Beyonce and the "Roboho" costume

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I stayed up past midnight last night listening to the shout-out between the Rev. Al Sharpton and Harvey Levin of the TMZ.com celebrity gossip site on Fox News concerning TMZ’s describing the costume that Beyonce wore at the BET 2007 Fashion Awards show last month as “Roboho.” The Rev. Al thought that the term was demeaning and racist; Harvey Levin said it was all in good fun.

What was missed in this whole shout-out was the similarity of Beyonce’s costume to that of the female robot in the 1927 film classic Metropolis.



Madonna riffed on Metropolis for her video Respect Yourself.

Design*Sponge: r.i.p jane

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The premiere issue of Jane (L) and the current issue

The Style Page has reported on the demise of CARGO (Lucky for men) and SHOP Etc. (Lucky rip-off) magazines. Now comes news via Design*Sponge that Jane magazine will cease publication with its August 2007 issue.

The New York Times also reported on the demise of Jane in its article A Women’s Magazine That Tried to Be Otherwise. The authors described Jane as the grown-up version of Sassy, the groundbreaking, but now defunct, teen magazine. Detroit-based conservative columnist Debbie Schlussel has her own take on Jane’s demise: So sad, too bad …

I find the way that titles such as Glamour, Marie Claire, Vogue, and O conflate articles on fashion and beauty with articles on social and political issues jarring. Moreover, these magazines don’t reflect my views on social and political issues. I also dislike the way that magazines geared toward women in their 20s and 30s are obsessed with sex. No wonder I prefer magazines such as Lucky and InStyle, which don’t contain such articles.

A fabulous resource on home design too good to keep to myself

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I was watching Sheila Bridges: Designer Living on the Fine Living TV Network yesterday, which had a feature on Pintura Studio, a design firm that designs and hand cuts stencils that are then used to hand print fabric and wallpaper. As Pintura Studio uses a lot of (Asian) Indian motifs, and I love these motifs (see my post on Block-printed textiles), I wanted to find Pintura Studio’s web address. I Google’d on Pintura Studio, and found this resource: HomePortfolio.

HomePortfolio - Home design & home design products

Although I had just discovered HomePortfolio, many others had discovered it before: there are nearly 1200 saves of its home page in My Web from Yahoo!

HomePortfolio is a fabulous resource for everything to decorate your home. It presents offerings from many vendors and enables you to create your own online portfolio of items for the home. That’s why I’m making special notice of this site through The Style Page blog.

Links for Pintura Studio and HomePortfolio may be found on My Web (tag: home).

PS Despite recent pictures of Sheila Bridges with a bald head, I am assured that she is in good health.

Good and bad advice from Allure

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Here are Beauty tips of the month from Allure:

  1. For a little drama, try not washing your mascara and eyeliner off completely—it will be smudgy and sexy the next day, says Charlotte Tilbury.
  2. Try a lipstain instead of gloss—the look is more inviting, say makeup artists. Dab color on the middle of lips, blending outward. It should look as if you’ve polished off a Popsicle.
  3. Work a new version of smoky eyes with bronze colored shadow. Line eyes with a soft chocolate pencil and sweep eye shadow over the lids and a little underneath, blending so there are no hard lines.

Regarding the first tip, going to bed without removing your makeup is a no-no! It will not be sexy in the morning!

Facial cleanser is usually not enough to remove eye makeup, so be sure to use an eye makeup remover (I prefer oil-freeicon or two-phaseicon liquid eye makeup removers that don’t leave an oily residue) and pat clean with a cotton ball or pad. Eye makeup removers formulated with mineral oil causes smearing. Use a second cotton ball or pad to make sure all eye makeup has been removed.

I won’t comment on the second tip – I tried to take advantage of Allure’s giveaway for Laura Mercier‘s Mulberry Lip Stain, but the server for her web site was probably overwhelmed with visitors taking advantage of the same offer.


Isadora Eye Shadow Quartet in Antique Gold

However, the third tip is great – I like the Isadora Eye Shadow Quartet in Antique Gold (I use the darkest shade as a liner), but the Eye Shadow Quartet in Bronzing Plum also looks tempting.

They’re Baaaaaaaaaaack!

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In my post Intentional Irony, I described Spice Girls as “one phenomenon of the 1990s that many would like to forget.” Lo and behold, Spice Girls are reuniting for a world tour. The Royal Observatory at Greenwich, which is the referent for zero longitude and time around the world (I won’t get into the technical details), was cleverly chosen as the site to announce their world tour.


L to R: Victoria “Posh” Beckham, Melanie “Sporty” Chisholm, Geri “Ginger” Halliwell, Emma “Baby” Bunton, and Melanie “Scary” Brown announce the Spice Girls’ 2007 reunion tour.

I hate the push-up bustiers that Posh and Scary are wearing: it looks like their boobs will spill out any moment (especially Posh). That’s not sexy, it’s tacky. Baby Spice (who is pregnant) is still cute, and Sporty looks great, better than ever. Geri Halliwell’s frock won’t win her any points with fashion cogniscenti, but I find her tousled locks and dress a refreshing change for this former topless model whose Union Jack costume made her look like some UK version of Wonder Woman.


Geri “Ginger Spice” Halliwell in 1997: UK Wonder Woman?

Given the media overkill surrounding the 10th anniversary of Princess Diana’s death, perhaps Spice Girls’ time has come around once again: after all, their single “Spice Up Your Life” displaced Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind” from no 1 on the UK pop charts two months after Diana was killed.

