Gym bags for the beauty obsessed

I suppose I could start a month-long series of blog posts devoted to diet and fitness with my stats--how much weight I've lost, how much more I intend to lose--that sort of thing. But I think I should play to my strengths and blog about what I know.

I run into a lot of "what's in my handbag" posts, but I don't read a lot of (read: any) diet/fitness blogs, so I don't know whether people talk about what they keep packed in their gym bags.

But over the past five months, I've kept a bag packed in the car because I've reached the point where I am hit by spontaneous urges to go work out. Yes, really. You never know when the urge to work out will strike! So here's what's in my gym bag--I mean, in addition to workout clothes and clean underwear and flip-flops and such.

Skincare

Even though my skin is, in general drier than it used to be, probably because I am, in general, older than I used to be--working out all the time has a mitigating effect. All that cardio definitely adds a glow, and my skin feels softer and more comfortable. This wouldn't be the case if I were spending two hours a day in a chlorine pool, but since I'm usually working with a trainer or on the elliptical, it's almost as if I'm hitting the steam bath on a regular basis.

Actually, come to think of it, I'm pretty much a walking steam bath. (Yuck!)

Anyway, I've learned that in the morning when I head to the gym, I should be absolutely bare-faced. I really dislike the sensation of sweating off a face full of makeup. I don't even wear moisturizer, since my moisturizer has sunscreen, and when I sweat the sunscreen runs into my eyes and stings. So I do my workout and then go clean up. And finally get around to using some products. But not many!

I always have a package of Oil of Olay wipes

because they're spill-proof, non-irritating, and refreshing.

I carry some Garnier Nutritioniste eye cream

because the eye area is the only part of my face that feels truly dry these days.

And right now, instead of a lot of different skin treatments, I'm just using beauty balm

to see whether it can take the place of moisturizer, sunscreen, and base. So far so good!

Body

I definitely need to put on lotion after a shower, so I've been relying heavily on scented body lotions. They're easier than carrying fragrance and lotion, and they don't break. Right now I'm enjoying Chanel #19.

Hair

Ack, hair. OK, I hate the hair dryers at my gym because they don't have nozzles to concentrate the air flow, and when I use them, my hair ends up a frizzy mess. That means if I really want to look good, I have to pack my own blow dryer. And a brush. And a heat-styling product. And maybe a flat-iron. Which adds up to a second gym bag just for my hair.

So what I really do is check to see how well my hair has survived my workout. If I think I can get away with it, I use a shower cap and skip the shampoo / blowout. Of course, I make sure I have some covered elastic bands. And some Klorane dry shampoo. I mean, I'm not totally without standards.

I can see your eyes rolling from here. Great. The internet thinks I'm gross. FINE.

Makeup

I always pack a stash of makeup in my gym bag, because when I get rushed, I am wont to do things like pack a full-on ladies-who-lunch outfit--and then forget to bring my makeup.

When I'm getting dressed at home, I'll amuse myself by coordinating my makeup to my outfit--say, gray and plum eye shadows when I'm wearing purple. But for the gym, I need to carry a bag of basic makeup that is guaranteed to look good with anything I'm wearing. It should also be non-breakable, leak-proof, and cheap, since it's going to be spending a lot of time in the car.

In addition to my beauty balm, I tend to carry a cream blush in a goes-with-everything shade of pale rose pink.

 Revlon Colorburst Lip Butter in Pink Truffle

Mascara and eyelash curler

Concealer

And an eye quad for when I really feel like putting on the dog.

Recent discoveries

Being the last by whom the new is tried, I'm sure my savvier readers will roll their eyes and think "Seriously? She's just gotten around to trying it?"

But here's the thing: the fashion/beauty press is an ever-moving stream of information. When the hot new thing is new, everyone is blathering away about it. You can't get away from people nattering on about Creme de la Mer or Tory Burch flats or Sevens jeans and then, all of a sudden, the chatter dries up.

(Except for Maybelline's Great Lash mascara, which still gets press. I don't know how Maybelline does it, because it sucks. But mark my words, that smeary, goopy crap in a pink-and-green tube is on somebody's Best of list even as we speak.)

