The Makeup Mole

It’s hard to be a global beauty citizen. I’m shooting Autumn/Winter beauty stories, but still on nice days in Sydney I’m also shooting late swimwear and beach stories as the weather has been so rubbish that they’ve all been postponed (forever, it feels like). Then I’m having loads of lovely bags land on my desk full of yummy upcoming products, which can either be Autumn/Winter, or Spring/Summer, depending on each company – and in the Northern Hemisphere it’s freezing and in Sydney it’s (technically) Summer.

Then online, I’m looking at either Spring/Summer this year – or reading up on the beauty from the shows, for Autumn/Winter NEXT year. And thus, my head is spinning! More beauty than you can poke a stick at. What to do? Well all I know is what I love at the moment, so I thought I’d tell you my favourite products that I’m getting lots of lovely use out of, right now – regardless of the season.

60’s eyeliner – Such a staple, and I love a feline flick at the moment. You can have it as thin as a spiderweb or thick and black and channel your inner Audrey Hepburn. My current fave I’m getting lots of use out of is the MyFace Slinky black liquid eyeliner. It’s matte, it’s inky black, easy to use, generous and goopy and not thin and nasty and watery. It makes lining eyes a breeze!

Add lashes – I’m still loving Revlon Grow Luscious mascara, or I also like Clinique Hi-Impact mascara. I am on the market for a new super fat lash mascara though, so if anyone has used one lately they think is fab, please let me know in the comments below.

Soft blush – I’m still favouring an earthy, gorgeous cheek that’s somewhere between a contour and a flush. Estee Lauder Signature Satin Crème Blush in Nude Light is the one I’ve been reaching for.

Luminiser – Because really, who doesn’t like to glow a little bit? My top picks at the moment are Benefit’s That Gal (for fairer complexions) and Jemma Kidd’s Dewy Glow All-Over Radiance Crème in Rosy Glow for a peachy shimmer. Darker skins as always get Becca Topaz – I’ve never found a better shimmer for darker skin tones.

A soft lip – Still with the pinks! Sorry everyone who is waiting to just get over my candy shop fixation right now – it’s still on. I like watercolour lipshines at the moment that look like a glaze and add a sweetness to the makeup. Luckily every company seems to be doing them. Rouge Coco Lipshines, Dior Addict lipsticks and Clinique’s Almost Lipsticks are the texture that I’m loving right now. For gloss I can’t go past Stila’s Lip Glaze in Fantasy, a gorgeous strawberry pink.

Add them all together and it’s a look that’s not summer, it’s not winter, but it’s just gorgeous and elegant and I love it. Take that global beauty!

How fab is this video! Shot by Style.com at the show test for Thakoon with one of my favourite all-time makeup artists, Diane Kendal, and amazing french hairdresser Odile Gilbert, it shows the process that takes place before the runway show. The designer and hair and makeup artists all get together over a period of a few hours (or as long as it takes!) to test out different ideas, until they have the ultimate woman that the designer envisaged. Almost as good as being in New York!

And when I say “Does Paris Vogue” I mean, literally! Fabulous NY-based hairdresser, James Pecis who I had the pleasure of working with a lot in London over the years, has just done the hair for EVERY SINGLE STORY, both main and short fashion in February’s Paris Vogue. Including a body-slamming editorial of Daria Werbowy shot by Inez and Vinoodh it’s definitely one for the archives and I’m as in awe as ever of James’ amazing hair skills. He’s currently in NY kicking off the show circuit with his team, but I for one can’t wait to see where his career is going to go next. What a coup!

See more of James’ work

Regular readers will know I’m a bit of a lip balm hoochie mama, swapping and changing what lip balms I use in my kit and on myself, as there are just so many good ones. One I do keep coming back to that not many people have heard of, is Homeoplasmine ointment. It’s one of those rare Parisian chemist finds (and you all know how much I love those! An hour in a French pharmacy going through all their gorgeous potions is my idea of heaven, I tell you).

I have to say I didn’t find it on my own though – I first discovered it when I was assisting in Paris, namely through makeup artist Alex Box. (Although since then I’ve seen it turn up time and again in makeup artists kits). It’s a homeopathic cream, which was originally created to heal the nasal passages from colds, allergies, and general freezing temperatures, which is why it’s just so fabulous on lips when the temperatures plunge, like in Europe in present – I think we need an emergency air drop of Homeoplasmine to every country in the EU, stat!

So it’s amazing for the upcoming show season where the models are all turning up windchapped, wind blown and jetlagged with their skin peeling off from the cold, and in 45 minutes you have to make them look hydrated, glowing and the picture of health, ready for the runway. I liberally slather on lips and around nostrils where constant sneezing and blowing make the area red and chapped, and let it sit for a few minutes as a healing treatment, before wiping off and doing foundation.

Homeoplasmine deals with flaky skin and provides moisture, protection and an undisclosed French homeopathic concoction (it sounds good, doesn’t it?) to heal and soften lips, ready to be made up in the colours of the season. It also has a matte finish to it which is a nice alternative to the shiny finish of Lanolips, Vaseline or Paw Paw ointment. So I like to carry both in my kit – it’s also fantastic if you’re doing men’s grooming (for all those makeup artists out there). It’s inexpensive, and a tube should last you, oooh roughly forever.

If you’re not planning to hit a Parisian pharmacy soon, I found a website that stocks it.

International celebrity makeup artist Kay Montano recently shot this gorgeous British ELLE cover of Alexa Chung – who couldn’t be more if an It girl if she tried, honestly. When I saw it I had to know what that gorgeous lipstick colour she’s sporting is. Kay told me it’s Chanel’s Rouge Allure in Insolente, which I’m sure you all know has rapidly been added to my ever-growing list of Must-Have Pinks. It’s turning into quite a long list now, as yes, you guessed it – I’m still obsessed.

Here’s a video from behind-the-scenes on the ELLE shoot:

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.