Miracle cream

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Miracle cream – LMX5™

The hair on my chin and jaw became unmanageable, so it was time for me to look beyond tweezing and snipping hairs with a manicure scissors. A dermatologist’s office tried to sell me on a package of laser treatments, but I balked at the price. Moreover, I’ve read that the effectiveness of laser hair removal depends on the contrast between the hair and the skin. As many of my hairs were light in color, I decided that I was not a good candidate for laser hair removal and went back to electolysis.

Now, I am a baby when it comes to electrolysis. My eyes tear up and I wince and twitch like crazy. This time, however, I quietly lied on the table while the electrologist deftly removed hairs. It didn’t hurt even when she removed hairs near the lips, where there are a lot of nerve endings. The difference? LMX5™ numbing cream, a topical anesthetic.

LMX5™ doesn’t require a prescription, but I had to special order it through CVS. drugstore.com doesn’t even carry it – it carries only the 4%, which, according to what my electrologist heard from her other clients is not as effective as LMX5™. However, Amazon.com does carry LMX5™.

Don’t be turned off by the fact that LMX5™ is marketed as an anorectal cream. After all, if beauty contestants can use Preparation H to treat puffy eyes, why can’t you use LMX5™? It’s also supposed to be good for undergoing treatments such as Botox.


Liv Tyler, as featured on the cover of the July 2007 issue of Allure

NEW The July 2007 issue of Allure (which features Liv Tyler on the cover) also recommends numbing creme when doing a bikini wax.

Is Beyonce’s look really that bad?

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OK, this is certainly not Beyonce’s best picture and might not be her best look, but is it really the fashion disaster that Cynthia Nellis of fashion.about.coom says that it is?

Ms. Nellis writes:

What’s missing in Beyonce’s outfit goes way beyond a pair of pants or a skirt (although either would’ve helped): Beyonce is missing dignity. She owes it to her fabulous self to skip the trends — like these almost-invisible teensy shorts — that don’t flatter her and stick with what does (which is pretty much just about everything else).

A slightly longer boy short might be better, but who needs thigh coverage with legs like these?

My criticism? The bright pink lipstick. Mally Roncal (her longtime makeup artist) or the beauty professionals at L’Oreal (for which Beyonce is a spokesperson) were not paying attention here.

Dr. Baumann’s The Skin Type Solution

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Here comes dermatologist Leslie Baumann, MD, with her own system for determining skin type: The Skin Type Solution. According to the publisher’s website

Four dominant factors determine your Skin Type. These factors are: oily vs. dry, sensitive vs. resistant, pigmented vs. non-pigmented, and wrinkled vs. tight.

Thus, there are 16 different skin types, according to Dr. Baumann, each with its 4-letter abbreviation. With these 16 skin type combinations, Dr. Baumann’s system is less like than the seasonal color typing popularized by Carole Jackson (author of Color Me Beautiful and Color Me Beautiful Makeup Book) in the 1980s and more like the 4-dimension Myers-Briggs Type Indicator!

Has anyone tried Dr. Baumann’s system? Is it merely a gimmick or does it really help you care for your skin? Dr. Baumann has an online skin care store BaumannStore.com, which features both luxury and mass-market brands for all the 16 skin types. She has not (at least not yet!) rolled out her own skin care line. More information about her book The Skin Type Solution is found at www.skintypesolution.com (an alias for the publisher’s web pages on her book.

The Naomi Diaries

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OK, so Naomi Campbell has an anger management problem and might not be a very nice person, but she’s so amazing looking and she’s the only one of the so-called Trinity of 90s supermodels (the other two being Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington) who still actively works the runway.

The Naomi Diaries is her first person account of her week in community service, after she was found guilty in January for throwing a mobile phone at her housekeeper. Read what she ate at her midday meals and what she did after hours, when she rejoined all her partying friends. The full story is found in the June 2007 issue of W magazine.

Want more Naomi? Visit her official web site and browse her photo galleries to see Naomi in all her lithesome, feline glory (Advisory: nudity, sexual situations).

Finding those hard-to-find inexpensive cosmetics

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Every now and then, I get inquiries about specific Love My Lips products. Unfortunately, finding these products is catch-as-catch-can. I don’t know of any store that carries a complete line of Love My Lips products. Moreover, Bari Cosmetics, which distributes Love My Lips, has not been responsive to my inquiries. To those people looking for Love My Lips products, I suggest prowling dollar and close-out stores, including, but not limited to, the big chains such as Dollar Tree, Dollar General, and Big Lots!

Jordana is another much sought-after brand of inexpensive cosmetics, particularly for their eyeliner pencils. Walgreen’s drugstores carry Jordana’s eyeliner and lip liner pencils, and you can find a broader range of Jordana cosmetics at dollar stores, although I haven’t seen Jordana at the big chain stores. Alas, I can no longer find Jordana’s eyeliner in Bittersweet – it was the perfect black-brown eyeliner that I favor. Now, however, you can shop for Jordana online at BestBeautyOnline.com.


My web stats indicate a number of queries on L’Oreal HIP foundation. It has been harder to find this in stores. My contact at L’Oreal tells me that several retailers are no longer carrying L’Oreal HIP Flawless Liquid Makeup, in order to make room for other L’Oreal HIP products; however, Rite-Aid and Wal-Mart are still carrying L’Oreal HIP Flawless Liquid Makeup. Rite-Aid partners with drugstore.com for online shopping.

My web stats also show a few queries on Boots No 7 products at Canada’s Shoppers Drug Mart. While Boots No 7 and Botanicals may be found at select CVS stores and many Target stores in the U.S., only four Shoppers Drug Mart stores in Canada carry Boots cosmetics: for more information, visit Shoppers Drug Mart.