I’ll be the first to admit it; I rarely switch off from beauty-based thoughts. My YouTube sub box is crammed with ammunition, a quick tour of my flat serves as a visual reminder that I never need to buy another bathing-related product ever again and my reading material? Yep, you’ve guessed it – on the whole concerns the beauty world once again. And my latest Amazon order only adds fuel to the (mentioned above) fire…
If you’re new round these parts you may not have heard me talk about Cosmopolitan magazine before; the US-based Hearst Communications’ fashion-centric publication, a.k.a ‘The Best Damn Magazine Ever’. If you’re a G&M old-timer then you’ve probably just sighed a ‘not again Gauri’ groan. It’s OK. I’ll make this one quick. It dawned on me the other day while having a flick through their latest issue that this mag is one great learning tool. For someone who’s loved beauty for donkeys years and has slowly chipped away at practically every beauty tutorial on YouTube ever made over the years, discovering something brand-spanking new isn’t always easy. So here’s my top five tips and tricks that I’ve absorbed from the pages of Cosmopolitan that may be fresh fodder for you too:
I was thinking the other day during one of my makeup musing moments that usually occur on the bus mid-Candy Crush, how back in the day when I was a student at college no one really wore red lipstick. I was really trying to rack my brains, but I seem to remember we were all in the grips of a slick of nude gloss on the lips, if that. Now bold lips are a bit of a daily norm. I even sported Shiseido Lipstick in RS 452 the other day with not much else in a last ditch attempt to channel some Parisian chic into my look, though it probably ended up looking like ‘sweaty girl who’s gone a bit too crazy in Big Bazaar and now can’t carry it all home’ chic. In fact one of my favourite parts of getting ready to go out is seeing what my lipstick adventurous best friend, is going to put on her pout. Hint: it’s usually a MAC Lipstick. But equally I still love a nude, albeit not the porno lips we all were pulling out a few years back – hello MAC Myth – but a ‘my lips but better’ shade equally balanced in the brown, pink and beige departments. But the question is, what one rules supreme in the lipstick charts now: bold or nude? There used to be a clear winner, but now the game has changed.
It’s time to send my nails to rehab. Years of countless paint jobs have left them looking a little rundown. Too easily breakable, thin and (heads up for a TMI comment) a little flakey. I know, quite the mental image I’m conjuring up there. It wasn’t until I was chatting to my mom the other day about beauty bits and how awesome her nails were looking that something clicked. She hasn’t worn polish for months and is now the proud owner of some hardy nail beds. She used to suffer with the flakey ends like mine, but since her lacquer vacay, no more. So it’s time for me to take a varnish holiday too and this weekend I thought I’d breakdown my new mani mantras for you…
Beauty tools surround me in practically every room of my postage-stamp sized flat. A quick tour and you’ll find brushes in my wardrobe, an array of metal utensils in my bathroom and a pair of nail scissors in my kitchen ‘let’s put paperwork in here in forget about it drawer’ – everyone has one of those, right? But it got me thinking – what do I actually need. Could I narrow it down to a handful perhaps? After an afternoon of chin scratching I think I got there. Of course there’d still be a few implements that would weasel their way in, but for the purpose of this post I present you to 8 tools you NEED sprinkled with a few recommendations along the way…
I’m telling you Linking Road, Bandra is a dangerous place. Not only do I end up exiting with a bagful of cute, yet horrendously cheap clothes, I’m also rather partial to a peruse of the beauty stores. On my last trip there I ended up with two purchases from a brand I’ve heard very little about, Kama Ayurveda. A luxury organic hair, bath and body line that shuns synthetics in favour of high quality ingredients (you can read the stuff here).
It dawned on me the other day that if I was to be put on the spot and asked to pinpoint my favourite beauty brand ever, I would probably end up ummm-ing and ahhh-ing for a good five minutes before concluding with a confused shrug. So deep I know. I can only imagine it’s like picking a favourite child (I kid, I kid). Though there are some brands who bring it across the board and who don’t really disappoint whatever product I decide to try and buy from them. So here they are; four G&M-approved suggestions that would be front runners for the aforementioned question…
