs a mascara for those days don’t they? This one delivers as it has dense, inky pigment which doesn’t flake or smear – no crumbling under hot lights or one too many cocktails! So it’s perfect for real life, it just does what you want it to do. And even though I can’t test it on myself anymore, I’ve used it often enough on jobs to keep on pulling it out, time after time. J’Adore.

chanel.com

Tom Ford blew me away when he first came onto the scene at Gucci in the early 1990’s with his uber-luxe interpretations of the 70’s. It was the 70’s through a lens where everyone looked like they were partying it up at Studio 54, and his clothes and the images that accompanied them quickly became iconic.

When I heard he had moved into cosmetics with his collaboration with Estee Lauder a few years ago, I died a little bit and yes I will confess to quite a bit of feverish eBay buying to get my paws on parts of that collection. So when he created his beautiful lipstick line in 2010, the progression from clothes to makeup felt complete. But it wasn’t…yet. Now he has a full line of Tom Ford cosmetics that has just been released in London, and true to form, it is perfection in every sense of the word. The initial images featuring Lara Stone and utilising the not inconsiderable beauty talents of renowned English makeup artist, Charlotte Tilbury were tasters of what’s to come, and having tried the Shade and Illuminate contouring palette, I WILL be making room for more of his products in my kit.

The contour palette is available in two shades, a lighter version and a darker one (important as not everyone is one colour! One person’s shadow is another’s dirty GT racing stripe). I have it in Intensity 1, which is perfect for quite fair complexions. I used it on two shoots last week and fell more in love with it every time. It’s just a great, great colour, as it’s quite tan with a little bit of red in it, so it looks like a shadow but a glamorous shadow, if that makes sense. (Only Tom Ford could make shadows glamorous). If contour colours get too grey they can look muddy and dirty, but this one walks the right side of warm brown to create perfect, sculpted hollows just where you want them. It’s a very light cream so that it’s buildable, and has an almost transparent quality to it, but enough heft to give you cheekbones Scavullo would have loved. It works equally well with a brush or fingers, and blends gorgeously.

The pan size is huge so unless you’re doing serious Mount Rushmore work on your face every day it should last you ages, and it also has a clear white highlighter in the palette, so you can make those cheekbones pop. I love the highlighter too as it’s the same transparent cream and it has a gold effect to it as opposed to a pink pearl base which a lot of highlighters have. The whole effect is shimmery, amber-y gorgeousness. I also love that the packaging is so light – I know lots of bloggers have been finding this annoying as the price tag is high, and presumably they expect expensive makeup to feel like a block of obsidian. Thank you Mr Ford for not making it so! As a makeup artist, I actually have to take out luxe but heavy items (cough, Burberry, cough) as weight is an issue when you take a suitcase full of products with you to work every day.

It’s not cheap. But it’s about the same price point of other premium brands such as Chanel, Dior, Burberry, YSL etc. When you are buying a little slice of heaven you can expect to pay for it, but for me the quality is just so good I will be skimping on other things (like food, utilities, new shoes) to pay for it. This is a range worth getting in hock for, and I rarely say that! (Oh alright, when the new Chanel collection comes in I generally do, but who needs shoes or food when you can have new season designer makeup gorgeousness?)

I literally cannot wait to try the rest of the collection. Kay Montano was emailing me about it from London when she had a private viewing of it at the Dorchester (as you do, obvs) as it was just so amazing. Kay has tried pretty much every product on the planet and has an encyclopaedic knowledge of beauty, so for her to say that is a pretty big call.

tomford.com
Tom Ford Beauty is available now at Selfridges in London, and will be exclusively available at David Jones Sydney and Melbourne from November 13th, 2011.

Helmut Newtown 1977

If you fancy a little bit of this in your life - You need a bit of Revlon Fire.

At the moment I am loving high octane glamour – full on, no holds barred, take it to the edge over the top Alexis Carrington style glamour. The type of woman who oozes diamonds and confidence in equal measure. I love red lips, expensive hair, and a blood-red nail, as epitomized in Helmut Newton’s classic photographs. And I’ve found the nail polish his models would be sporting (if he were still alive, which sadly he is not. Luckily we have his incredible work archives to remember him by).

The polish is Revlon Top Speed in Fire. It’s the perfect glamorous red as it’s just on the orange side of a pure red. It is decadent, luxurious and gives a nod to the late 70’s, early 80’s which I’m all about at the moment.

I used Revlon’s Top Speed nail polishes years ago and I’d totally forgotten how good they are. They dry fast which is great at work as no one wants to sit around waiting for nails to dry when there are pictures to take, and I now use it personally as well as I always seem to be doing my nails whilst I’m running out the door/on a call/packing my kit – the curse of the multi-tasking modern life I suppose.

revlon.com

I never blog about my brushes, (not because I don’t love them, because I do – the same way I love macaroons, vintage Brooke Shields and moon bears, which is to say A LOT) but because blogging about them is like blogging about my own arms – they are so much a part of me that it almost seems silly to talk about them.

However when I come across something new that I haven’t seen before, I feel honour bound to tell you all. This is my new dude in my extensive brush collection – it’s Benefit’s Powder Shadow brush from their new range of brushes. This brush is noteworthy as it’s great for laying down shadow. Sounds boring, I hear you ask? Well a good lay down brush is surprisingly hard to find these days, as you want one that is dense and soft, where the bristles aren’t too long (as then it blends instead of laying down product). MAC do a few, Laura Mercier does a good one and I have a bunch left over from makeup college, but of late I have been very short of a good lay down brush. The Benefit brush is very soft as they’re made of real hair, yet the bristles are just the right length to do the job, and as a double extra added bonus, it’s slanted, so if you wish to buff in a liner it’s perfect for that. It’s also quite genius as a crease brush too, so it can do double-duty in your makeup bag.

The new line of Benefit brushes is reasonably priced (which is nice as brushes can be very expensive), and I’m quite keen to try some more of them on for size. Because, as with vintage Brooke Shields, so it is with makeup brushes – you can never have enough.

Here’s Brooke in Louis Malle’s 1978 classic, Pretty Baby so you can see what I mean – the Benefit Powder Eyeshadow brush you’ll have to get on your own.

www.benefitcosmetics.com