I’ve just been scrolling back through all of my previous What’s In My Makeup Bag posts and I stumbled across this particular beauty: the Summer 2018 edition. If you don’t want to click through and read it then here’s the gist of the matter, in image form:

Isn’t it nice? Such a lovely lipstick! So cheery and optimistic. I shall have to dig that particular lipstick out – I’ve been wearing my pink-tinged beiges for far too many months. Perhaps it’s time for a coral lipstick favourites video, to lead us into summer?

But for now, we’re still on neutrals and beiges with a hint of rosiness on the cheeks. Low-key springtime, nothing fancy, mainly because most of us are still on lockdown and those who aren’t probably don’t feel very celebratory or adventurous. The focus (for me, at least) is on good skin and trying to look as healthy and fresh as possible – bronzer that disappears into the base, a dusting of sunshine over the top and a dewy finish to lids and lips.

Lids and lips. For some reason saying that makes me feel slightly queasy – I’m not sure whether it’s the lazy, tabloid-style alliteration or the gynaecological implications. Although what would “lids” be, in the lady department? A lash-fringed flap of skin. Hmm. I’ll have to think carefully about that one.

GOD! Can someone please keep me on the straight and narrow? Perhaps I need an editor. To check my behaviour and act as the filter I don’t seem to possess.

“Hello darling. Ok, I’ve just read your latest piece…and…how can I put this? It’s rather crude. I mean, darling, is it quite sensible to talk about the time you slipped in the shower and narrowly missed being  penetrated by the mixer tap?”

I like to think that the editor would be called Nigel. No particular reason. But he must chain-smoke French cigarettes and have an office on the Tottenham Court Road and wear a silk kimono. I have it all planned out.

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But back to spring makeup. There’s a video and really it’s mandatory you watch it, this time, because I’ve used up all of my word count on pointless drivel so there’s no space to talk about lipstick shades. It’s all covered on film and if you want a cheat’s spoiler list then just scroll down the page a bit.

Take particular note of the double-bronzing manoeuvre; as a first step the cream bronze buffs effortlessly into the foundation, creating a sort of warm, duo-toned base, and then the powder bronzer sits lightly on top looking all dusty and beautiful. I’m doing this a lot at the moment and I like the effect.

I’m wearing the Emanuelle Dress, bought from Hush here*

The post What’s In My Makeup Bag? Spring 2020 appeared first on A Model Recommends.

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©2020 “

Let’s take a look at Chanel’s Spring 2020 collection. It all looks so beautiful, especially photographed against the huge booklet they sent along with it – mauves and vibrant sandy corals and pale shimmering champagnes. The colours of a desert as the sun goes down – the collection is called Desert Dream and I think they’ve captured that perfectly.

But what’s worth snapping up and what can you afford to miss, if you’re a die-hard Chanelophile and like to have something from each collection?

Well, I shall get straight to the point – no beating around the proverbial bush – I’d put my money into the foolproof products you’ll use year-round. Or at least into the summer – if you use them at the rate I have been then they’ll never last a year!

Browse Chanel’s Desert Dreams collection*

First mega-buy; the Baume Essential, at Boots here*, which has been reinvented in a warm, coppery-golden shade called Golden Light. This is a great highlighter for darker skin tones, adding a really grown-up sheen with minimal “glitter”. On lighter skin tones it’s more tricky to get placement right, but it’s not impossible – I’d move away from the traditional “swipe along the cheekbone like a snail trail” and blend in well on the areas that the sun would hit, really making the glow part of the skin rather than sitting it on top.

Anyway, the non-pearlescent Baume Essentiel (my review is here) is now firmly one of my favourite makeup staples – it just gives the most amazingly natural dewy finish – but the limited edition Golden Light version is beautiful for the warmer months.

Next best buy would be the Stylo Ombre et Contour eyeliner and shadow pencils, which I’ve used in Mauve and Brun. I know that these aren’t a brand new launch but I hadn’t really had a good try with them and I was surprised to find that the staying power is immense, despite the fact that the liner feels like a soft crayon to apply. I thought it would wishy-washy itself off after an hour or so, but it was stubborn, refusing the cleansing balm and the flannel and only shifting when I went in with a dual-phase eye makeup remover.

