Category: Bobbi Brown

Nordstrom Holiday 2008 Cosmetics Trend Show

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Last Saturday, I attended the Holiday 2008 Cosmetics Trend Show at Nordstrom Tysons Corner outside of Washington, DC. The show began at 8 am. The first person arrived at quarter after 6.

The event was like a pep rally, and Nordstrom Midwest/Capital Beauty Director Julianne De’Chaump was head cheerleader. The show had three scenes, in which representatives from various cosmetics companies showed their latest products. While each of the scenes focused on makeup looks, attention was also given to skin care, bath & body, fragrance, nails, and hair products.

Scene One: Bright Metallic Textures was best exemplified by Bobbi Brown’s Shimmer Brick from her Copper Diamond holiday collection:


Bobbi Brown ‘Copper Diamond’ Shimmer Brick Compact

This compact features shimmering shades of candlelight, gold, copper, beige and sand that would be great for highlighting the browbone, inner corner of the eyes, and top of the cheekbone.

Scene Two: Winter Berry Lips was exemplified by lip colors from MAC’s Red She Said collection:


MAC Red She Said Collection

Scene Three: Black, Smoky Eyes was best exemplified by Laura Mercier’s Eye Colour Quad in Tuxedo:


Laura Mercier Eye Colour Quad in Tuxedo

This eye shadow quad features both shimmer and matte shades of black and white, just like its namesake. It’s from Laura Mercier’s Black Tie Collection.

Actually, all these trends are perennials for the winter holiday season.

Bobbi Brown Custom Palette

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Bobbi Brown Custom Palette

It’s been a long time since I looked at Bobbi Brown. I’m not sure why: I favor brands like Laura Mercier that project an image of making women look beautiful. Certainly Bobbi Brown qualifies.

I visited the Bobbi Brown counter at the nearby Nordstrom and was impressed by the variety of eyeshadow and blusher shades available for its Custom Palettes. I created my own palette, which consisted of eyeshadow in Hot Stone (medium ashy brown), Wheat (medium ash beige), and Black Plum and blusher in Brown Berry. Hot Stone is a recent addition to the Bobbi Brown collection of eyeshadow. After a brow stylist recommended ashen shades for my eyebrows, I’ve been using Hot Stone on my eyebrow, along with the darker Grey Brown eyeshadow from il-Makiage.

I’m very happy with the palette. I use Wheat as an all-over eye shade, Hot Stone on the lid, and Black Plum in the crease and outer corner, which I complement with a deep plum eyeliner. BTW a plummy smoky eye more sensuous than a smoky eye in traditional neutrals such as gray or brown.

I have two complaints. First, the individual shades come in their own fancy packaging: I’d much rather pay for individual pans. Secondly, the glossy black finish of the palette really shows up fingerprints.

Now the Bobbi Brown site (www.bobbibrown.com) has an application in which you can build your Custom Palette online.

Friday roundup – March 7, 2008

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It’s Friday, and time for the Friday roundup, for the fourth week running! The Friday roundup highlights blog articles written by Friends of The Style Page in the past week.

SugarShock loves the Pop Beauty Eye Class in Brown Eyes. She writes, “While the shadows looked kind of sparkly in the kit, when you apply them they actually have a nice iridescence that’s not too glimmery, but just right.”

Pop Beauty Eye Class in Brown Eyes

Mischo Beauty announces the debut of her Facebook page.

Scandalous Beauty features Whitney and Bobbi!! No, not Bobby Brown, Whitney Houston’s ex-husband. Rather, Bobbi Brown. Scandalous Beauty recommends the new Bobbi Brown Nudes Collection to recreate Whitney’s makeup (but not that Carol Brady hairstyle):


Whitney Houston

Whitney Houston had been on a downhill slide since she married Bobby Brown in 1992. I was routing for her comeback when she filed for divorce in 2006.

It should be evident to regular readers of this blog that I share i♥make-up’s love of Indian beauty. I’m not Indian, but my husband is. In Recreating the Sixties’ Look, i♥make-up discusses how to recreate the dramatic winged eyeliner look popularized by Indian actress Sharmila Tagore:


Sharmila Tagore

TV presenter (and ex-wife of Salman Rushdie) Padma Lakshmi recalled that she spent hours trying to recreate Sharmila Tagore’s look.

The late Bengali film director Satyajit Ray discovered Sharmila Tagore when she was just a teenager. He cast her as Apu’s bride in the third and last film of his Apu trilogy that won international acclaim and brought attention to Indian cinema. Ray must have been prescient about his actresses: similarly, he discovered Aparna Sen and Jaya Bachchan nee Bhaduri, both of whom had gone onto major careers in Indian cinema, when they were mere teenagers. Non-Indians might remember Sharmila Tagore as Meena’s mother in Mississipi Masala, about the unlikely romance between Meena, a young Indian woman (played by Sarita Choudhury) and an African-American man (played by Denzel Washington).

Lip tips

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After posting Great drugstore finds, I realized that I needed to revise my advice on lips on The Style Page website.

Concerning lipliner that it is not obvious, I had written:

  • Another solution is to line the lips using a lip brush with the color you intend to apply: this is especially useful for applying highly pigmented matte lipsticks. [This advice originally came from Bobbi Brown]

  • ArtDeco, a cosmetics company from Germany, offers a Color & Contour Lip Duo, which features lipstick at one end and contour at the other end for lining the tips. This is a highly pigmented lip color, so blending is still necessary.

Now I think that both techniques result in an overly obvious line, which is why I now prefer clear lipliners or lipliners that perfectly match the color of one’s lips (which is why MAC’s Lip Pencil in Spice has been so popular).

I’ve since discovered that companies other than Revlon and Paula’s Choice offer clear lipliners, but at a higher price: DuWop Reverse Lip Liner and CARGO The Reverse Lipliner.

Living Beauty by Bobbi Brown

as seen in the March 15, 2007 edition of USA Today.

Lastly, the March issue of InStyle featured an excerpt from Bobbi Brown’s latest book Living Beauty. Bobbi Brown wrote that the most flattering lip color is two shades darker than the natural color of your lips. I can vouch for her advice, after a lot of experimentation (and a lot of money spent!). One also has to take her complexion, hair color, and clothes in account when selecting lip color.

I’m light to medium in complexion, with dark brown hair and brown eyes. While I had been classified as a “Winter” (using the seasonal color typing that was so popular in the 80s), I tend to favor rich warm colors over cool colors. Some of my favorite lipsticks are Bourbon from last year’s limited edition Catherine Deneuve color collection from MAC and Bésame’s Enchanting Lipstick in Chocolate Kiss, particularly when wearing brown. In fact, I favor lip colors that are “ambiguous,” that is, not too cool, not too warm.

Another tip is to apply lip color just slightly inside your mouth (I would name the source of this tip if I could recall it) so that there won’t be any apparent demarcation lines; also, this application suggests fuller lips.