The Joker Is Not Well Groomed These Days

I know. I know. Shame on me. I've been so out of commission, it's actually frightening!

Very sorry lovely Modos. There are myriad reasons for my absence, but although I may post slightly less frequently - perhaps once a week rather than three times - you will be hearing my beauty musings with, at the very least, more regularity.

So let's talk pop culture. It's an unconventional topic for me, to be honest, even though my job requires me to be somewhat on top of it. But having worked the Dark Knight premiere, and bearing witness to the extreme hullabahoo surrounding the production, I feel it's still at the forefront of my mind. Granted, this film is heavy on the men folk, with the only really important lady being Maggie Gyllenhaal (and did she ever hold it down! LOVE her!); there wasn't exactly a lot of relatable beauty present it terms of my viewing enjoyment. (Gyllenhaal did sport a killer red lip to the premiere and looked stunning.)

However, it's worth noting that the makeup in the film was magnificent in the form of Heath Ledger. Going back to my post about chipped nails, it's worth noting that the Joker is certainly making an impact in the film with his chipped foundation and chipped lipstick.

You've seen the stills if you haven't made it to the theaters, so you know what I'm trying to say.

It's very funny to me that this is our contemporary Joker, rather than being the perfectly masked Jack Nicholson interpretation (he was fastidious with his grooming techniques, no?) - what people are calling "humanized." Yes, Heath plays the part to perfection - humanizing a totally dark and destructive character - but there has to be something said for the fact that our interpretation of humanizing the Joker aesthetically is through mussing him up and making him look like he hadn't showered in months.

The one thing I will say is that in the past, many of our most villainous characters in film were represented as completely well put together - i.e. Cruella Deville, Catwoman, Norman Osborn (Spiderman), and Jafar (Aladdin); remember Angelica Houston in "The Witches," the film adaptation of the Roald Dahl book? All completely primped to perfection. I wonder if being perfectly groomed happens to be our little warning that something sinister is brewing beneath the surface?

Maybe this is why I always felt so suspicious of Victoria Beckham...

Really, this is just an observation, but it's a funny thought that in order to "humanize" a demon, we aesthetically rumple them up a bit, huh? Thoughts lovelies?

~ Olivia Villanti

The New "RED" Look

Do all of you remember the retro-60,70,80’s look? Madonna, Goldie Hawn and a few others used to sport this trendy look. Well, it quickly went out of style with the turn of the decade: 90’s is here!!! I grew up in the 80’s and at the time, loved the style. But who doesn’t love and try to ride the trend tide in their decade? We all do.

The blue eye shadow, the poofy hair, the curly perms, the leather w/zipper jackets, the whole nine yards. You’ve probably seen that some aspect of this past trendy style is back and a big hit in Hollywood. Lipstick, especially. I personally, really used to hate RED lip color. I felt it made people look like vampires or zombies. But Hollywood has been incorporating the color red - very nicely, I must say - in movies and on celebrities. I like the new, up-to-date, red lip color, especially with the opaque face.

It brings back the whole Eva Gardner look of the early 50’s. CLASSIC….one might say! Kate Hudson, Eva Longoria, Julia Roberts and more have sported these looks recently at award shows and while on outings. (Paparazzi gets all the good shots!!). Guys, I just love the look so much, I had to write about its beauty!!!!

Stay GORGEOUS!!

~ Nekiwa Smith

Summer Days Call for New Ways

Welcome to summer! Now that your calendar is filled with summer events, you can't exactly go bare-faced. So, to help you look your best in the hottest of temperatures, I've gather some tips to help update your summer makeup routine. Tis the season to change your routine, not ditch the makeup bag altogether. Here is a breakdown on how to make your routine match the summer heat.

Sunscreen: Applying a daily dose of sunscreen will help your skin help itself. Sunscreen works as an absorbent that keeps the UV rays from reaching your skin. Sure, most makeup foundations list SPF's of 15 to 30, but that amount of protection is only fundamental protection added for walking to your car or checking the mail. For prolonged exposure to the sun, which is 15 minutes or more, sunscreen should be applied to your full face prior to makeup application. Allow at least 20 minutes for the application to dry and absorb.