Anyway, here are some things I've been liking:

Bioderma Cráline H2O Solution Micellaire 

I mostly don't watch the beauty gurus on YouTube. I mean, I like conspicuous consumption as much as the next girl, but those teenagers with their haul videos sicken even me.

I also find them almost maddeningly inefficient. I mean, if I tell you that this stuff is a cleanser that you use on cotton pads like a toner, and it's cool, soothing, and gets your face beautifully clean without stripping or irritating your skin, you know everything you need to know, and I didn't just waste eight minutes of your life.

And yet, I have to give the YouTube gurus credit: they know their stuff. This particular video was about French drug store products, and being the world's biggest Francophile, as well as someone who delights in discovering great drug store products, I sat up and took notice. Unfortunately, I can't remember which video taught me this. Sorry, beauty guru, whoever you are. (The 250 ml size is available for $25.00 on Amazon.com--here's a link to all their Bioderma products)

Embryalisse Lait-Creme Concentré

The same beauty guru also turned me on to Embryalisse Lait-Creme Concentré, which is a very plain, very gentle, slightly fluffy-feeling moisturizer. It's like a fluffier, less greasy version of Eucerin. It's great when my skin feels super dry or when I've been testing its patience with too many retinols and acids. A good-sized tube goes for $25.00 on Amazon; here's a link.)

Benefit Dandelion

See what I mean about my lag time? This stuff came out a decade ago! My friend Wendy turned me on to it. She said she'd used up three of them. I love it. It's blusher for the blusher-challenged--at least if they're pale. It's such a pale shade of pink, it probably wouldn't show on medium or darker complexions. But porcelain types can sweep it on lavishly with the big white brush and never be afraid of developing 80s disco cheeks. It's $28.00 at Sephora. Thanks, Wendy!

Review: Chanel's Fleur de Lotus Joues Contraste blush

I came home from Nordstrom with the complete Anniversary Exclusive collections from Chanel, Dior, and Bobbi Brown. I'm planning on reviewing every item between now and August 6, the last day of the sale. Nordstrom card holders have early access to the sale, which doesn't start officially until July 20. 

American makeup fanatics started lusting over Chanel's Joues Contraste in 69 Fleur de Lotus when it was released in Asia in February, 2012. If the posters on the Makeup Board at Makeup Alley are any indication, this is one of the most eagerly-anticipated items in Nordstrom's Anniversary Sale Chanel collection. So it was with great anticipation that I opened my compact--only to discover that I appeared to own its twin.

Placed side to side, my dirt-cheap Maybelline Dream Bouncy Blush in 20 Peach Satin (which retails for $7.99, but which I bought at CVS with ExtraBucks) seemed identical to my ridiculously expensive Fleur de Lotus, which retails for $43. Here they are out of direct sunlight.

Maybelline Dream Bouncy blush in 20 Peach Satin on left; Chanel Joues Contraste in Fleur de Lotus on right

Hmmm ... on second thought, the difference shows up better in this picture than it does in in the sun. The Chanel is showing up pinker and shimmier, and it is. 

Swatched

Both blushes appear scary-dark in the pan, but both apply and blend down to a very wearable coral shade.

On the left, Maybelline, on the right, Chanel. Nothing else on face but my morning moisturizer. Note my youthful glow. ::coughs:: It was already 95 degrees outside!

I applied the Maybelline with a taklon foundation brush and blended it down, but it's slightly more opaque than the Chanel. I applied the Chanel with the brush in the compact. You can see my freckles much more clearly!

The difference shows up better on my arm when I apply them very heavily; Maybelline applies much more definitely coral, and the Chanel's pink shimmer shows up better.

On my arm, I used a the foundation blush to apply the Maybelline, which is way it shows up so well. For the Chanel, I used the brush in the pan, going over and over to make sure there was good color pay off.

