Category Archives: beauty products

Chanel Nail Gloss: Get On My Hands

  , ,
Comments Off on Chanel Nail Gloss: Get On My Hands

chanel le rouge collection no1

After many, many years of producing the most brilliant nail polish shades but in a sub-par, easy-chip formula, Chanel have completely revamped their nail offering and it’s good. It’s really good. The new longwear polishes are just that – longwear, with the nude shade lasting a full week on my tin-opening, dried-weetabix-scraping, car-tinkering hands.

I’m going to come back to the longwear polishes in another post (this website might be a bit Chanel-heavy for a week or so, I’ve done a bit of a blitz through their new collection) but I couldn’t hesitate when it came to today’s subject: Le Vernis Nail Gloss. It’s very rare that I try a product and then run straight to my laptop to write about it – especially a nail varnish – but that is precisely what’s happened today. The Nail Gloss from Chanel is so good that if you have even a modicum of interest in your hands, you need to paint this on them.

In the bottle the gloss looks faintly disappointing – a transparent varnish with a reddish tint. The sort of thing you’d expect would stain your nails a wishy-washy pink, as though you’d coloured them in with a felt-tip pen. Or the kind of expensive extra step that might add a reddish sheen over your base colour, a luxury top-coat for those with money to burn. No, friends, no: wishy-washy this is not. Surprisingly, it’s full of pigment and one coat leaves your nails the sort of bright, punchy, fiery red that is almost a rule when it comes to summer beauty.

chanel nail gloss review

But there is a hint of sheerness there, a bit of transparency – it’s like painting your nails with a very rich and glossy form of strawberry jelly. It has the visual bounciness of a gel, with a hi-shine finish that looks chic and pulled-together, but the punchy colour of a traditionally opaque polish. I can’t get enough of it.

I’m hoping that the lasting-power is good – it doesn’t mention “longwear” on the box, so I’m not going to have the highest expectations in terms of longevity, but then I’d happily repaint with this every other day. Application was a breeze. And I keep staring at my fingers and thinking about holidays, which is never a bad thing.

Continue reading →

5 Reasons Big Easy is Your New Best Friend

  , ,
Comments Off on 5 Reasons Big Easy is Your New Best Friend

Warm weather is upon us and summer is (literally) just around the corner! You can find us by the pool, at the park or staying cool inside at the movie theaters. And, of course, you know you won’t catch us without a flawless face. But let’s discuss this. We do not want to be wearing a full face a makeup all day, especially in the summertime. Solution? Your new summer BFF: big easy.

bigeasy_model2

Here are 5 reasons why it’s never leaving our side this season:

#1: First & foremost, we’re all about protecting our skin. Big easy provides maximum coverage with its broad spectrum SPF 35 to prevent aging & more. Seriously, though, if there’s one thing that you need to remember when you’re in the sun—it’s definitely to protect your skin! Bonus points for moisturizing your face before applying big easy to keep your skin fresh all day.

#2: It balances moisture & controls oil. What does this mean? Once you’ve applied, throughout the day it’s going to do a beauty balancing act between keeping your skin moisturized with botanical extracts and controlling slippery oil. This is especially important during the hot, hot heat of summer.

#3: Big easy soothes & comforts the skin to help fight free radicals. Are you asking yourself what free radicals are? Samesies! 🙂 Think of free radicals like bacteria. As we go throughout our days, we’re exposed to so many different things: cute boys, new makeup & unfortunately lots of bacteria. Big easy creates a protection layer that fights against these free radicals, protecting your skin. Yes, please!

bigeasy_product

#4: It self-adjusts to your skin. Much like the always-talked-about BB creams, big easy adjusts to your skin tone, providing medium natural coverage that evens out your skin tone and conceals imperfections.

#5: Lightweight with medium coverage sounds like the perfect mix for summer. Big easy’s liquid-to-powder formula melts in like a cream, yet finishes lightweight & velvety like a powder. It’s everything you’ve wished for in a multi-balancing complexion perfector!


How will you be wearing big easy this summer, Benebabes? Tell us in the comments below! xo

Continue reading →

Chanel L’Eau: The New No5

  , ,
Comments Off on Chanel L’Eau: The New No5

new chanel no5

Last week I went to the launch of the new Chanel No5 fragrance, No5 L’Eau, and for the past three days I have been doing a bit of a “compare and contrast”, walking around wearing the original No5 on one wrist and the new No5 on the other. Chanel No5 is one of the world’s most popular perfumes and perhaps its most iconic, but I have to say that it has never been quite my taste. I think of it as an “everything” fragrance – it seems to have all of the smells you can possibly think of crushed into it, an army of smells, and it’s difficult to single out any one particular note. You can sense the jasmine and the rose and the amber and the sandalwood and the bergamot and the lemon and the iris and the ylang-ylang and the neroli and the vanilla and the patchouli and all of the other things that are in there, but try and focus on one note and all of the others gather around it like a clingy gaggle of schoolgirls. I always think of the No5 components as being a very loyal gang – they will not be separated at any cost, and if you try to corner one component on its own (is that lily of the valley I spy? is that rose?) you’ll be confronted by the full force of the No5 Squad.

