Pinup, vintage fashion, vintage home, Jane Austen's Emma, and Miracles from Molecules!
If makeup products were a baseball team, your face primer, foundation, and setting powder would be your battery. Okay, maybe I’m belaboring the metaphor, but the stuff you put on your skin really is the foundation (har har) for your makeup look.
There are tons of great products out there, but I’ve settled on the following team: Photo Finish Foundation Primer by Smashbox, Vitalumiere Aqua Foundation by Chanel, and Invisible Pressed Setting Powder by Laura Mercier.
Given last week’s Stila Stay All Day Liquid Lipstick review, you’re going to think I’m some sort of Stila nut. I’m not, but I might be if my third (next) major Stila buy comes out a major winner!
Today I’m addressing liquid eyeliner, the bane of pretty much everyone’s existence and yet such a staple in every midcentury-loving gal’s makeup kit. You’ve all seen The Liquid Eyeliner Meme and lived it to some extent, yes?
There are literally a ton of products to help you create a version of the look: real liquid liner that you put on with a slim brush, gel liners in a pot that you apply with an angled brush, and my personal favorite, the felt-tipped liquid liner pen. Since I like to do the flicky wing style liner from the late fifties and early sixties, I need a product that flows easily without dripping or bleeding off. I’ve also got to have a sharp applicator tip to help me create the clean wing points and a wide enough “brush” surface to make a strong line across the full width of the lid. I’ve tried a ton of liquid liner products and the only one that consistently delivers a uniform line with sharp definition is Stila’s Stay All Day Waterproof Liquid Eyeliner in Black.
Yes, you must use a good eyelid primer for it to work precisely right, but that’s true of any eye makeup product. It also takes some time to get the “hang” of liquid liner. That said, I find the “felt-tip pen” style applicators are the easiest to approach. The pen tip on the Stila liner is the right size, shape, and substance to provide the line I like with the resistance and steady product delivery my spazzy hands need. Additionally, the color goes on opaque and evenly. Once dry, it doesn’t flake or smudge off. When it’s time to remove it, my Neutrogena makeup remover sheets + a little extra makeup remover work fine.
This one’s not cheap. It’s $20 per tube, but the results are worth it. The Stila liquid liner also comes in a ton of colors, so if you’re the type who likes to try pink, blue, green, and brown eyeliners, Stila has options for you. Like the lipstick from last week, you can find it at places like Sephora and Ulta.
I love kitschy, tiki things and my favorite fashions are mid century designs inspired by Polynesian and Asian art. After falling in love with a pretty blue Alfred Shaheen last year, I recently obtained another, very different Shaheen style this month!
This one’s a strapless mid-1950s dress with a pleated shelf bust and full skirt. I’m not usually a fan of brown, but the fabric on this one is gorgeous! It’s a rich, cool brown Polynesian texture with gorgeous, creamy white blossoms. The pleated upper bodice is a nice, sharp white that contrasts nicely with the brown texture of the main dress.
Continue reading “Outfit of the Day: More vintage Alfred Shaheen”
I didn’t end up doing anything for New Year’s Eve, but I had plans. Even a nice dinner out deserves a special dress, and this time around I chose Trashy Diva’s new Lena dress. She’s a gorgeous 1950s halter dress with a circle skirt and very festive Swarovski-style crystals and glass beading on the bodice and halter straps. The dress was intended for the holiday season, but it’s actually rather seasonless and the color flatters many skin tones!
The bodice is beautifully pleated with a nice “shelf” detail that pulls up into the halter straps. For those who hate the neck-pulling that happens with many halters, this one’s worth trying. The bodice is very structured and form-fitting, which takes some of the pressure off the neck. The halter buttons at the back of the neck, too, which alleviates the pull that often occurs with halter ties.
I got the size 14, which fits a bit closer than the stated measurements on the Lena size chart. At 43-32-48″, the bodice fits perfectly without a bra.
Continue reading “New Year, New Year’s Eve Fashion: Trashy Diva’s Lena Dress”
This spring’s Pantone Palette for women is half brights, half pastels. Pantone claims this is emblemmatic of designers’ and consumers’ interest in establishing “equilibrium,” whatever that means. There are three blues, four if you count “Paloma,” a light blue-gray.
The “Freesia” yellow would make a pretty halter dress. “Dazzling Blue” screams accessories to me. And minty, pastel greens are always pretty, so “Hemlock” would work for just about anything.
I’m not sure what I think. What do you think?
Not very original, but a feature that gets the point across. When it comes to makeup, there are certain products I rely on. While I’m in no way a professional, I feel like I should share the stuff that thrills me so others can benefit from my happy – and sometimes not-so-happy – experiences.
My current favorite is Stila’s Stay All Day Liquid Lipstick, a vibrant, heavily pigmented opaque lipstick that applies like a gloss. It’s got an almost gel-like consistency when it goes on, yet it dries quickly. Once dry, there’s very little transference and NO feathering, which is something your traditional oil/wax lipsticks do when they hit warm lip.
The colors are beautiful, especially for the vintage red lipstick fiends out there. Their flagship color is a true red shade called “Beso.” It’s similar to Besame Red and MAC’s Ruby Woo, but without the runny consistency of the Besame lipsticks or the drying effect of the MAC matte lipsticks.
I got mine in a limited edition Stila set presented by Sephora. The set is no longer available, but the single tubes are available at places like Sephora and Ulta for around $22 each.
Yeah, that would be me. In the last two weeks I got two more (yes, these make three) vintage Heywood Wakefield M308G “step” side tables in the “Champagne” finish and the M320 “kneehole” desk in “Wheat.”
I seriously love this side table model. If I could be a piece of furniture, this is what I’d be. steppy second level and the sweepy legs are quirky, yet graceful. The inward-upward taper created by the legs and the smaller upper step take a page straight out of classical Greek architecture. This is the freaking Parthenon of end tables.
While this particular style was only in production for about six years (1948-1953) and they don’t come cheap, there are enough M308Gs out there to populate your own modest-sized mid century furniture planet if you really wanted to. I got these from a knowledgeable collector who had a nice HeyWake buffet project in the hopper and didn’t have time or space to deal with them now.
Now for the desk and chair. I picked them up from a nice couple who needed to make room for their baby’s crib. The wife’s grandfather had purchased the set new, which made me a little sad to think that such a nifty piece was leaving its original family. That said, I will give it a very nice, loving home, so no one has to worry.
Heywood Wakefield produced this iconic kneehole design from 1950-1965. Count Alexis de Sakhnoffsky – the 20th century Russian-American industrial designer known for his streamlined, modernist style – created it. What makes the desk extra-nifty is the very wide upper drawer. And the left-lower double-high bottom drawer, which makes it perfect for storing file folders. And the fully finished desk back. And…well, pretty much everything.
My plans for world domination through mid century birch furniture are becoming reality! Craigslist, I couldn’t do it without you!
Technology is awesome. This week, it’s particularly awesome because I learned that the British Library has used it to post a whole mess of nifty illustrations from beloved classic editions of Jane Austen’s novels to its Flikr stream.
Some of these Austen illustrations include Irish Illustrator Hugh Thomson’s famous line drawings for Macmillan’s 1896 edition of Emma, represented below by Mr. Knightley’s proposal.
For more from and about iconic illustrated Austen works, peruse the following: