fruitybeauty

The subtle rainbow eye. Also not an oxymoron.

Here is my favourite backstage shot (and as you may be noticing, one of my favourite models, Amelia) from the Steph Conley show.

Model Co did the makeup, and they are clever little cats because this muted (another new favourite thing of mine: the word muted) rainbow eye is very Paris s/s 07/08. A lot of the big make up houses did it, (Chanel, Shiseido, Dior campaigns followed through) and why it's good, and it keeps being mildly altered and done again, is because this under-and-above lining of almost metallic,  paradise tones are just a leeetle bit fun. And because the colour is not leaping all the way up the eyelid, and the shades used are relatively sheer (or mixed with a pearly silver shade to soften), and the application is more like a liner job than a disco dolly job, it's wearable and cool in a non-15-year-old-in-1976, way.

Try it at home. Garn. Crack out some purple and emerald and line those little eyes. And don't forget, when the eyes are all fruity, the lips must be... That's right, an ANTI-COLOUR!

Like this font kind of, only more like your natural lip colour, and less like words on a computer screen.

Zimmo, Bobbi and the lip that rocked Fruity's world.

How delicious is this lip, which was the look at Zimmerman yesterday. (Experts from the University of Columbia suggest it could be up to a 9.3 on the Deliciousness Scale.)

See, I've been infatuated with the orange lip for a long time, but tend to gravitate towards the really intense, almost fluoro go. But this lovely muted electric orange lip is so marvellous and even better, because as these girls kindly demonstrate, even the pale-skinned can sass it. (The more pink-based oranges tend to lend themselves to more-olive based skintones.)

Here's the lowdown for DIY fruits:
Important person: Linda Jefferyes, Makeup Artist Director, using Bobbi Brown. Important bits: Use Creamy Concealer under the eye area to hide any dark circles and use Foundation Stick sparingly on face – only use where needed. Ultra-light dusting of Sheer Finish Face Powder. Groom eyebrows upwards and brush through Clear Brow Gel. Use the Eye Definer Brush and Eye Shadow to fill in brows – they need to be defined. Curl eyelashes. Use fingertips to apply Calypso Coral Pot Rouge for Lips and Cheeks on apples of cheeks – blend well. Use the Lip Brush to apply Coral Blush Stick on lips – blot with a tissue. 


But I also love the hair. It's styled but soft, y'know? Done but undone, which is kind of Perfect Hair in my mind.

Here's the lowdown for DIY fruits:
Important person: Sophie Roberts for ghd. Important bits: Distribute Fat Hair Lotion throughout. Create a part in the centre and then shake hair dry (using blow dryer) keeping the roots flat. Using the ghd styler take up fine horizontal sections from the roots and iron flat to about 3 inches away from the scalp.  Then slightly rotate the ghd styler to 45 degrees and glide through until you reach the ends – as you get to the ends relax the rotation slightly back to about 20 degrees and glide faster to achieve a raw look to the ends.

Pussycat Mods.

Recently I posted that Nicole PussyCat Dolls was a hair icon.

Cause she has amazing hair. Always.

Little did I know she was all, like, makeup girl and fashion-trend person too. Or, y'know, looking to drop the Snoop's ghetto ho look and morph into a hot prestige bitch.

But the proof is in the filmclip, as Albert Einstein once wisely said.

Crazy pastel eye shadow and black liquid liner mod eye makeup? Check.

Heavy-ass, deep, mod fringe? Check.

Black mega-sunglasses? Check.

Pale, nude, almost-frosted lips? Check.

Monochrome threads? Check.

Most Obvious Sponsorship for a Samsung MP3 player, ever? Check.

High-five for the new beehive

I'll call it the Loose Beehive Fringe Combo. (LBFC).

I kind of snapped to attention and wondered if it was a trend when i saw Beyonce do it on her album cover, and flicking it all around (hair, eyes, legs, buttock region) it in her filmclip for Day Ja Voo (i'm kidding: of course i know how to spell it, but now you've made it awkward, so you can forget about it), and then she started wearing it kind of everywhere she went, for anything, ever.


http://people.aol.com/people/gallery/0,26335,1535981_7,00.html, and then I realised I liked it, even if she went waaaay too Texan cheerleader on this particular occasion, (beehive too high; hem in similar predicament.)

But now Nicole She-so-urban's done it all nicely and subtly http://people.aol.com/people/gallery/0,26335,1544546_11,00.html
and so it therefore morphs from coincidence, into a Trend. (Don't ask why, it just does. Shhhh.)

The lazy girls's DIY to raunch beehivey fun

You kind of need to have a fringe for this, so if you don't, take a seat and we'll see you soon. Don't pull that face, it's your fault for growing it out.

Ok. So. Blow dry wet, clean hair after applying a volume/root lifting product (i like Fudge's Root Juice), and make sure you're using a large, barrel brush and pulling your mop up and out as you go. This is what give the lift and bounce.

Don't worry about blow drying it perfectly all over, just so long as the crown/fringe are very dry and kind of high and bouncy and full of volume. Spray a light hold hairsrpay all over then gently backcomb your crown area with a fine tooth comb.

Pull the majority of your hair back into a really, really high pony, only do it that way where you pull it back loosely so it's kind of messy and imperfect and tarty college girl. Once it's up, pull the hair in the pony tail tightly in half so the elastic tightens on your scalp - this gives that teasy, palm tree base we want. Pull, with out releasing if from the pony, some volume and beehivey-ness on the top of your head. If pieces come loose, backcomb them then slip their ends back in under the elastic. Spray in place.

Now pull out your fringe and blow dry with a small round brush till it's "flopping" nicely. Pull to each side and pull taut with the brush to get rid of kinks and cowlicks. A middle part is best for this look, so if you have a SERIOUS cowlick, like THE PERSON TYPING THIS DOES, bobby pin your hair in a middle part, hairspray it lightly, and leave it for ten minutes. Lightly spray again all over.

God, I'm exhausted. Surely you have the look by now?

If you don't, print out the photo of Miss Jay-Z above and DON'T YOU DARE STOP TILL IT'S PERFECT.

Anti-frizz vending wizz

Why buy condoms or tampons or pinecones from a vending machine, when you can buy...

Lovely, Smooth, Straight Hair?

A couple of Scottish kids have just ensured their first Ferraris with this, a vending machine that offers People Who Are Having A Bad Hair Day an instant return to smooth, frizz-free hair, and thus Total Hotness, with a 90 second go of some ghd irons.


http://www.springwise.com/fashion_beauty/vending_that_kills_the_frizz/


It will cost you around, ooh, maybe three aussie bucks (can't convert; won't convert), but honestly, what price can you put on looking and feeling aesthetically excellent again after light rain just ruined hours of meticulous ghd-ing at home?

I say NONE, and if it weren't heavily trademarked by a certain credit card company, I would say "Priceless".

Maybe I should invent a lip gloss re-touch dispenser.
Or a disposable black eye-liner dispenser.
Or a Wow, My Low-cut Top Really Is Inappropriate, I Need a Nice Cardigan, cardigan dispenser.

But this vending machine is a good idea, right? Right?

Or, is it just breeding even more vanity/insecurity/our obsession with... sorry, just need to re-apply my lipstick, be right with you... with perfection?

Speak now or forever hold your straightening irons.

NY fashion week beauty trends.

When I'm planning my beauty pages, I need inspiration.

So, I like to sniff around on take-way-too-long-to-load fashion websites, and flick through those achingly hip overseas magazines who have collectively decided that punctuation is for losers, and then peruse the big guns like Allure and Lucky, and then sit at my desk smoking a cigar and figuring out what the trends are right now, because it's well-known that everyone decides that, say, tangerine lips are hot at exactly the same minute when we are handed the memo from the mythical and definitely not made up Beauty Trend Decider, who sometimes plays jokes on us and tells us that frosted blue disco eye shadow is in, and everyone really can wear it.

But then I had a Clever Moment®, and thought I would ask my violently fashion forward friend and her towering Balenciaga boots if there were any outstanding beauty trends at NY fashion week, of which she just returned from, after having bought said boots.

First she sends me this.

















Then this.

















Then this.

















Then this.























And I thought, thank GOD.
FINALLY, something I can work with.

Espada.

Most people think Thailand spews with fakes. Fake bags, t-shirts, shoes, belts, umbrellas, lighters, moustaches; you name it.

And they'd be right. When we remove ourselves from our hotel to shuffle into town to eat food that costs AUS2.80 a plate, and slurp on Singha and hold back vomit when we see 75 year old men nuzzling 17 year old Thai girls/boys/goys, we're drowning in 'designer labels'. (And rain. It hasn't stopped since we hit. Makes the extremely dodgy electrical wires hanging above our heads buzz and spark; the sewers smell even, uh, sweeter, and our hair become even more disobedient.)

