Category: cosmetics

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.

The triumph of marketing over all else

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Here are a couple of products that represent the triumph of marketing over anything else:


Stila Smoky Eyes Palette

This $40 compact embeds a one-minute recording explaining how to create the smoky eye look – with named Stila brushes. In other words, you’re paying $40 for advertising, the same reason I find logo tees so stupid.


Cargo Daily Gloss

Cargo Daily Gloss is an example of making money from a product that had previously been given away free – Mary Kay and Merle Norman provided blister packs as a hygeinic means for customers to test lip colors. Similarly, CARGO’s ColorCards™, upon which eyeshadow color has been embossed, is yet another means of commercializing what had been given away for free.

Introducing 29 Cosmetics

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Winter Collection from 29 Cosmetics

I spoke by phone with Lydia Mondavi of 29 Cosmetics while she was on the floor of Neiman Marcus in San Francisco for the promotional launch of 29 Cosmetics, her new color line formulated with grape seed extract (“29” refers to Route 29 in Napa Valley, the premier wine country in the U.S.). The line only debuted at Neiman Marcus on February 16.

Lydia is originally from Atlanta and is a fifth-generation Atlantan. She developed skin care lines for spas all around the world. The spas were interested in color cosmetics with benefits for the skin.

Lydia met Robert Mondavi, a scion of the Mondavi wine-making family, through a grade school friend who is now a chef in Napa. Lydia and Robert married soon after, and now have been married for five years.

Robert is the vintner for both Spellbound and Medusa wineries. While Spellbound specializes in wines at $15 a bottle (the Petite Sirah is their flagship brand, the first of its kind in Napa Valley), Medusa is a boutique label with wines at $38 a bottle.

All products in the 29 Cosmetics color line are formulated with grape seed extract. Grape seed extract is a powerful anti-oxidant, and as Lydia noted, is a by-product of the wine-making process.

29 Cosmetics will expand into skin care. This raised the inevitable question about competition with Caudalie, the skin care line in which the products are formulated with grape extract. Lydia said that the people who run Caudalie are dear friends, and 29 Cosmetics’ skin care products would not compete directly with Caudalie’s skin care range.

Check out the sophisticated shades of 29 Cosmetics at its website www.29cosmetics.com. Names for the product colors and palettes were inspired by wine and areas in and around Napa Valley. Special products include lip treatments (see photo above) and Napa Mist. All products are formulated, manufactured and packaged in Milan, Italy.

You may buy 29 Cosmetics on its web site, or at 29 Color on Neiman Marcus’s web site, beginning February 20. 29 Cosmetics is exclusive to Neiman Marcus, and will be rolled out in NM stores in LA, Chicago, Palm Springs, Atlanta, and Las Vegas this spring. It might eventually come to Washington, DC (where I live!) and King of Prussia, PA.

Australian Beauty

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After our articles on Asian beauty and Canadian Beauty, here’s an article from The Age (Australia) about Australian niche beauty brands, including Aesop, Bloom, Natio, Mecca Cosmetica, Li’Tya, Mor, Glamourflage, and Red Tea Natural Skin Therapy:

Lifting the lidThere’s a lot more to make-up than meets the eye, writes Melinda Houston.

The article also mentions that Poppy King, who had the eponymous lip color line Poppy and later joined Prescriptives, has a new venture Lipstick Queen.

And let’s not forget about Becca, Sue Devitt Studio, and Di Kennedy Studio Colour! Are there any that I missed?

Revlon to discontinue Vital Radiance brand

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After my two previous articles that dealt with Vital Radiance (Update on mass-market brands, Vital Radiance UPDATED 2006-02-22), it was only right to complete the story and inform readers that Revlon has faced the inevitable and is going to discontinue the Vital Radiance line. Poor sales have lead major retailers to drastically cut back on the number of stores selling the brand.

I provided some possible explanations on why Vital Radiance failed in my article Update on mass-market brands. For more about Revlon and its dropping Vital Radiance as part of its restructuring plan, read Revlon cuts 250 jobs, dumps cosmetics line in restructuring plan.

