Guys. Tory Burch is expanding her beauty line. (Cue happy dancing, squeals of excitement, tears of joy, or all of the above. Seriously, don’t make me do it by myself.) I have to say, I love it when designers branch into makeup. Not only is the quality of their products usually pretty high but the packaging is always to die for. I mean, Marc Jacobs? Gucci? Dior? All stunning. Burch already has perfume, lipstick, and a couple of cheek products in her line, but she’s adding three new eyeshadow palettes for Spring 2015. And while her other products feature that (gorgeous) signature orange-and-gold packaging, the eyeshadow palettes have a slightly different vibe. Instead of the gilded effect, the coveted designer has enrobed her shadows in vintage-book inspired compacts.

Each palette comes with six original shades in a long-wearing formula, a dual-ended brush, and a how-to sheet that includes instructions on how to achieve two different looks. And as for the colors themselves? A neutral lover’s dream. Each palette is at least half-full of easy-to-wear shades of brown. But if you are trying to branch out into color (or just enjoy incorporating some in your mostly-natural eye looks), two of the three have purples and blues that will easily compliment your neutral eye. Let’s take a look.

Pas Du Tout

Colors include: Gamine (matte natural ivory), Menagerie (copper pink), Beau (golden violet), Paillette (metallic bronze), Jolie Laide (shimmering dark chocolate brown), and Au Contraire (matte black)

Cat’s Meow

Colors include: Hint (luminous tan camel), Smoking Slipper (golden espresso brown), Midnight (deep navy), Tawny (radiant taupe), Stone Cold (shimmering gray carbon), and Magpie (iridescent blue-violet). 

Catch

Colors include: Wild Card (golden aubergine), Folly (matte rust brown), Blushing (luminous pale nude pink), Little Bit (shimmering pale peachy pink), Morning Glory (iridescent lavender), and Evil Eye (matte vibrant blue)

Each palette retails for $60, and is available for pre-order on toryburch.com. Catch and Pas Du Tout are currently available on nordstrom.com.

Summer is (almost) here! Hooray! This year, in lieu of spending ALL our time consuming strawberry margaritas & BBQ’d hot dogs, we’ll be obsessing over summer beauty staples. Oh, who are we kidding? We’ll be doing all three.

Luckily, this eye look is fabulous for ALL your fave summer activities (see above). It’s that great base makeup you’ll come to know & love (who wants to like a prima donna at the beach, anyway?).

Here’s how to get this understated-stunning summer look in 7 easy steps!

1. Start with high brow at the very edge of your brow line. This will instantly lift your eye with its perfect, natural pink hues.

2. Apply stay don’t stray onto your eyelid—BBQs mean sun, which means sweat, which means slip—there will be none of that! Stay don’t stray has your back.

3. For your base shadow, start with our creaseless cream in my two cents—apply over your eyelid.

4. Next, take our long-wear powder shadow in kiss me, i’m tipsy—apply into the crease of your eye.

5. Then, in the outer corner of your eyes, apply our matte espresso long-wear shadow, quick! look busy. This will add the perfect smokey touch without getting too over-dramatic. Nobody likes a drama queen, trust.

6. Don’t forget about your #BeneBrows! Using short pressing motions, stroke gimme brow—our volumizing brow fiber-gel—along brow to define shape. Comb through to blend & build brows.

7. Finish your look with our NEW first ever lash-hugging gel liner pen, they’re real! push-up liner. Add a few coasts of they’re real mascara for big, sexy eyes in an instant!

Voilá! What’s your go-to summer eye look? Tell us in the comments below!

Continue reading →

A much-requested video; half the world now seems to be obsessed with the mysterious delights that are kept locked up in the legendary French Pharmacie. I don’t tend to go pharmacy shopping as much as I used to, and that is mainly because the things that I used to stock up on are now widely available. Escentual.com stocks Bioderma, Embryolisse and La Roche-Posay, which were the three main brands that I’d stockpile, and you can get NUXE and Vichy and Klorane and Lierac very easily too. But there is still something quite fantastic about seeing all of these brands squashed onto the shelves together; huge multipacks of Bioderma cleansing water sitting above rows and rows of delectable face creams, twenty different treatments for sensitive-skin-that-is-also-acne-prone* underneath cheap tubes of ointment that promise to “repair and protect”. Even if some of the labels and names are now more familiar, it’s nice to see such range and variety in one space.

Read more posts on French Skincare favourites…

There’s nothing in the UK that really compares to a French Pharmacie; not that clean, almost clinical presentation and the way in which samples are given out with every purchase and the fact that staff are nearly always very knowledgeable about the ranges they are selling. It interests me, too, that there’s very little in the way of colourful or garish packaging in the Pharmacie; you are often forced to read the label quite carefully rather than choose according to visual stimuli. It makes me think that the Pharmacie shopper is perhaps much more likely to get something that is suitable for his or her skintype or skin concern – you can’t just pluck things off the shelf, not so much. If you go to Boots, for example, there are so many brands vying for attention and they all have to sing out from the shelves and blind us with their wacky names and pretty bottles – I often wonder whether the customer has a fair chance at being able to select what they really need. I get very easily distracted by pretty packaging and names that promise great wonders… Just thinking aloud, there!

*Treatments for skin that is sensitive and also acne prone, look to La Roche-Posay and Avene in the Pharmacie – or they are at Escentual.com too. If you’re looking for Lierac then it is stocked at LookFantastic.com and Delarom, which is a new discovery for me, can be found at Urban Retreat.

Watch more skincare videos…

Continue reading →