Category: beauty

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all the gold things can stay

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One of my favorite side-effects of the resurgence of vintage and retro aesthetics is the old school packaging popping up here and there. If lipstick is good, lipstick in a weighty gold tube is better.

A great example is this Albeit lipstick I mentioned briefly before (wearing here). Estée Lauder’s Mad Men collection has the same vintage look, as does Charlotte Tilbury’s new line. What can I say? I like the color gold. I agree that one can have too much of it and that it is sometimes tacky beyond redemption…but there it is. I want it. And it’s festive in the bargain.

A great formula is key, of course, but packaging is part of the experience. Even if the act of using the product is private, as I think is more often the case for our generation (fading is the image of the woman pulling out a compact to touch up in public), still each element adds its weight to the whole, marking the difference between the perfunctory and the ceremonial. Naturally it feels special to use objects we find beautiful, and their beauty helps us to be mindful of our task. More appreciative, maybe. If we have chosen truly to our taste. It is the case for me, when I choose truly to my taste.

Elizabeth Arden, Estée Lauder and YSL have always understood this. Michael Kors had the right idea from the start with his new collection (we agree about the supremacy of gold, Michael and I). Props to biodynamic brand Dr. Hauschka for their satisfyingly luxe packaging, and it’s not as metallic but I quite like Clarins’ packaging, too.  Once in a while Revlon releases one of their retro pigments in vintage packaging and I keep waiting to run into one. Certain designer brands, too, do limited edition packaging once in a while that I think really lovely (think Givenchy, think Armani). Tom Ford, though he doesn’t go full-on with the gold, has that Midas air about him, everything he has a hand in glinting in the light.

I find value in that sensation of using something special. Often I wouldn’t think of these objects as especially important to me or tangled in sentiment (if so it is a sentiment that begins and ends in their aesthetic appeal), rather as influential when directly in use. I think I take it to something of an extreme, and want every object in my little empire of possessions to feel special, purposeful, chosen. Really a lot of them do, though. A lot of them are. It is perhaps not too unrealistic a desire.

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smell this: L’Occitane Eau de Vetyver

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L’Occitane’s Eau de Vetyver is a rich, creamy vetiver, wonderfully enveloping in the winter months. Here we have a species of vetiver quite distinct from a fresh, bright vetiver (my prime exemplar being Guerlain Vetiver). This is dark and earthy, closer to straight vetiver essential oil.

It’s a shame vetiver isn’t one of the scents we tend to have on auto-recall, like the banana or rose. Please, go smell something that smells of vetiver and teach your nose about this great fragrance. I have yet to smell a vetiver dominated fragrance that I actively disliked. This is personal to some extent, of course, but vetiver has the sharp green brightness of mint as well as the slightly different acidic brightness of citrus (a different quality of light, if you follow), the visceral appeal of rich, healthy earth newly overturned and full of living roots, and that masculine tug that comes from being used at least minimally in the base of nearly every western fragrance (and not so minimally in many of the masculine ones), and so being vaguely, can’t-quite-put-your-finger-on-it familiar.

To all of this, in the case of L’Occitane’s offering, is added a measure of sweet cream, softening all of the edges and giving the fragrance a feeling of warmth, like the illusion of warmth one gets from smelling cinnamon or amber fragrances. It can be used sparingly as it is a powerful concentration and has excellent longevity on the skin (and even better longevity on fabrics).

This isn’t showing up on L’Occitane’s online shop anymore so I suspect it is being discontinued. I snagged a bottle from my local store to have as a backup, is how much I like this fragrance. Many of L’Occitane’s fragrances are pleasant to me though few touch me as personally desirable. I do like the Magnolia & Mûre from their new La Collection de Grasse line but that is a story for another day.