Four Products to Replace the One That Got Recalled
Plus: watching my dead skin roll off in the shower and loving it.
Disclaimer: The blog this week is 98% about make up and dead skin. So if this doesn’t interest you… click away and come back next week when I’ll be talking about films.
Summer daily face
Last summer my favourite face sunscreen was recalled and then discontinued. It was supposed to be SPF 50 but was testing as low as SPF 4. It was a matte zinc based sunscreen, but because I’m already very pale, and get shiny, the physical mineral white cast worked perfectly as base make up for me to knock down how red my face gets in warm weather.
I really hate the style of beauty writing that is like “oh god i’m so disgusting I need X Y Z to FIX ME”, but I should note that some teenage girls once stopped to point and laugh at me when I was walking home from the gym because my red visage was too much for them to bear. Think of the children! I must not offend their eyes on the hot subway platform!!!
Fortunately this summer I’ve figured out how to achieve the same look and texture of my now cancelled holy grail sunscreen. Unfortunately, it now takes me four products instead of one.
These products are favourites because they hold up all day while bouncing between sweating heavily in 38C weather and high humidity and the arid microclimate of an overly air conditioned office building with fluorescent overhead lighting.
Base
I start with the Beauty Of Joseon Aqua Fresh SPF. It’s a gel-cream, their standard one makes me too shiny. I follow that with Glossier Perfecting Skin Tint (shade: G10). I’ve never really understood the purpose of setting sprays. It took the clever naming of ONE/SIZE Powder Melt Glass Setting Spray to make it click for me that you can use powder to set your make up and the setting spray to hide the amount of powder you’ve just put all over your face. I use Charlotte Tilbury Airbrush Flawless Finish powder (shade: 1 Fair). I am still mourning the botched reformulation of Givenchy Prisme Libre Loose Powder.
Then I go in with Kosas Revealer Extra Bright Colour Corrector (shade: Magic) for under my eyes and around my nose.
I am obsessed with the Kraum Micro Taper Brush and the colour correcting shade in the m.ph Underpainting Palette for spot concealing. Before this product combo, I had never been able to get Lisa Eldridge’s pinpoint concealing technique to work for me… “My blemishes just reject make-up!” I would say, defeated. I was trying to conceal my blemishes with under eye brightening concealer and my finger (LOL) - colour corrector and a truly teeny tiny brush was the key!
Blonze and Freckles
What do you do after removing all of the redness from your face with your base layer? You go in and add redness back but in all the right places of course! I bought the Fara Homidi Blonzer refill (shade: Nue) and repurposed my old blue FH lip palette to house it. I put this on my cheeks, across my nose (sunburn blush), and on my eyes. It has incredible lasting power.
I also bring my freckles back up to the surface with the Rudi Berry freckle pen. I think this was a KJH rec. I have tried so many different freckle pens over the years and this one beats them all. I don’t really understand their website - you can only buy this freckle pen a few times a year, you have to ‘become a member’ (?) - I jump through a lot of hoops to get my hands on this pen! I stockpile it and it’s perfect!
Eyes
I’m on strike from mascara at the moment but have rediscovered tightlining. I used to use the Hourglass Gel Eye Liner in Canyon (brown) - but when I went to repurchase, it was sold out in that shade, so I picked up Obsidian (ultra black). I’m enjoying the contrast of such a dark lash line when forgoing mascara entirely. It took me about a week to get used to tightlining again. There were tears… but on day five my eyeballs have come to accept the pencil with no complaints.
I picked up the Kraum Eye Shaper Brush last week and I’ve never had a brush this shape before. I use the aforementioned Blonzer as eyeshadow and this brush makes it so easy to apply to the crease line only because the bristles are so densely packed, and then you can flip it over to blend. I’ve never been able to create a shape with my eyeshadow so quickly - I usually just put it all over the lid and blend out. Achieving a subtle cut crease like this in 3 seconds flat makes me feel so elegant!
I like to tint my own brows and it has been on my to do list for weeks. The box of Dybrow is sitting on my desk taunting me daily. Until I get around to this —TGFBB (thank god for Boy Brow)
Lip combo
Current lip combo is Fara Homidi lip liner in Faun and Hourglass Phantom Smoothing Blur Lip Balm in Echo. The Hourglass balm has incredible lasting power - it’s still there after hours, velvety matte - but not dry?!
Body
I was influenced by Christine to try the Sluff mitt. When she started talking about how you can see your dead skin come off in clumps on the shower floor I was sold! I had always been a Salux girl. In recent years I became devoted to the Soft Services Buffing Bar, but I don’t love the way I feel soapy after using it, I always felt like I needed to go back in with shower gel to clean off the residue of the bar after scrubbing.
The Sluff mitt WORKS. You do, in fact, see rolled up balls of dead skin all over the shower floor and it’s very satisfying.
I’m also intrigued by the new Nécessaire Body Wipe + Eucalyptus Water Spray but I have to remember at some point that it’s not my job to review every new beauty product that I like the packaging of and draw the line somewhere (I’ll probably try it next month).
📺 TV
The TV adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ The Shards finally has a release date - August 5th.
🎧 on repeat
As I type, Madonna is a 20 min walk away from me at the Knockdown Center throwing a party for Confessions II. I love the new Charli video… and thank you Beyoncé for taking your time with Act III but giving us some crumbs to feed upon while we wait.