You can find the Stylos online here* – if you love a smokey eye look but hate applying liner then this might be your way forward. Scribble on like a child, blend with a dense little brush (this one* from Charlotte Tilbury is excellent) and you’re done. The Mauve is a good colour if you’re really, really low-key and want something barely-there, but opt for brown if you want impact…

Now the lip colours didn’t suit me so much – I tried Rouge Brulant and Endless – and I didn’t get along too well with the shadow quad (the coral shade and one of the mauves had hardly any payoff, which is unusual for Chanel shadows!), but I did become quite enamoured with the Ombre Premiere in Rising Sun; a liquid eyeshadow that left an extremely pretty, warm and flattering sheen.

Do excuse this photo, I took it early on in the makeup routine proceedings and I look a bit like an experiment. But do you get an idea of how youthful and fresh the sheen looks?

So, my picks: liquid shadow (here*), liner crayons (here*) and the Baume Essentiel (here*). That’s what I’d be snap-snapping from this particular collection.

You can find Desert Dreams in its entirety at Boots.com here*.

The post Makeup Collection Review: Chanel Spring 2020 appeared first on A Model Recommends.

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©2020 “

After writing off my “daily essentials” makeup bag, thinking I had lost it at a hotel, I was excited to find that it was, in fact, stowed away right at the back of the glovebox in my car. Behind the owner’s manual and the pile of old MOT certificates and the broken umbrella and – joy! – a sweet bag with a singular Percy Pig from M&S in it. I ate the pig, despite the fact that it must have been at least six months old and had probably been heated and then frozen, heated then frozen, about sixty times.

Anyway I’m still here to tell the tale, so God only knows what they put into those pigs – I think they’d survive the apocalypse! Unlike Clinique’s excellent Pep-Start Lip Balm, which had the dead and dessicated body of a woodlouse stuck into the top of it. Not Clinique’s fault, of course – mine for losing the lid many eons ago – but still, gross.

You’ll be pleased to know that I’ve cut the contaminated top off the balm with my extra-sharp Global kitchen knife (how I’ve longed to slip a mention of my knife into this blog, I can die happy) and I’m contemplating using it again. The thing is, before you go all hysterical, I’m pretty sure that the louse was dead before it stuck to the balm. It’s not as though it crawled on, got its little legs stuck and then slowly expired from thirst and hunger.

How do I know this? It’s an educated guess. The louse corpse has no legs, so the chances of it crawling on and getting its legs stuck are virtually nil; I looked closely with my magnifying glass and there’s no evidence of leg material whatsoever.

So I don’t think it’s as though the woodlouse died of some terrible disease and leached all of its germs and whatnot into the balm and I’m sure now that I’ve cut off 5mm of product all will be fine. Vote now.

Good grief, that went off on a tangent. If Clinique haven’t already discontinued that balm then they probably will now. It’s tainted. Tainted I tell you!

Click to watch the video and find out what was in my Time Capsule makeup bag. I could equally have called this my “Lost and Found” edition, or “Daily Essentials I Didn’t Appreciate Until They’d Gone”, because it’s a bit farfetched to call something from only a few months ago a “Time Capsule”, but seeing as though I didn’t have the foresight to keep a bag filled with makeup favourites from 1995 and bury it in my parents’ garden, this will have to do.

Charlotte Tilbury Filmstar Bronze & Glow, £49 here*: http://bit.ly/2zWfFZK

Charlotte Tilbury Mini Brush Set, here*: http://bit.ly/2SfAAke This is actually really good, usually mini brush sets are a bit hit and miss! If she does them again next Christmas and they are the same, I’d get them! 

Chanel Powder Brush No3 – discontinued? 

Karen Walker Necklace*: http://bit.ly/2OX1wn1

Zoeva Buffer Brush, £17 here*: http://bit.ly/2vkEGif

Rodial Banana Lowlighter, £38 here*: http://bit.ly/2Hd3Ce5

Glossier Boy Brow in Blonde, £14 here*: http://bit.ly/2vkEGif

L’Oreal Unlimited Mascara, currently £5.99 here*: https://amzn.to/37jyzrJ

Clinique Pep Start Lip Balm – can’t find this at all! Where has it gone? It’s REALLY GOOD! Apart from the dead woodlouse body. 