new chanel no5

Those who find this overwhelming might welcome the arrival of Chanel’s newest fragrance, No5 L’Eau. It’s altogether lighter and fresher than the original scent – I think much more modern, more delicate. Olivier Polge, the perfumer for the House of Chanel and the nose behind this fragrance, said at the launch that he had worked a lot on the head notes of the perfume – the “dynamic aspect” – with citrus and tangerine enhancing the aldehydes. But L’Eau is still instantly recognisable as No5; it’s an interpretation of  it, or an “expression” as Olivier called it. The floral headiness is still there (with rose quite prominent, or perhaps I’m just spotting it because I love rose!) but I don’t find the florals to be as powerful. And the  warmth from the vanilla and sandalwood are perhaps more apparent in L’Eau, which is perfectly fine by me; give me light and powdery over suffocation-by-flowers any day of the week!

chanel no5 l'eau

I think (though nobody mentioned this) that Olivier Polge’s intention was to make a No5 that would appeal to a younger customer and if that’s the case, then he’s done a brilliant job. L’Eau has all of the vital essence of the original No5 – that loyal gang of inseparable fragrance components – it’s just that the lighter and fresher notes are leading the pack. I could never wear No5, it was just…too much, as though I was a child playing dress-up in clothes that were far too big for me. But L’Eau and I are getting on just fine – it suits me much more and I feel incredibly chic. There’s still that sense that I’m a child dressing up in adult’s clothing, but perhaps someone’s altered the fit of the jacket and taken up the trousers and made it all feel that bit more suitable and relevant.

Chanel No5 L’Eau launches in September – I’ll update with more details when they come in.

*I attended the press launch as a guest of Chanel along with other writers and beauty editors, this is not a paid-for or sponsored post. (All sponsored or advertorial content is clearly marked “AD”.) If you’d like to see an absolutely brilliant video of the trip then please click here to see Lily Pebbles’ short film.

The post Chanel L’Eau: The New No5 appeared first on A Model Recommends.

Continue reading →

So, I’m a Vegan Now.

  ,
Comments Off on So, I’m a Vegan Now.
  • In early 2015 I stopped drinking milk and switched to almond/rice/coconut/whatever was on offer milk.
  • In late 2015 I became a pescatarian and started buying more dairy free ice cream and yoghurts.
  • In early 2016 I became a full vegetarian.
  • On July the 7th 2016 I watched a speech by Gary Yourofsky on youtube and everything suddenly made sense. Duh, I didn’t want to contribute to animal cruelty at all, and the obvious choice was being vegan.
  • In October 2016 I went to a vegan food festival in Manchester and had some dreamy New York Cheesecake and pulled jackfruit BBQ nachos. We also went out to a fully vegan Chinese restaurant for my birthday and everything was heavenly.
  • In November 2016 I started looking at my clothing and beauty products and realised just how many things aren’t vegan-friendly when shopping.
  • In December 2016 I had a vegan Christmas dinner and it was hot damn delicious.
Today I have been vegan for 6 months and 12 days. I haven’t been a perfect vegan, or a healthy vegan. I’ve had one too many emergency mcdonalds veggie burgers, I’ve ordered chinese takeaway (I am at this point perhaps 25% salt and chilli tofu) and ordered a side of noodles, not realising until I asked the next time, that they were actually egg noodles. I’ve probably had a bunch of things with dairy hidden in because omg milk is EVERYWHERE. I accidentally bought some lipstick with beeswax. So you see, I’m learning, I’m trying my best and slipping up along the way.
Veganism is as easy as you make it, it’s certainly not hard or expensive – in fact I think it’s the easiest thing in the world (minus the accidents I guess) and I feel better about my choice every single day. My skin is clear (OMG, guys!) and my conscience is pretty clear too. No baby calves had to be taken from their mothers for my cereal & hazelnut milk this morning, no baby male chicks were thrown into a grinder as ‘waste’ for my tofu scramble, and nobody had to die for my Linda McCartney sausages and mash comfort food tea. Do I sound smug? I feel a bit smug.
There are down sides too; I feel a deep sadness when we drive past fields of cows or sheep and I’ve been hysterical on the motorway more than once when driving past lorries carrying animals for slaughter. I try to avoid watching anything graphic – I already know it happens, but have watched a couple of videos accidentally when scrolling through twitter and I’m just left an inconsolable mess than bubbles and simmers slowly down into a horrible anger that makes me want to be one of those… what are they called, oh yep, militant vegans 😉
I’ve had a huge argument with my boyfriend (who isn’t a vegan… yet *cackles*) about us one day having a baby and how I would like to raise it vegan. It seems pretty obvious to me.
I’ve lost weight, which, when you’re a walking skeleton already, probably isn’t the best.
I tried the vegan Ben & Jerrys ice cream whilst I was in the USA and it was DIVINE, but, I read they have no plans to bring it to the UK yet, so that’s a real tragedy.