Susan McGraw for Vital Radiance

I’m going to miss Vital Radiance model Susan McGraw, however. She’s cute, and I love her salt’n’pepper hair.

$160.00 for Compact Foundation????

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This has got to be the priciest makeup I have ever seen: it’s even pricier than Shiseido’s luxe Cle de Peau makeup line. This is from the signature line of Serge Lutens, the makeup artist who had previously created the dramatic looks for Shiseido’s print advertising and displays. Serge Lutens makeup is available from Barneys.

Would you pay $160.00 for foundation??? Yes, you read that correctly: one hundred sixty dollars. What is the price you are willing to spend on makeup?

2006-09-21 UPDATE: apparently, Serge Lutens has nothing on H. Couture Beauty, which retails its mascara for $589.00 and its lipstick for $150.00 – found via The Weekend Read, from Elke von Freudenberg’s The Beauty Newsletter. The cheek to call this “H. Couture Beauty”!

ColorBar: for our readers in India

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After the U.S. and Canada, the next highest percentage of our readers come from India. A number of our Indian readers have inquired about ColorBar Cosmetics from the K.K. Modi Group. ColorBar is a relatively late entrant into the increasingly crowded cosmetics market in India and seeks to compete with Chambor, Lakme, and overseas brands such as Revlon and L’Oreal.

ColorBar has launched its own website at www.colorbarworld.com. ColorBar has also retained a creative company to study the brand’s performance in the Indian market (see agencyfaqs! > news & features > ColorBar Cosmetics moves to Law & Kenneth).

Currently, ColorBar is available only in select northern states in India. However, managing director Samir Modi has announced that ColorBar will expand into western India.

Special offers on cosmetics

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IsaDora Lip Treat Color
IsaDora Lip Treat Color

I have an assortment of IsaDora cosmetics to give away:

  • Bronzing Powder in Dark Tan
  • Eye Shadow Quartet in Gold
  • Light & Shade Eye Shadow in Lime Rose
  • 2 Brush-on Gloss (one in Glacier, the other in Sorbet)
  • 2 Lip Treat Color (one in Apple Blossom, the other in Sheer Apricot)
  • 2 Express Star Gloss (one in Reflecting Oyster, the other in Reflecting Peach)
  • 2 Sun Protecting Pearly Gloss (one in Pearly Nougat, the other in Bubble Gum)

Please submit your name and postal address to me at thestylepage@yahoo.com, and I will mail the products to you. U.S. and Canadian residents only. Again, I request that you write a review of products for posting on this blog.

Be assured that The Style Page will not share your address with anyone and will not subscribe you to my lists or blog.

Bonne Bell VitaGloss2O® Moisture Stick

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For many girls, Bonne Bell is their first cosmetic. Years ago, my friend invited me to a makeup application from Bonne Bell at Stix Baer & Fuller, a department store in St. Louis that was later bought out by Dillard’s. I can still remember how the salesgirl applied a triangle of dots of cheek tint on my cheekbone (just below the temples) and stroked it on my cheeks. As it happened, I didn’t wear makeup during my teens (despite my mother’s urging for me to wear lipcolor), as I thought that makeup would detract from the intellectual, serious side (!) that I was so desparately trying to cultivate. I didn’t start wearing makeup seriously until I was 27, and clearly had a lot of catch-up to do. You can be sure that I wasn’t looking at Bonne Bell at that time.

I’m like a kid, however, when it comes to lip balm. I like fruity flavors (in lip balm, that is) and Bonne Bell’s new VitaGloss2O Flavored Moisture Stick Lip Gloss fits the bill nicely. This is a clear, twist-up stick, much like Chapstick: remove the black cap and twist the stick up at the other end. While Bonne Bell compares it to sponge-on liquid gloss, I like this better. It also is formulated with Vitamin E, which is great as an emollient. And of course, it comes in the fruity flavors that girls (and the kid inside grown women) like: watermelon, strawberry, raspberry, mango, pineapple, and kiwi.

BTW There was a real Bonne Bell. She died in November 2005, at the age of 82.