Charlotte Tilbury Lip Liner in Hot Gossip, £17 here*: http://bit.ly/38u3Jy5

NARS Voyageur Palette in Suede, £28 here*: https://bit.ly/2w8Z7Pv

The post What’s In My Makeup Bag? The Time Capsule appeared first on A Model Recommends.

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©2020 “

Here begins my epic task of catching up on all of the stuff I didn’t manage to post before the end of 2019, and I’m going to start with a bit of a Chanel update. Because who doesn’t love a dose of double-c luxury to kick of the year?

Before Christmas I was invited on the press trip of dreams; a visit to the Chanel skincare labs to look at their latest launches, coupled with a very swanky stay in Paris. Let’s face it, a trip with Chanel is never going to be shoddy, but this was next-level extra; bedding down at the Ritz (in a room, I should add, I didn’t just pull out a sleeping bag and lie in the lobby) and some really quite excellent dining.

Despite the fact that on the way out to Paris I was surviving on 75 minutes’ sleep from the night before (can’t ever sleep before an early wakeup call, see Early Bird) I threw myself into the Chanel immersion wholeheartedly, touring the HQ, having my makeup done at the Chanel flagship store on the Champs Elysees and even doing some Chanel-themed crafts. (Gilding my own Chanel logo with gold leaf. As you do. Crafting de Chanel.)

I sat in what can only be described as a Chanel Classroom, learning about some of the ingredients they use in the new Sublimage cleansing range (the new l’Huile-en-Gel Cleanser* is a gorgeous gel-to-oil-to-milk concoction, if you’re a Chanel-ophile and are in the market for a luxury treat!) and I went down the skincare labs to see how a few of the raw ingredients are extracted.

But my favourite part of the trip was a tour around the Chanel archives. Les Archives de Chanel. (I think I irritated the entire press group by labelling everything X de Chanel. It was all so stylish, so minimalist. Even the lifts looked nice. Lifts de Chanel. I just could’t help myself!)

In the archives they had some of the most important dresses and suits from various decades and they had loads of amazing photographs showing early designs and campaigns, but it was the vintage beauty packaging room that really tickled my fancy. It was like opening a time capsule, but a brilliantly elegant one – no mouldy parchments, broken records or rusty old sardine cans here! Instead there were teeny oil-paint tubes of moisturiser, bottles of talc, boxes of soap – all of them vintage and some from as far back as the 1920s.

What I found amazing was how many of the products that Chanel introduced in the 20s are echoed in their modern launches – in some ways the types of product and the way that they are presented has changed very little.

Glass bottles with sleek shapes and unfussy labels, minimalist black and white boxes and products that seemed more than a little familiar. How brilliant that some products available today, such as the Huile de Jasmine, were originally launched almost a hundred years ago!

It seems crazy that a product idea can work so well, be so desired and cherished, that it has almost the same look and formula a whole century later. If that’s not a masterclass in branding then I don’t know what is!

Although I have to say that the hand cream has evolved somewhat: from simple tube to what has to be one of the most ergonomic and satisfying pieces of packaging I’ve ever had the pleasure of touching. Have you seen the Chanel Creme Main? It’s housed in a perfectly smooth pebble of a bottle that fits exactly into the palm of your hand. So clever. So unusual. So well executed.

I realise I’m going down one of my rave routes (as in I’m getting diverted and praising something for ages, not as in I’m following a trail of gurning, topless, whistle-blowing dancers to a large tent in a remote field) and so I’ll stop now. I do wish I’d made more comprehensive notes on all of these archived products, though – honestly, they were fascinating. Look at the tanning products!

I can’t imagine too many people were bringing out tanning products as a range in that era – this was really thinking outside and around the proverbial box and giving people products that they didn’t even know they needed. Not just tanning oil, but self tan – get that sunshine hit without even stepping outside…

Marvellous. I’d go again, if only just to take better photos and write things down. As it happened I was too busy enjoying myself.

You can find the new Sublimage cleansing range online here* – my pick would be the Oil-in-Gel Cleanser* because it completely (and easily) removes makeup without being at all drying. Obviously the Sublimage pricetag applies, here, so please don’t faint when you see it.

Pricetag de Chanel.

The post Press Trip de Chanel: A Masterclass in Branding appeared first on A Model Recommends.

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Press Trip de Chanel: A Masterclass in Branding was first posted on January 22, 2020 at 10:46 pm.
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