Verdict

 
Fleur de Lotus is a beautiful coral-with-pink shade that would flatter complexions that are anywhere from porcelain pale to medium, and cool to warm. It applies very sheer, but can be built up. The brush it comes with is very soft and makes precise application difficult. For more color pay off, it's best to use a dedicated blusher brush. As for the shimmer, it really doesn't show on the skin. I don't own either Benefit's Coralista than Nars Orgasm, having swapped them both, but as far as coral blushers go, my impression is that Fleur de Lotus is more like Coralista than Orgasm--very soft and wearable, with no glitter, just a rosey shimmer. In fact, Fleur de Lotus shade reminds me of Chanel's Distraction nail polish, which is in heavy rotation this summer. I expect the same will be true of Fleur de Lotus.

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Elsewhere: My reviews of the rest of Chanel's Nordstrom Anniversary exclusives:

Quadra Eye Shadow in 35 Rives
Illusion d'Ombre in 87 Rivière
Stylo Yeux Waterproof in 86 Beige Clair
Aqualumière Gloss in 80 Alizé and 81 Roselin

Chanel Collection Byzance Fall 2011 makeup collection

This spring, I spent a while kicking myself for not having gotten my mitts on Chanel's Ombres Perlées eyeshadow palette while it was still available. The colors looked perfect for hazel eyes.

So I went all Scarlet O'Hara and shook my fist at the sky and declared that as God was my witness, I was never going to miss the opportunity to score a Chanel limited edition cosmetic ever again.

So when I discovered the fall collection was up at Chanel.com, I ordered pretty much every limited edition color they had. Want to see?

Let's start with the lips.


Somebody really needs to get rid of that ancient Shellac manicure

I got a Rouge Allure in Rouge Byzantin, the lip pencil in Rose Cuivre, and a LE Glossimer in Braise (158).

As you can see, the Byzantin Rouge Allure is almost fuschia. After so many years of my-lips-but-better pinky brown glosses, it looks ... very bright. I'm trying not to freak out over it. After all, Sandra Bullock wore hot pink lipstick the night she won her Oscar. And Taylor Swift always wears bright lipstick. Which means the bright lipstick trend will work its way into the general public as sure as rain rises up the legs of my jeans. And for "general public" read "women of a certain age." Yes, even us.

(Deep breath. It's OK. You start small. You apply the lipstick, blot it to tone down the color, then add a little gloss.)

On the other hand, Braise is a much more wearable sheer light red--very lightly brown-red, actually--with gold microglitter.

The lip pencil is from the regular collection. It's not a LE, but I thought it would look good under the Glossimer. And it does.

OK, let's talk eyes. I also got the limited-edition eye shadow quad in Topkapi with four shades: a warm medium brown, a light taupe, a dark chocolate matte brown, and a gold.



Here it is swatched. As you can see, all the shades are quite shimmery, except for the chocolate brown.

I'm not going to pretend that these are basic, every day colors, but I can easily imagine getting a lot of use out of all the colors (well, except for the gold. I'm not Mr. T.) But the gold looks beautiful as a highlight on the inside corner of the eye, in the center of the lid, or under the bottom lashes.



I also got two shades of the Illusion D'Ombre cream eyeshadow. I must say, I can't wait to play with these. They are so gorgeous, and they have a wonderful mousse-like texture (actually, I'm sure this is what the Maybelline Dream Mousse eyeshadows were like.)

I got Epatant, the dark, charcoal green pictured above, and Illusoire, a deep plum. I forgot to take a picture of Illusoire, so here's the photograph from the Chanel website.

In this picture, I had just lightly touched my finger to each shade to swatch them.


 Illusoire on top, Epatant on the bottom

As you can see, these shades can be quite subtle and lovely.

The makeup artist at the Chanel boutique in Chicago showed me some of the Illusion D'Ombre shades applied with a brush, and they are gorgeous. Really incredible looking. (I was very taken with Ebloui, a lighter shade of mauve-lilac, but I didn't buy it.)

There are two limited-edition shades of powder blusher: Joues Contrast Rouge in Rouge and Or. Which means red and gold. And they are:



Here's a close-up of each shade:

Amazingly enough, they can be quite subtle. Especially for colors that look like two-thirds of a traffic light, No, really. I first applied them to my hand with my Lancome skunk brush and I couldn't even see the colors. I went over my original application using the brushes that came in the compact, and the colors were still pretty subtle. Finally I went all out, applying the gold shade and then lots of red on top, for a full-on scarlet fever look. And even then, it's not as clown-like as you'd think.