But none so funny as this one, which was gloriously housed in 'Central Festival', a largely empty mall posing as Phuket's answer to Bondi Junction Westfield, and exactly the kind of badly executed take on a label I love to make up when I text friends from here. ('Ssup Marge, Pede, Donk.)

Oh look, it's raining again.
Guess we won't be slothing around the pool today.
Again.

Before I rack off, one little note on beauty over here which, I'm guessing, won't surprise many: You can not buy self-tanners here. (Even though if you were a Smart Person you would pack more than one bottle, so really, it's your fault and you deserve to look white.)

Tanning products simply do not exist here. They're as invisible, as oooh, SUNSHINE MAYBE? Because these guys do not want to be tanned. They don't even want a healthy glow. To them, white skin is the ultimate sign of beauty and elegance. (Hence all of the whitening products over here. Oh, yeah. Plenty of them. You can buy them with your petrol. Seriously)

They're onto something though, wanting to look all Russian Doll-like. After all, Gemma and Daria and Julie and Lily and Natalia and all the other super-popular-and-successful-pale-skinned kids stomping down the runway in Prada and Fendi ('Prasa' and 'Fende') are all pale as.

Whatever. I'll board that boat later.
Right now, I need DHA, DAMMIT.

Singapore: Muggy. And not in a steal-your-bag-way.

So i'm in Singapore for a Work Thing that i can't discuss here because it's a lovely big secret and isn't being launched for many months yet. Let's say years to really put you off the scent. Anyway, so there's editors and beauty girls and peacocks and monkeys and super-sized snails everywhere, right, because it's all tropical here and that means there'll be obscure animals that wander around as though they're on contract from the zoo and are being paid to 'act normal', but mainly what I'm noticing is that even at a resort, and even in 116 percent humidity, magazine girls will look excellent. Now this does not include me. Even though by all accounts i am a magazine girl. My hair flops and frizzes. Theirs shines and swings. My make up slides, or simply doesn't get put on. Theirs is velvety and flawless. My dresses and thongs look like they've seen Singapore 789 times already. Theirs are Prada. I could go on.

Anyway, so the toes. They've all got wild toes. One has a green big toe, then the rest are ref. One has all blue one foot, the silver the other. Then there's this girl, whom i surreptitiously snapped while she was looking at, ooh, probably a giant snail. She's gone with a spacey, disco version of the french manicure. If you look closely, she's sporting a hot pink base, then a strip of silver glitter where the white would delicately top off the nail.

Should be wrong, but it's so right on her, it's almost left.

Coral toes. DO IT.

I feel like I've had a baby.
Or bought a new plant, on a less dramatic scale.

Because you're supposed to blog every day, right? That's the rule. And that's what they say in all of those torturous How To Make Your Blog Successful articles in the paper, and on some of the more advice-generous Successful Blogs out there. (What they don't, but perhaps should say, is to ignore all of that and just be a savagely witty gay man in LA with a massive, hard ... drive capable of having more Internet Explorer windows open on picture agencies than you have Italian man sandals, so you can post an endless stream of blogs about celebrities doing silly and naughty and spectacularly dull things in violently recent photos.)

ANYWAY. If you'd just be quiet so I can get back to my point.

Which is that i need to write something about beauty on here every, single, day. So that when people come here expecting beauty stuff, they actually get them, instead of a MP3 of a dancing chihuahua, which I initially thought might be a very amusing post for today.

Dedicated beauty talk: YOU MUST WEAR AN ORANGE OR CORAL BASED NAIL POLISH THIS SUMMER.

I am wearing a Stupidly Fluorescent Orange [technical term] on my toelets currently, and they look superb. More fun than a bag of mixed lollies blended with a five year old. And, it must be a Real Life Trend, because all the other beauty editors from all the Other Magazines are wearing similar fruity shades. [No pun intended, but let's enjoy it all the same.] And except for the time I peeled a mango with my feet during a Uni talent quest, never so many compliments on my feet have come my way. And since mangoes are in fact orange... y in colour, and I'm talking about orange-based tones and compliments on feet... Look, I think you can see where I'm heading with this. The point I'm making is pretty obvious.

I went to Uni.