Tag: CHanel

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Legions of Lip Balms

On By samanthaIn HEALTHLeave a comment

My seventeen year old son is taking some medication which is making his skin, and in particular his lips, very dry. He is constantly coating his lips with balm. It is no exaggeration to say he seems to get through a stick a week. His favourite is the Palmers Cocoa Butter Formula. This tastes too chocolatey to me but that’s one thing he likes about it. He says this product is the most effective at keeping his lips moisturised. It sells at around £1.70.

There are so many lip balms available it is difficult to know which one to choose. My son tends to lose them often so I am not going to be buying him anything costing over £5. For myself, I used to buy the little tins of Vaseline Lip Therapy, a bargain at around £1.25. but I began to find my lips were ridiculously dry if I left the product off even for one day. I did particularly like their tinted Rosy Lips shade though. When I am out and about I think a stick is more hygienic than a pot of something that I keep dipping my, possibly germy, finger into.

I have been impressed by the Dr Paw Paw balms which contain SPF 20 and come in a squeezy tube. I have some discoloration around my mouth, something that appeared during my pregnancies so I do like to make sure this area is protected from the sun. I particularly like their peachy shade which does not feel gloopy or sticky at all. It provides a very subtle shine. If you don’t like to wear lip gloss or lipstick then this is a good option. These sell at around £4.

My daughter likes the Burts Bees balms which come in all sorts of different flavours and there are tinted versions too. I particularly like their peppermint balm. I do find these a little sticky but they are very effective at moisturising and good for leaving on overnight. There are lovely boxed sets available which make nice little presents if your teenager has a party to go to and you don’t want to spend a fortune on a gift.

When choosing a lip balm I am looking for something moisturising but not sticky feeling. I recently bought the Nivea 24 Hour Moisture Hydro balm which smells lovely and is not sticky but I didn’t find it at all effective on the hydration front. A pity because I am usually impressed with Nivea products. I also wasn’t keen on Neutrogena Norwegian Formula Lip Care balm either, it didn’t seem very moisturising and my lips felt dry shortly after applying it.

If you are willing to spend more money then I can recommend Chanel Rouge CoCo Baume which is a hefty £36. I did buy this once and it was a beautiful product to use and of course the packaging is gorgeous. It doesn’t appear to contain any SPF though. Or you could spend a whopping £62 on La Mer’s The Lip Balm which has amazing reviews on the Harvey Nicholas website. A friend of mine has been buying Gayle Hayman’s Lip Lift for years. It is a lip conditioner that is supposed to fight the appearance of fine lines around the mouth. QVC sell them in packs of two for £36.

So my verdict is, if you have a teenager who loses a lip balm a week, go for Palmers Cocoa Butter Formula or a minty Burts Bees. If you are treating yourself splash out on Chanel or try the reasonably priced Dr Paw Paw for shiny but not sticky lips.

Thank you for reading,

Samantha

Header Photo by  Brittney Weng  on Upslash

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What’s In Your Bag?

On By samanthaIn SHOPPINGLeave a comment

I rarely look at YouTube but last week I was looking for videos demonstrating how to make an A Level study timetable for my youngest son – exciting I know.  On my home page was a video suggested entitled What’s In My Bag? Huh? People actually spend their free time watching women discuss the contents of their handbags?? How asinine, I thought. An hour later, having entered some sort of trance state, I had watched about five of the videos, mostly Korean or Japanese YouTubers, no speaking just soothing background music playing and clumsily translated subtitles along the lines of “let me introduce you to the contents of my elegant bag” and “this lipstick creates an elegant and stylish atmosphere around the mouth”. The contents are all almost identical, a Louis Vuitton key pouch, £240, seems to be almost compulsory, a Gucci or YSL card holder, Airpods, huge iPhone, and a flat, rectangular bottle of hand-sanitiser which they all spray in the air around their faces declaring that it smells wonderful. I can’t imagine it is very good for their lungs.

Video on Youtube by GrownVlog

So what’s in my bag? I have small Ralph Lauren bag that I sometimes use if I am going out of an evening but, usually, I prefer a hobo style because I like to carry around a lot of totally unnecessary things.  In fact, creature of habit that I am, I have been buying a variation on the same style of bag for the past fifteen years. My current version is from Whistles, the style is called Baye. Black pebbled leather, gold hardware and very simple. In the summer I have an oak coloured Mulberry Bayswater (bought in the sale fifteen years ago) which I plan to sell as it is too heavy and formal. I tend to buy good quality items and use them for a long time.