Finally, I bought a bottle of Peridot nail polish. Lately, Chanel polishes always seem to start a crazy lemming rush, and I wanted to grab a bottle before they were sold out. (In fact, now that I think about it, I was inspired to hit the Chanel website in the first place because I saw a bottle of Peridot for sale on ebay for some ridiculous amount of money--$45 or so.)

The picture in the eBay auction was what you'd expect a polish called Peridot to look like--a light yellow-green. In actuality, the polish flashes teal and gold and is never actually stays still long enough to look green, if that makes sense. I don't know whether I'll ever want to wear it; I may exchange it for a bottle of Quartz, which looks like Particulière with very fine shimmer.

At any rate, I tried to give you a sense of what Peridot polish looks like:

But I finally decided I needed to let you see the bottle in action. So here you go--my first mini video review.

To sum up, I'd say the entire collection is drop-dead gorgeous, but not every product is worth buying. Illusions Dombre are definitely worth a look; so is the Topkapi Quad, if you don't already have a ton of brown, beige, and gold shadows. The gold shadow is gorgeous and can be applied lightly or sponged on for a very dramatic effect. The nail polishes are interesting, and I'd suggest taking a look at Graphite, a medium gray with lots of silver microglitter, or Quartz, a taupey-beigey brown with tiny particles of micro glitter. Both are probably more wearable than Peridot. The limited edition blushes are interesting, and if you're a real makeup maven, you'll want to add these unique shades to your collection, but as for wearability and general usefulness. And the lipsticks are beautiful, but probably not worth getting.

(Just watch as a huge lemming rush starts over gold blush and fuschia lipstick!)

Eye shadow as contour: the theory

I'm probably getting really repetitive on the subject of neutral eyeshadow, but Sephora keeps filling my mailbox with catalogs showing models wearing truly outlandish colors--glittery turquoise stripes were featured in the latest--so it doesn't look as though I'll be shutting up any time soon.

So I'll say it again: neutral eye shadows are fantastic on women of a certain age. They do what eye shadow is supposed to do; shadow and sculpt the eyes to make them look bigger, brighter, and more expressive.

They do this by contouring the eye area. Now, it took me a long time to accept the fact that I was going to talk about using eye makeup to contour the eye area, because the old school notions of contouring seem hopelessly out of date.

You know what I mean when I talk about contouring the face with makeup, right? It's a makeup technique where you apply lighter makeup where you want a feature to appear higher or more prominent, and darker makeup where you want a feature to appear deeper or less prominent.

It's frequently used to make noses appear straighter and narrower, or make cheekbones look more prominent. But here's the thing about contouring: it's hard to make it look natural. It was first used in stage makeup, where the audience is very far away from the actors. Then it was used in black and white movies and stills, where you have dramatic lighting and a general aura of glamorous artificiality. But even then, makeup artists had to know what they were doing. Back then--and right now--when you shade and highlight an area, it's all about blending and soft, subtle shades.

As an example of what I'm talking about, take Marlene Dietrich. Her entire face was nothing but makeup and lighting. Here's a photograph of her standing next to Josef von Sternberg, the director who made her a star.

Notice the fairly flat planes of her face. Now look at her with von Sternberg's trademark lighting and a full face of contoured makeup:

I'm not a makeup artist, and I don't know how to do stage or film makeup, but it's pretty clear that Dietrich is wearing way more makeup than even the average Hollywood star of the 1930s--and they wore plenty.

Check out the contouring. I'm no expert, but I can see that a lighter shade of foundation is blended down the middle of her nose, with a darker shade along the side. In the first picture, it looks like she's wearing highlighter under her eyes, and in the second, it's obvious that the artist used rouge to contour her cheekbones (a trick that works very well in black and white photography, but is much less successful in color photographs or real life.)

Take at Dietrich's eye makeup. Her eyebrows are the stuff of legend, so we won't discuss them, except to warn you not to emulate her. Although tweezing her eyebrows off and drawing them on again much higher up did give Dietrich a much larger area in which to apply eyeshadow.