Tinted Moisturizer: This is a great way to make your makeup pull triple duty, because it works as a moisturizer, foundation and sunscreen. Moisturizers like Neutrogena's SPF 30 will give you added SPF protection on top of your sunscreen application. The tint in the moisturizer helps you skip the step of covering your face in foundation. Keep it light and natural.

Primer (optional): This was a new must-have tip for me that I've only heard of when mineral makeup started gaining momentum. However, primer might just be the new must-have of the summer. Primer helps keep a clean palette on your face to hold your makeup in place. I know it's another layer, but it is invisible and weightless. Primer works by controlling the shine and absorbing excess oils.

Tinted Lip Balm: Let's not forget about equal lip protection now that most lip balms come with an SPF of 8 to 12. Try a tinted balm to give your lips color without the heaviness of a lipstick.

Bronzing Powder/Creams: If you are not quite satisfied with just the tinted moisturizer, then add a bronzer. Apply the bronzer to your forehead, cheeks, chin and nose. These are the places where the sun hits the face. Only emphasis the cheeks and lightly dust the bronzer on the other areas of the face. When using a cream bronzer use only on the cheeks. Pink bronzers are the latest trend in this area. I will go more into bronzers on my Thursday Trends blog.

Eyes: On the eyes use a shadow creme in a neutral or seasonal color. This will be the area where you can play easily with color without looking overdone. Use a liquid waterproof liner to draw a thin line at the lash line. Remember to line through the lash line, not above it. For nighttime hold, use a crayon liner on top of the liquid liner. Use a cream shadow first. Then top over it with a powder shadow to hold color and withstand the heat. Pair the liner with waterproof mascara and this will open the eyes for a fresh-faced look.

Clean Up: With all the waterproof products you will need to invest in a makeup remover. Waterproof products are tough to tackle with just cleanser and water. The makeup wipes are successful in cleaning off most of your face prior to a nighttime wash.

I hope that I shed some light on transitioning your makeup routine from spring to summer. In honor of the summer heat, I will try introduce some more seasonal tips on my "Try It Tuesday" blog. Thanks for reading.

~ Charlotte Almazan

My Name Is Olivia and I Had Chipped Nails

A little while ago I came across a piece in the New York Times entitled "I Love What You Didn't do to Your Chipped Nails" about a new trend in nail polish- the imperfect upkeep of it. Amazingly, I was onto this trend eons ago :) as I am just not one of those perfectly primped and primed ladies. But the point of the article wasn't just about the trend, it was about when and where this sort of casual attitude is acceptable. And according to the majority of celebrities that young girls are emulating, there was a certain "Anywhere you want" bottom line. Lindsay Lohan had no trouble sporting flakey "wicked" polish to a film premiere and the list went on and on of young starlets on the “yay” side of the debate.

But that's really the beginning. In the Times piece you got the sense that it was ok to sport grody manicures (pedicures were decidedly a WHOLE OTHER story) as long as you are sporting an "it" bag. You can't really look like a total schleppy slob with a Birkin on your arm, can you?

The more that high/low fashion gets all muddled together, the more we see an "anything goes" attitude in our grooming and beauty rituals. There is something kind of grunge/punk rock in chipped polish that certainly lends itself to the perfect Balenciaga S/S08 ensemble or an Alexander Wang F/W08 look. It compliments it, rather than detracts because the whole idea it seems is more "yes I know luxury, I can afford all these special things, but there is nothing precious about me."

I think it's a woman's way of taking something that is so powerful and statement making in itself and turning it into their own.

But can you do this with beauty?

Can we really apply the same rules?

Personally, I am a bit embarrassed when my nails go totally AWOL- but it is hard to keep up. I wish I could get a weekly mani/pedi, I have friends that do, but it just doesn't seem to happen. It feels like such a commitment. And although it's very relaxing and I quite enjoy it, most days I'd rather be relaxing with a book if I have the time than to be sitting inhaling fumes and worrying that each page I turn will undo all the hard work.

