Sephora's Lipstick of the Year: Dolce Vita by Nars

Sephora's Best Lipstick Winner

Out of more than 100,000 votes in Sephora's poll, the winner for best lipstick is Nars' Dolce Vita. Since you like lipstick, and so does Fellini, it all makes perfect sense.
This versatile, semi-matte shade has wowed thousands of women. Just beware of flatterers.



Sephora's Best Blush Winner

Nars also took home the category for best blush in Orgasm. It's a beautiful shade that compliments most skintones.

As a backup, I also highly recommend Lune d'Or blush by Bourjois, or #35 if you like to play with numbers. Just don't give out your digits too soon, unless it's for a manicure.

XO,
Charlotte





Buy it: Nars La Dolce Vita lipstick ($23), Nars Blush in Orgasm ($25), available at Sephora.

Fiberwig Mascara & Bourjois Lipstick: Rock It This Weekend

Weekends are for golden bangles and loud makeup. Put them together, and light the dancefloor on fire.

What you need:

1) Flutter: Fiberwig Mascara ($22, Sephora), the best-selling mascara in Japan.

2) Blaze: Bourjois Rouge Best Red in #15 ($14, Sephora). Test-drove #15 and it definitely goes vroom. This is what it looks like....


3) Jingle: With bangles ($24, UrbanOutfitters.com).

Solvents-"R"-Us

Heads up: I am sooooo sleepy, so don't expect any sense from this. Just letting you know what's up with me and makeup these days.

Tonight I had a chance to commence Operation Pour Crud on My Eyeshadow and See if it Turns in to Eyeliner, with mixed results. Water is crap. Vaseline and "Lacrilube," which is an ointment for very dry eyes, were disappointing, failing to pick up enough color or produce a sufficently fine line. The winner in this round? Saline solution. Not bad in a pinch, though I don't know how long it will stay on. But don't go anywhere, I have high hopes for glycerin, and I may actually manage to haul ass to the drugstore this week.

I AM SUCH A FUCKING DORK.

Meanwhile, for things I don't trust myself to replicate in the lab, I still head to Sephora. Which is where I went with my friend K yesterday. (Her real initial, I keep my makeup and my Kafka references separate. Mostly. Sometimes. For now.) We were on a misguided mission to obtain Dior Icepearl, which I previously HAD AND LOST, because I am useless. Since I'd acquired it early on, I did not realize the frenzy that it inspired (totally frenzy-worthy, btw), and was not prepared to have the salesgirl look at me like I was a total loon when I asked her if they had it. Apparently these days you have to trade your hymen on eBay for some chick to let you come over and borrow hers for a few minutes and even that's a deal, but I'm all the fuck out of hymens. Anyway, the salesgirl was playing fast and loose with the creative interpretations of my desires, because she directed me to Guerlain's Divinora Fairy Mascara. I am a Guerlain fan, actually, though they do tend to the slightly goofy, but this, this was just club kid sparkles, a posher version of my precious Bourjois Wet Look Top Coat. Anyway, my basic message here is DON'T LET ANYONE TELL YOU SPARKLY MASCARA IS DIOR ICEPEARL BECAUSE THAT'S BLASPHEMY. KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE PRIZE.

(They actually had a sample Icepearl wand out. I aaaaalmost thought about maaaaybe grovelling for it, but I've got enough of my own bacteria.)

I Make You The Science!

Observation: Pencil eyeliner is tricky and harsh and not friendly to my delicate baby eyelids. Dry-to-wet eyeshadow like that by Bourjois is not bad for eyeliner purposes, but as shadow, tends to be a little heavy. Eyeliner-making goop that transforms normal eyeshadow in to liquid liner is great, but suspiciously expensive for what looks like a little bottle of corn syrup.

Hypothesis: That this eyeliner-making goop is not really all that special, and is probably something I have lying around my house already.

Prediction: That I can duplicate the eyeshadow-to-eyeliner results of a Paula Dorf Transformer with more common (and cheaper) solvents. Baby oil? Glycerin? Vaseline? Aloe vera gel? Maybe even actual corn syrup? I don't think I want to really put corn syrup on my eyes, though. Maybe I'll just test that one on my hand.

Stay tuned for updates on the testing! I anticipate very very exciting results.

It is the Final Number. Ice Sorcerers come to Collect.

BONUS! Today's baffling selection from the Ice Source website. The Collector? The Final Number? I am no stranger to bad translations, and am not one to mock people for making them, not even people who are selling obscenely expensive face cream which I want anyway, but I don't know that this is as simple as a bad translation. I genuinely have no idea what this "collector" is or does, or what the "final number" is, and would welcome any theories you may have. It's very ominous sounding, no?

Elongates eyelashes and shortens leg hair!

You know, I was wondering if spending all this time reading blogs and eating crackers was making me stupider, and I think I have definitive external evidence that it is. (See, I need the external evidence because my mind is too cracker-logged to evaluate itself. I am like, at the level of a smart-end-of-average pig, probably.) Anyway. I got a new mascara, and it's NOT FLEXTENCILS. It is this new Lancome mascara, L'Extreme, and it is supposed to have special elongating worker-bunnies and patented eyelashening fiber bits and I'm sorry, but this is crap. It is sticky and dumb and so not eyelashening. And I spent money on it because my stupid French class is near stupid Bloomingdales and what, am I supposed to NOT go in? And then I want the shiny ladies at the makeup counter to touch my face, because I love having my face touched, especially by shiny ladies, and then I feel bad not buying at least the mascara from the shiny face-touching lady although they probably get locked in the basement at night and the money I paid goes to the parent company which probably uses it to develop more efficient baby-crushing-machines and I am being HAD, but it keeps happening. Average-to-smart pig, I'm telling you. Ha, know what, I would be fucked if I were an average-to-smart pig, because word on the street is that Lancome's parent company, L'oreal, is not exactly ahead of the let's-not-test-on-animals curve.

Of course, I don't know how up to date this info is or anything, and my views on animal rights are nuanced (underdeveloped). Still, in honor of a) the fact that this new mascara is very expensively not doing anything for me and b) my love for my dog, here are some good (and tested-on-Violet) mascaras made by companies that don't test on animals.*

Almay One-Coat Lengthening Mascara: Nice and natural and drugstore-cheap, I think this is what I am going to buy when my current stock runs out. Almay is owned by Revlon, and I don't know what their practices are, but the Almay branch is a-ok.

Chanel Extracils: Chanel, of course, does not fuck around. Still, this is not as dark as I wish it were. Chanel also owns Bourjois, which makes the SPARKTOCKULAR Coup De Theatre (pardon the lack of accent marks, I'll get it figured out) and very fun top-coats, including this one. Multiple steps of mascara application are not what I want to deal with in the AM, though, so these do not make good everyday products for me.

Clinique High Impact Mascara: Actually dark enough for me, though not as lengthening as I wish it were. Nothing has been yet, so I guess that's not really points off. (Clinique, and a whole lot of other companies, including Perscriptives and MAC, I think, are all owned by Estee Lauder, and are all ok animal-wise. Of course, they may have all sorts of other issues. Or not! Who knows! But we're talking about animals today.)

There are others, but I don't really care to reveal how wantonly I purchase (even animal-friendly) mascara, so that will have to do.

*NB, my research is how you say, MINIMAL, so if buying products not tested on animals is really important to you, double check these. Also, I am sure there are plenty of animal-friendly companies that make lovely mascaras that I have never tried. Not so sure, actually. Still. These are not those.