Fresh Sugar Lip Treatment SPF 15
($22.50 for 0.15 oz.) is a moisturizing lip balm in a tube. The Sugar Lip Treatment is definitely hydrating, and it’s thick enough that it leaves a thin, buttery layer on lips once applied. It has a slightly gloss look, but it isn’t too high-shine. I love how moisturizing it is when it’s on my lips, but the problem is it doesn’t last for more than a couple of hours. I find that constant reapplication is necessary to maintain that hydrated feel–once you stop, so does the moisturizing.
I love the sweet, lemony scent, though, but I am a sucker for citrus-y scents–though there’s no real taste to me! This is something I like to use during the day and at my desk. I tend to reapply lip balm several times throughout the day as I eat/drink and the like, so it’s perfect for that. It’s not so great for a slick of balm at night, because it just doesn’t last long enough for that. It does contain SPF 15 (octinoxate at 7.49% and oxybenzone at 2%), which is a nice touch.
The packaging is gorgeous–it’s an near matte but slightly metallic bronzed metal (well, that’s what it feels like!) tube. It’s sturdy and has a bit of heft to it, which makes it feel like a lipstick rather than a lip balm. All the fancy packaging probably contributes to the higher price tag–at least for a lip balm–but it’s much more emollient than many other stick-based balms I’ve tried.
I like it–between the scent and the buttery feel on my lips–I may purchase another tube once I finish this one. I like the convenience of a tube, the lemon-y scent, and the feel. I do think a product like this is easy to go through, though, because it’s so emollient that it’s easy to over-apply and finish up a tube rather quickly. I’ve been testing it out for a week or so now, and I expect one tube will last just over a month with daily use.
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- Product: 26/30
- Value: 7/10
- Ease of Use: 4/5
- Packaging: 4/5
Recommendation: It’s not a miracle treatment, but it’s a nice lip balm for everyday use. If you have only slightly chapped or dry lips, I think this may be sufficient for you. Those looking for more long-term results may find that the moisturization stops when you stop using the product.
Availability: BlueMercury
Philosophy Amazing Grace Shimmering Powder
($29.50) is a soft, icy pink highlighting powder. Its packaged in a mirror-finish compact and inside is a light pink powder with the word “grace” embedded in the center. When you open the compact, there’s a mirror with the phrase, “where there is grace, there is beauty,” which is a nice touch. I just like the uplifting spirit of the Philosophy brand, and I think this is a nice reminder to have in a compact, too.
It’s a fine-milled, very smooth powder that can easily be used to highlight specific areas or dusted lightly for an all-over glow. It does not impart much color, if any–it’s almost the faintest pink-tinged white. There’s a definite sheen rather than obvious shimmer or glitter that does the highlighting as well, which is always nice in a highlighter. Amazing Grace isn’t a new, innovative highlighter, but it’s a solid one if you’re looking for something soft, subtle, and with no real color. I’d say the slight pinkness of the product does give a healthy glow to the face without actually making it a light blusher, so it works for a highlighter.
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- Product: 26/30
- Value: 8/10
- Ease of Use: 4/5
- Packaging: 4/5
Recommendation: Pretty-in-pink, Philosophy’s newest highlighter does a nice job of softly highlighting the face without going overboard with glitter or shimmer. It’s nearly colorless, which may make it a nice option for those not looking to add color to cheeks!
Availability: Sephora
NARS Summer 2010: Enchanted Cream Blush
NARS Enchanted Cream Blush
($26.00) is a new shade of cream blush launched with NARS’ Summer Collection. NARS describes it as a “soft peach,” and I’d completely agree with that assessment.
Enchanted is a sheer, soft peach with soft golden shimmer and a slight sheen. I’d like to put an emphasis on sheer, though, because I could not get it to show up on my cheeks, being around medium in skin tone (I’d say I’m on the lighter side of medium, but I’m certainly not fair). I did try to build up the color on my cheeks, but it just wasn’t working for me. On my skin tone, it ended up being more like a barely-there highlighter, unfortunately!
I can see this being really lovely and soft on fairer skin tones, and I think it would work well on both cool and warm skin tones. Cool skin tones will find this works as a soft peach that doesn’t turn orange, while warmer skin tones are easily complemented by peachy colors.
The formula itself is soft, creamy enough to melt into skin but not so creamy that it slips around. It dries down quickly and blends easily onto skin. I find that NARS Cream Blushes last me three to four hours before fading a bit. I like using them as bases and using a setting powder or powder blush on top to set and prolong wear to about six to eight hours.
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- Product: 25/30
- Value: 8/10
- Ease of Use: 4/5
- Packaging: 4/5
Recommendation: If you’re looking for a way to prolong the wear of your blushes, you may find these cream blushes work well alone or as a base for your powder blushes.