I've tried to apply the same philosophy to waxing, etc. The minute anything is out of place, I vow that I will head to salon (and every time I return I admit that it has been way too long). Subsequently, my nails are bare 85% of the time. And I quite like it that way.

Ultimately, I believe that yes there is a time and place where letting your grooming guard down is simply unacceptable. When my company was hiring interns, you can bet the girl with chipped polish did not get hired. I was actually uncomfortable for her, though she didn't seem affected one bit. She flashed her stop sign red nails, corroded and broken, gesticulating as she proceeded to answer my questions. I was amused afterwards, thinking how strange it must be to be so oblivious. Yes, me, wearer of chipped polish (on occasion). Because although, yes, it's happened to me, I would never enter an interview that way, would never really enter the office with anything more than "minorly cracked" and were I to find myself in the uncomfortable situation of being across the table from a potential employer in a condition less than satisfactory (god forbid) you can bet my hands won't be anywhere in sight- even if it's awkward and uncomfortable.

So I think my personal stance on this whole thing is- employing a devil may care attitude towards fashion is all well and good but just like there are still formalities that should be upheld, even in this "anti fashion" fashion era, there's a code that should be followed when it comes to beauty too. And I do think, professionally, there are some things that are a don't. Chipped nails, in my book, are one of them. I will remember this the next times things start going south…

I vow to.

~ Olivia Villanti

Primary Colored Eyeshadow - Beauty Do or Beauty Don't?

So remember that impulse buy I mentioned in my last post? (It feels like that was ages ago…sorry it’s been a busy week!)

As usual, my love for the yellow eyeshadow was in full swing under the bright lights of Sephora and it’s reassuring employees who made my “risky” fashion statement seem like no thang (their lids seem to be inspired by strobe light gels). But once home, well, it felt just a bit “girlfriend woke up with jaundice.” “Sickly” could be considered chic in an Italian Vogue kind of way, but on the streets of NY as a mere mortal, I wondered about my eyes becoming a bit of an eyesore.

But as a determined experimentalist, I decided I had to just find the right opportunity to sport it and to temper the “Motion Sickness Victim” reference with some dark eyeliner and mascara.

Last night was the perfect opportunity.

I was gifted with tickets to see The Cure (!) and where is there a better place for makeup experimenting than a concert (of goth gods no less)? So I worked it.

I kept my face bare for the most part. And I was admittedly light handed with the application- using it more as a liner. But the results were surprisingly fun and did make me feel a bit mischievous and cat like. I am posting some pictures here of the results. This may have been a horrible fashion faux pas, you’re welcome to weigh in with WTF’s or bad, wrong, no no no’s…but there was something a bit intriguing about it and made me feel kind of like a cool goth girl.

I secretly love going to concerts because there seems to be a general anything goes attitude towards fashion. I certainly could have had a heyday with street style pictures of people entering and exiting Madison Square Garden.

In a really old, thread bare tee stolen from the BF, stovepipe black jeans and black stiletto ankle boots, I felt like the crazy eye makeup added a nice level of “androgynous femininity” which is what I was going for.

Anyway, enough of my personal musings- it would tickle me if you would disclose your biggest beauty risks. How do you make them work? Any tricks for tempering something that feels like it should be a great big non plus?

~ Olivia Villanti

Bubbles, Bubbles Everywhere

I love soap. Rich, luxurious handmade soap. In fact, I can truthfully say I love handmade soap almost as much as I love shoes and purses. If you haven’t tried a bar of handmade soap, then I recommend that you run right out and get one right now.

But first, let me make myself clear, I am not talking about bars of glycerin soap, I am talking about bars of soap made using the Cold Process method. A method that involves mixing the oils, lye and fragrances together in a very specific order and manner. Those who make cold process soap are truly artists, blending everything together to make a bar of wonderfully fragranced, super moisturizing perfection.

