J Crew - The Seventh Sphinx

April 12, 2015April 11, 2015

layered

The recent wig preoccupation prompted a good question, something like: do you ever change up, you know, your real hair?

And the answer is…not recently. I was in an auto-pilot growing phase, I suppose.

But what a good idea!

So, I hacked at the previous situation (which was nearly all one length with minor shaping) a bit, adding some rounding layers, until I got this:

I essentially wanted the widest part of my hair to line up with the highest part of my cheekbone. Or, ideally, with the intersecting point of the eyebrow latitude line and an imaginary line that is the continuation of the upward sweep of the cheekbone. Right around there.

Nailed it.

My face is basically square, or like a pentagon, and it’s large. Somehow my instinct is to have large, round* hair, to put the hair in proportion to the face. This (or a little bigger than this, actually) is the ratio that seems natural, harmonious, and to slick the hair back is to introduce severity via disproportion. Seems like we must all have some sense of this point of harmony, a point where you stop blow-drying or cutting or what have you, and decide it’s just right (or you don’t stop, and regret).

*I kind of like it as an offset pentagon, actually, I realize! The hair is a little boxy as well, but in a way that doesn’t line up with the face. If you follow… I like the squareness of my face, and don’t feel an urge to soften it as one might see in diagrams of hairstyles for different face shapes or something.

On another note, let’s give a shout out to purple eye makeup. This is basically…every purple product I own in a big smudgy mess. Recommended. The key is to keep smudging the color lower than seems advisable. Keep going! This is even conservative. And then I should have blended with a bronzer-type shade to make it even more sultry and massive…but one runs out of time.

Purple looks good on every eye color, though. Especially brown, I think. Certain shades of purple make me long for brown eyes.

Pearls of Joy Tahitian pendant, Charlotte Tilbury Matte Revolution lipstick in Love Liberty (love this shade and formula, more on these later – FINALLY available in the U.S. but only for one month evidently).

March 19, 2015March 19, 2015

cart unity

I enjoy the process of shopping, whether physically or virtually adding items to the cart (and removing items from the cart, this also key), and find it especially satisfying when there is some harmony or narrative to the cart, as when, in the grocery store, purchasing ingredients that complement one another, seem conspicuously to belong with one another,* reveal precisely what you intend to make with them.

*Conversely, also deeply satisfying when they seem conspicuously not to belong with one another, when the cart contents are markedly odd and unexpected as a unit.

Not every vendor carries a sufficiently broad range of categories to make interesting juxtapositions, though, too, I’ve been pleased with certain combinations of just shoes or just paint brushes – it needn’t be a precisely logical harmony. It’s not that the items would necessarily be used together, though perhaps that might be the case, or it might be fun to imagine it as the case (say, a skirt and a pair of sunglasses), but more that they are aesthetically compelling together according to whatever quirky beauty-logic is currently reigning in my head at the time.

Here’s a recent J. Crew cart I found pleasing, somehow more appealing to purchase these items together than it would have been to get any given element singly.

Here we have: two neutral silk camisoles, Garance Doré stationary, notebooks, notecard, Troi Ollivierre lipstick in Parker.

See what I mean? Love this largely cream palette with gold accents and that single pop of berry pink. I like the range of textures, too, metallics and silk, paper and cream. What would also have been fitting in this cart is these great cream and gold New Balance 620’s (really like their various brand collaborations, for the record, some great color combinations). Really similar to a pair I was jonesing for last year but couldn’t find from a vendor that would ship to the U.S.

Only of course they are sold out of my size.

Hm. I’ll try to show some other examples later (do you like seeing what people buy? I’m often interested to know this kind of mundane data, and it’s not a bad way to learn about new products). Definitely doing some spring shopping at the moment.