Availability: Nordstrom
Chanel Darling Rouge Allure Lipstick
Not Quite Summer: Chanel Darling Rouge Allure Lipstick
Chanel Darling (#30) Rouge Allure Lipstick ($30.00 for 0.12 oz.) is a soft, squishy, kind-of-jelly-ish pink. It adds some color, but it’s still on the sheerer side (particularly for a Rouge Allure). It has a very glossy finish and feel–almost like a Hydrabase lipstick, actually–so it feels moisturizing and has more of a lip balm feel, though it does give my lips noticeable pinkness. It’s a very muted, toned down pink that’s easily wearable by both cool and warmer skin tones, because it will take on many of the characteristics of your natural lip color. When my Chanel artist showed me the sheet of products for Summer, I saw Darling on the list so I asked her to set it aside (along with Genial) for me, but it just doesn’t seem to fit with the launch. It fits even less so when set against the brightness and vibrancy of Genial and Super.
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- Product: 26/30
- Value: 8/10
- Ease of Use: 4/5
- Packaging: 4/5
Recommendation: If you’re in the market for a sheer tinge of pink in the simplicity of a lipstick but with the feel of a lightweight balm, you might like Darling.
Availability: Nordstrom (By the by, Nordstrom still has Genial!)
Givenchy Will Take You to the Tropics & Back
Givenchy’s Summer Collection is an island themed number featuring quite the variety in products, but in this post, I’m going to concentrate on Island Lagoon (No. 17) Le Prisme Mono ($29). It’s a multi-colored “quad” that features lighter aqua-blue, medium sky blue, grayish-black, and deep purple-blue. The powder portion is small enough where using the individual colors is near impossible, but the top two squares are primarily aqua-blue with sky blue, while the bottom two squares are primarily aqua-blue and deep purple-blue, so I kind of looked at it as two shades of eyeshadow in total.
The compact has a pretty blue coloring on the outside, and the compact itself is much slimmer and thinner than previous limited-edition eyeshadow quartets released by Givenchy in the past. It comes with a tiny sponge-tipped applicator that I wouldn’t bother using myself.
The eyeshadow looks incredibly pretty and artsy in the palette, but I’m not in love with the product itself. It’s just not as bright and vibrant as it could be. The first two squares yielded a frosted aqua-blue that’s semi-opaque–it’s noticeably on the sheerer side. The bottom two squares worked together to create a semi-sheer, muted navy blue with silver sheen. Over an eyeshadow base, they’ll be less visibly sheer, but the colors won’t pop. If you want to get them to really pop, try them over a more metallic base–go for a champagne shimmer shade to keep them the same, slightly muted shade or use a colored base (like gold or blue), you can brighten them up a bit. The eyeshadow itself is incredibly silky and buttery smooth–easy to apply and blend.
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- Product: 25/30
- Value: 8/10
- Ease of Use: 4/5
- Packaging: 4/5
Recommendation: I like it, but it’s not love–for me, it looks prettier than it actually is. I think if they made it as vibrant as it looks, I’d like it more! The eyeshadow has an excellent texture and feel but could use a little more pigmentation.
Availability: May 2010
Out of Chanel’s ultra exclusive Noir et Or Collection, Ligne et Ombre de Chanel in Jet-Gold ($45.00) emerges. While not exactly groundbreaking in terms of color, it’s extremely fitting to the collection. It’s a matte black cake eyeliner paired with a golden peach flecked eyeshadow.
The black side is not meant to be used dry–it needs to be used wet so it can “activate.” I just gave the brush the tiniest bit of wetness, and I was already able to get a nice, intense black out of it. The gold, while it can be worn dry, also looks and wears better wet–and I like that with Chanel shadows, I can use them wet without leaving a wet spot behind. (Similarly, the gold would adhere and look more uniform used over a base rather than dry, since it is so shimmery.)
When used as an eyeliner, the black lasts for hours on me. I didn’t have any fading, smudging, or migration after eight hours of wear on my lower lash line (not my waterline, to be clear). If you really wanted, you could definitely use it with a brush to darken up the crease or any shadow you’re wearing, but it doesn’t excel at that (and again, it’s supposed to be used as an eyeliner).
It’s a fun product, but there’s nothing so standout about it that it’s necessarily worth hunting down and forking over $45 for. Chanel and luxury makeup collectors will likely enjoy it, but I think for others, it’s not going to knock your socks off–I’d say grab an eyeshadow duo, lipstick, or gloss instead (or even an eyeshadow quad, since this is just a little less than one!). I think if they made the gold a metallic cream finish, it could have gotten really interesting. It may not have been the most wearable, but it would have certainly played into the collection’s theme just a bit more.
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- Product: 26/30
- Value: 7/10
- Ease of Use: 4/5
- Packaging: 4/5
Recommendation: The cake eyeliner is excellent, but the gold eyeshadow is almost like a throw-in–pretty but not amazing. Chanel collectors will likely covet the piece, as exclusive as it is, but non-collectors won’t miss out if they skip this.
Availability: Chanel Boutiques