These bars almost always contain Saponified olive oil, coconut oil, cocoa butter and shea butter. Naturally, each maker has their own secret recipe. Plus, the most fantastic scents. Each soap maker creates their own unique scents. You could spend your entire life sampling all the different fragrances out there.

Now if you are wondering how I became a soap nut, let me explain. I used to be a body wash kinda girl, didn’t matter what brand or what scent, I tried them all. Sure they worked fine, even smelled pretty good, but I wasn’t completely satisfied with them. A lot of the body wash fragrances seemed all the same to me. I wanted something that smelled truly exotic or fresh.

Then of course, there were the articles that I read that indicated that body wash and commercial soaps are more “detergent” then soap. That the process to make these large batches of soaps takes something fairly natural and turns it into a giant chemical soup.

Enter the bar of handmade soap. Here was something with a short list of ingredients, handmade by a real person. Someone who took real pride in their work, not to mention the scents were amazing. Anything that you could imagine they had. Plus, you may be able to work with the soap maker to customize a scent. So you could have a “designer” fragrance made just for you.

The packaging also appealed to me. No plastic bottles, just a bit of cardboard or tissue paper wrapped around each bar. Although, some of the soap makers go out of their way to pretty up the soap with beautiful wrapping paper and ribbons, which is so much cooler then a plastic bottle. Traveling with the soap is easy, especially with today’s regulations about what you can take on an airline. A solid bar of soap is no problem in your travel kit.

Some bars are gentle enough to work on your face and some are specifically shampoo bars and can give you beautiful, shiny hair (you could even cheat and run the shampoo bar over your entire body). Hey! Sometimes an all in one is just what you need on a morning when you are running really, really late. You can use the soap for EVERYTHING, even shaving your legs.

Come on give it a try, get a wonderful handmade bar and lather up!

~ Jennifer Flaten

Filler Up!

One of the first signs of aging is what I like to call loosy goosy. That’s when the skin starts to get a little slack and just doesn’t have the spring and firmness it had when you were younger. Unfortunately, it’s a fact of life and unless you know something I don’t, it’s going to happen at some point.

A common misconception is that once the skin starts to sag, we should book a date for a face lift. Cutting and pulling the skin taut isn’t the answer to a fresh faced look. Instead, most of the time patients end up looking just tight and artificial.

Autologous fat transfer is a procedure in which an individual's own body fat is used to plump up sunken or emaciated areas of the face or to add volume where desired. The word "autologous" simply refers to the use of one's own tissues or fat.

The first step involves the liposuctioning of excess body fat (usually the thighs, stomach or buttocks). After the suctioning, the fat cells are injected into the areas in the face that have lost volume.

Facial fat injections help to plump up the areas that have started to go loosy goosy. It leaves the patient looking refreshed and youthful. The features aren’t changed, they are just brought back to the fullness they had in more youthful days.

Facial fat sculpting offers several major benefits. In addition to correcting problems of the aging face, facial fat transfer is natural. The material used is not from an animal, or a cadaver, or a synthetic product. It's also versatile; the fat can be used for many facial imperfections, including scars and depressions in the skin. The effects of facial fat sculpting are very long-lasting — facial fat injections last significantly longer than cosmetic injectables such as Restylane®, and Juvéderm. And facial fat sculpting is safe, since there are no allergic reactions to worry about, because the fat transplantation is from your own body.

The risks are minimal as long as you are seeking treatment with a board certified plastic surgeon that has experience performing this procedure. Soreness and swelling are possible, but they're not commonly experienced.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to consult with a fully accredited surgeon. The surgery is relatively minor; however, it’s still a medical procedure and should be taken seriously. Do your homework and you should have wonderful results.

~ Eileen Lang

For more information try these helpful websites:

http://www.plasticsurgery.org

https://www.abplsurg.org

Sugar and Hair Removal...the New Frontier

So “new frontier” was really just a journalistic hook because there is actually nothing new about the ancient practice of “sugaring” (a technique of hair removal originating thousands of years ago in Egypt) but it is, relatively speaking, new to us North Americans. If you live in the Big Apple, you probably are familiar since Shobha, which started as a singular salon off Broadway a few years back and has now officially garnered the title of “Empire,” is ubiquitous in beauty circles as the hair removal destination for New York women.