And what eyeshadow! She's wearing a medium shade from the lash line all the way up to the brows, with a lighter shade on the eyelid and a highlighting shade in the inner corner and in a narrow line under the eye. Her crease is shaded much darker. Her eyes are very wide set, and that, added to the increased height of her brow area, means the makeup artist could apply a ton of dark shadow in the U-shaped crease to the back wedge. Her eyes were big to begin with, but the eyeshadow makes them incredible.

And Dietrich was doing this before eyeshadow was commercially available. Instead, she or her makeup artist used soot mixed with baby oil or petroleum jelly.

There, now. Aren't you ashamed that you're not taking full advantage of the lovely, hygienic ready-made shades now available in stores?

Next on The Beauty Boomer: What I Do, or, I know Poppy Buxom, and she's no Marlene Dietrich.


Elsewhere on the web:

For more on makeup in films, see the article on makeup in Film Reference


For how to look more like Marlene Dietrich, go this article in Suite 101

30 Days to 10 years younger--10 minute tips. Tip 14: Wear blusher

Whose idea was it to stop wearing blusher? It's been about 10 years now, and it's making me a little crazy.

I read an article once about Evelyn Lauder (maybe Estée herself!) that said she was always trying to talk women into putting on a little more blush. So hey--you might not care that I think you look better with some color in your cheeks, but when the first lady of cosmetics is begging you to wear a little blusher, I hope you pay attention.

Think about it. Pink cheeks are youthful and pretty. Where do you think the expression "the first flush of youth" came from in the first place? This is what makeup is for.

Sure, there are all kinds of more sophisticated looks, but when it comes to your cheeks, I hope you will leave sophistication to 14-year-old supermodels with naturally pink cheeks. We need some color.

The thing is, it has to be the right kind of color. And you have to apply it properly. But honestly, it's not that complicated. Here's what to do:

Pick the right color. At the moment, I'm talking about a powder or cream blusher with some opacity, not one of those super-intense gel blushes. For powder and cream blushes, the correct color isn't a crazy shade of fuschia, red, or brown. The perfect shade will be a nice version of my-cheeks-but-better pink.

And you don't want to pick too icy or unnatural a pink. Even if you're very fair-skinned and used to wear pinks that were almost fuschia or lavender in tone, you don't want to do that anymore. As we age, our skin becomes more yellow toned, so a very icy cool pink will look unnatural. You want to use a nice fleshy pink, one with some coral or brown in it to warm it up a bit.

Find the shade your cheeks turn when you've gone for a nice brisk walk. (Not the beet-red you become when you've been doing wind-sprints.) Or give them a pinch. Or use your MLBB shade of lipstick as a guide.

Wear your blusher on the right part of your face. Maybe you've seen this picture of Maggie Gyllenhaal already.



It's a perfect illustration of what not to do. Her blush is too dark; it's too red, and it goes too far down her cheeks.

Your blush should go on the apples of your cheeks (mind you, Maggie's got a bushel of apples there, which might explain it.)

Madonna got it right.


The cheeks themselves look a bit off, but the blush is perfect

If you don't know where the apples of your cheeks are, imagine a line running across your face under the tip of your nose. Your blush needs to stay above that line. Then imagine a second line going down from the arch of your eyebrow. The center of the blush should be along that line. Blend it out from there.

Want to see some more pictures of blush done right? Check out these pictures of Winona Ryder. God bless her, she gets it right every single time, whether she's on the red carpet or doing something much more casual.



See how her blush is strongest in the center of her cheek? That's how it's done.



Ready for some don'ts? Don't use blush all the way up to the hairline. Do not sweep it up towards your temple. You'll get lamb chop cheeks like the late Pat Buckley.



Also, most celebs apply their blush too far away from their noses and too close to the sides of their faces, creating a pair of pink parentheses (or in this case, orange.)



This is probably supposed to highlight the cheekbones, but it looks unnatural, and is probably the reason blush got such a bad name in the first place.

Also, don't even think using blush to contour hollows. Blusher is not contour powder.

I'll go into the specifics of brands, powder or cream, best brushes, etc., at some later date. For now, I just want you to think pink!