The contents of my bag are not very exciting I’m afraid. The beautiful young YouTubers are all about Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Givenchy, Chanel and Céline. I did have a Chanel wallet but I recently sold it as I felt embarrassed using it at the Tesco checkout. Fortunately the large Classic Flap style I owned was recently discontinued so it became a desirable collectors item and I was able to recoup my money. Now I have a small Kate Spade purse, bought for £50 in the sales. Also in my bag you will find my ancient and very scratched Harrods key ring, a reusable shopping bag, small notebook, pen, umbrella, numerous crumpled but unused tissues, a Burts Bees lip balm or three, a mirror, comb, perfume sample, gloves and, if I’m likely to be waiting around anywhere, my Kindle. I did have beautiful silver keyring from Tiffany, given to me by a colleague years ago when I left work to have my first child, but a builder borrowed my keys for an afternoon and then never returned them. He looked me right in the eye and said he’d never been in possession of them. I hope he got a good price selling it or that his wife enjoys using my lovely keyring. I really should treat myself and replace it.

There’s something comforting about having a few of your own possessions with you at all times. In Margaret Atwood’s sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments when the women were rounded up their bags were confiscated and Atwood refers to the fact that they missed their little packets of tissues. Sadly, that was to be the least of their problems.

Now that I have wasted an hour watching this rather hypotonic content I should get back to researching A Level revision timetables!

Thank you for reading,

Samantha 

Cover Photo by Marissa Grootes on Unsplash

Perfume Pretenders

On By samanthaIn HEALTHLeave a comment

My twenty year old daughter had some friends round and one of them walked into our house on a cloud of what of what I assumed was Chanel’s CoCo Mademoiselle. I have a love-hate relationship with this particular fragrance. I love it on anybody else but it smells slightly sour on me and is guaranteed to give me a migraine. There is a note in many Chanel fragrances that gives me a headache, I can really only wear Chance. My daughter’s friend said no way could she afford Chanel, they are all students, she was wearing Soft Iris by Marks & Spencer.

On my next visit to M & S I found the scent, priced at £10 and sprayed a tiny amount onto my wrist. An hour later it smelled prettier on me than Madomoiselle and, more importantly, no migraine! I bought a bottle. The range also includes a few other well-known perfume “dupes”. Pink Pepper is apparently a dead-ringer for Lancome’s La Vie Est Belle, a wildly popular and very sweet perfume . Fresh Mandarin supposedly smells like Caroline Herrera’s Good Girl. The girls in Ms Herrera’s fragrance campaign have to be good while the boys get to be bad, rather unimaginative gender-stereotyping in my opinion but that is beside the point, the CH perfume is lovely and it comes in a high-heeled shoe shaped bottle. There is also a Jo Malone wannabe in the range, Sea Salt and Neroli . M & S sell a pack of all the various testers for £5 which is fantastic value. I think this would make a nice little gift for a teenage girl.

Perfume is one of things that is so easy to get wrong and is is an expensive mistake if you end up with a £75 bottle of something that you no longer like after a couple of days. I have re-sold so many used-twice bottles on eBay over the years. Now I generally buy Chanel body sprays, which are around £30, because they are less strong than even the EDTs and are not headache inducing. They last for ages too as you only need to spray a tiny amount. If I am considering a new fragrance I will usually buy a sample on eBay and wear it for a couple of weeks or so before committing to a fully sized bottle but, most days, I don’t bother with perfume anymore.

While in Marks and Spencer I also bought a small make up bag for my handbag, a bargain at £6, and a delicious bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich!  

Thank you for reading,

Samantha

Cover Photo by Laura Chouette on Unsplash

Purse Predicament

On By samanthaIn SHOPPINGLeave a comment

In my recent post Shopping Shy I described how much my daughter hates shopping and that I think it’s the sense of overwhelm that is the problem. There is simply too much stuff to choose from. Gone are the days of going into a shop and having two or three choices. Now we all have fingertip access to thousands of retailers offering their, often very similar, wares.

In Ruby Wax’s book Frazzled she describes how the act of buying some cushions became a huge exercise in overthinking. I remember some years ago going onto Amazon to order some new salt and pepper grinders. There were hundreds and hundreds to choose from. Goodness knows how much time I wasted comparing them all, I actually began to feel quite stressed over this inconsequential decision. I eventually bought two perfectly ordinary wooden grinders which I have never given a second thought to since. 

This week I decided to buy a new purse. I wanted something smaller than I usually use with room for a few cards, a couple of coins and a little bit of cash. How hard could that be? Having sold several bags and purses on eBay as part of my ongoing de-cluttering exercise, I was in the position to treat myself to something nice if I wanted. I Googled small zip-around purse and was immediately swamped with choice. There was a beautiful Chanel number for an eye-watering price, I discounted that immediately as I have not won the lottery. Louis Vuitton have a pretty model for £350 but it’s still very expensive and I’m not a huge fan of their Monogram canvas. Mulberry have one for £240 but it is a little plain. Oliver Bonas have some at £26 but they aren’t leather although I was very tempted by the bright orange. I choose a glossy patent leather purse from French brand Isabel Bernard for £60 but a £30 delivery charge was added at checkout so I cancelled. Eventually, after much deliberating, I ordered one from the Kate Spade sale which came in at around £50. It arrived yesterday and is perfect. Phew.

I do wonder how all of these different retailers keep going, surely there can’t be that many people looking to buy the same product? I haven’t even mentioned all the hand made options available on Etsy. I buy most of my birthday cards from Etsy but I haven’t had a great experience with other items, the quality has been lacking or they just haven’t tuned up.

If you’d like to pick out your own small purse without the over-thinking drama, then take a look at my Pinterest board below, I have done the leg-work for you.

https://pin.it/rbgjK9HJ7

Thank you for reading,

Samantha

Cover Photo by shawnanggg on Unsplash

A Lifetime of Lipsticks

On By samanthaIn HEALTHLeave a comment

Woolworths, Romford 1984 and teenage me is purchasing the best lipstick I will over own. Woolies own Evette brand in the colour “Mulberry Wine”. The perfect pinky brown which stayed on all day. If only I had known that it would be discontinued I would have bought all their stock with my pocket money. In the forty years since then I have been on the hunt for another colour I have liked so much.

It’s odd that I can remember the name of just about every lipstick I have ever owned. The first was Boots No 17 “Twilight Teaser”, a bluesh, iridescent mauve. I’m sure it looked terrible but it was certainly eye-catching. I wore it to a non-uniform day at school and every girl asked me what colour it was, a new experience for me as I definitely wasn’t known for my style. Another Boots No 17 favourite was the safer and very pretty “Poncho Pink”. I also loved the Miss Selfridge “Kiss and Make Up” range and wonder if Charlotte Tilbury took some of her inspiration from their lip-print embossed branding. I wore their “Iron Maiden” and “Copper Knobs” shades” around 1987. 

When I began to have some disposable income I graduated onto the more expensive brands. Estee Lauder “Spiced Cider”, a rust colour, was one I wore for years along with Lancome’s “Brun Nu” and “Rose Nu”. I went to a wedding around 1991 and actually asked one guest which lipstick she was wearing as I liked it so much and thought it may be “The One”. Clinique “Super Nectar”, I bought it the next day and it looked absolutely hideous on me.

I actually still have the lipstick I wore too my 1994 wedding, a rather daring matt red with incredible staying power, Rochas shade 56, it’s pictured below . I experimented with dark, blackberry colours at this time as well although always had to blot them so there was just the feintest stain left. My favourite which I also still have, although it smells a bit dubious after all these years, was Chanel Shade 36. I now buy Clinique’s Almost lipstick in Black Honey which is a very wearable balm-like tint.

Post Pandemic I seem to wear less make up but I don’t generally leave the house without a quick dusting of face-powder, usually Clinique, and a slick of some lip product or other. Loreal’s “Organza” is usually my go-to everyday lipstick or a tinted lip balm from Dr Paw Paw. I also love Estee Lauder’s “Pinkberry” which is the closest I can come to wearing a nude without looking totally washed out.

I never have been able to find a shade as perfect as my Woolies lipstick but perhaps it was just the thrill of being grown up enough to wear make up for the first time. I also hold fond memories of the little tins of four blushers sold by M & S around the same time but I certainly wouldn’t wear them now. Having said that. my make up choices have barely changed in all these years and perhaps it is time to change things up a little bit.

Thank you for reading,

Samantha