Hair removal is a sticky subject (pun intended) as each person reacts differently to every method. So to say one method is better than another can only be applied on a personal level. That said: Sugaring changed my life.

My very first bikini wax took place at a rather divey little place by the beach in Barcelona. At age 18 I hadn’t quite developed a sense of caution regarding the condition of my surroundings. My biggest concern was if I could afford it, and there I could. Halfway through I was praying that something would happen that would force her to stop without me being the baby that couldn’t handle the pain- a fire, a hysterical woman acting out on the feelings I was experiencing- ANYTHING. But that didn’t happen; she kept tearing those sheets off and such intense nausea was building up inside me that once it was over, I felt that I had just come down with the flu and would require a few days bed rest. I was bleeding and the job was uneven and awkward. I swore to never do it again.

And then I heard about Shobha. Sugaring was reportedly 40% less painful and at this point (2 years later) I knew I had to face my demons. Terrified but with flecks of optimism I entered my appointment.

And left a convert. The procedure was so startlingly different than the aforementioned nightmare, I almost wondered if the hair hadn’t really been removed at all.

But it had and the job was fantastic.

I referred several friends who actually felt deceived by my praises of sugaring, as many of them were forced to incorporate wax at some point in the process. As said before, each person is different and thus what removes hair on one may not do the same on another. But I believe that in the right salon, with a caring practitioner, you won’t ever experience the trauma that I went through. My friends that did go reported that the mixture of sugaring and waxing was actually ideal.

Bikini follicles are extra stubborn, but sugaring is safe and effective on legs, arms and anywhere else body hair is unpleasantly lurking.

If you have sensitive skin it is definitely worth a shot, as sugar is made entirely from natural kitchen ingredients (sugar, lemon juice, and hot water); you are much less prone to become irritated after.

Any particularly ambitious ladies out there looking to DIY, this is possible- many recipes are lurking around the internet. But I’d caution you to make sure you don’t burn yourself. Skin patch tests are crucial with a very small amount of your concoction. You’ll know if it’s too hot. Most recipes call for cotton swatches to adhere to the substance, and at Shobha they use denim. I’d definitely go with denim because of its very durable nature and the fact that it’s not likely to stretch or give much in the removal process.

Would love to hear from anyone that tries it out. Who knows? Maybe I’ll even try it out.

~ Olivia Villanti

Natural Summer Protection

Taking special care of your skin is essential, especially as the seasons change. In the winter, we need more moisture; during the summer, we need additional protection from the harmful UV rays of the sun. The right sunscreen can make a huge difference in how your skin ages in the future. If you want to keep your youthful looks way into your late 40’s, properly protecting your skin is crucial. Usually during the summer months we spend more time outdoors enjoying the beach, picnics, festivals, long walks, and gardening - all the while soaking up UV radiation.

When you use sunscreen, avoid applying it too early. Never swab on sunscreen more than 20 or 30 minutes before venturing outdoors. It’s important to smooth a even coating of sunscreen to all exposed areas of your skin. Don’t forget areas such as the feet, neck, knees, earlobes, and lips - they need application as well. The average sunscreen wears off after about two hours so remember to reapply. Select a sunscreen with an SPF of 15 or higher for adequate protection. Try to use hats and sun-protective clothing to help fend off damaging rays.

Some of the best sunscreens for sizzling summer heat are organic. Origins Sunshine State SPF 20 Sunscreen which costs about $22.50 is excellent. A less expensive alternative is Alba Botanica Sun Chemical-Free Sunscreen SPF 18 priced at $9 designed specifically for sensitive skin. Aveda Dual Nature Face Protection SPF 15 for $25 and Jason Sunbrellas Chemical Free Sunblock SPF 30+ for $17 are two of my favorite organic sunscreens. These products feel light and carry a fresh summer-like scent that isn’t overpowering.

~ Ange Perdu