I am 150% sick of meat and dairy adverts. You can’t watch TV in peace for half an hour without 24757 adverts for fast food, cheese, supermarket value meat, ‘happy’ eggs…. it drives me crazy. The Lidl turkey advert this year? Messed. up. The Mcdonalds happy cow advert? Messed. up. Adverts for strong healthy bones thanks to the calcium in milk and childrens yoghurts? Messed. up. Dairy literally leaches calcium from our bones. So shut that door. These industries are brainwashing you for profit.

I feel different, I know it’s only been 6 months, but I feel like a completely different person to the girl I was this time last year. The world is weird now, like, seriously weird. Take Christmas dinner, there’s me, the weird little vegan eating her vegetables (and hot damn delicious nut roast) and every other person at the table has 3, or was it 4? different kinds of dead animal on their plate. And I can’t say anything, because I can’t spoil Christmas now, can I? I feel like I’m trapped in a glass box just wanting to shout what the HELL are you doing? all the time. Nobody has been mean or judgemental with me, but I feel like I’m not doing enough, I want to debate and talk and teach my friends and family why you don’t need to eat meat, eggs and dairy. But I haven’t and can’t seem to yet?

uughghhh anyway, I feel as if this post has just been an epic word vomit. I’m so sorry. I have a lot of things on my chest about this subject at the moment. I’ve even deleted a bunch of paragraphs that were getting too much.

I’ve found this whole thing very easy to adapt to, but I wanted to do it, and truly feel like I have wanted to for most of my life. I understand for others it isn’t as easy, especially if they don’t feel a connection to animals or care about the planet all that much. Honestly, I would still be vegan even if it was unhealthy and didn’t help the environment, because I’m a big softie who is and always will be vegan for the animals. Cows have best friends. Turkeys and chickens can purr with happiness. Pigs are smart and funny. And obviously, fish are friends, not food.

October Skincare and Beauty Favourites

  , ,
Comments Off on October Skincare and Beauty Favourites

ruth crilly model beauty blogger

Is it me, or does the last beauty favourites video only seem as though it went up about a week ago? I feel as though I’ve been sucked into some kind of space/time vortex! Oh well. Some nice new discoveries, this month, including the excellent exfoliating facial pads from First Aid Beauty (thanks for that tip-off, Caroline Hirons!) and a great mattifying moisturiser from Una Brennan’s Superfacialist brand at Boots. There are quite a few different things that I really rate from Superfacialist  – you can read more of my reviews here. I’ve also had a bit of a re discovery this month, falling in love all over again with the Ultrabland cleanser from Lush. I used to use this thick, balmy cleanser years and years ago when I first started modelling but had totally forgotten about it until recently. It’s simple, gentle and gets off every scrap of makeup. A pot costs £7.25, which I don’t think is bad at all!

You’ll also find details about my upcoming London meetup in this video – 6-8pm on Friday, November 7th at the new Bobbi Brown Studio in Covent Garden. I hope that lots of you will be able to make it; I specifically chose a time when people would have finished work or college and it will be a really nice way to end the week. Makeup, chatting and some lovely little surprise treats and goodies for attendees. If you want to come along then the full details are below the video pane – please be so kind as to email the lovely ladies at Bobbi Brown who are co-ordinating the event!

Details and Links from Video

I Love Makeup Video: http://youtu.be/xBsdizx4OvI

Makeup Meet-Up Details: 7th November at Bobbi Brown Studio, 4 East Piazza,
Royal Opera House Colonnade, Covent Garden, London, WC2E 8HD
Please email [email protected] to secure a place.
Lush Ultra Bland Cleanser: https://www.lush.co.uk/products/ultra…

First Aid Exfoliating Pads: ON SALE at the moment! http://tidd.ly/cc265b4

Una Brennan Tea Flower Mattifying Moisturiser: http://tidd.ly/9d763d61

TimeBomb Powerball Moisturiser: http://tidd.ly/1db187bb

YSL Black Opium: http://tidd.ly/a4b98872

CoLab Dry Shampoo: http://tidd.ly/cf450843

CoLab Giveaway (UK only, so sorry!): http://www.amodelrecommends.com/2014/…

CoLab product demo on Telegraph: http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/beauty…

Continue reading →