drop off

Oh my my! How fun are these little wonders? These topless flipflops have no sign of straps and work on a water-based glue system that sticks directly to your feet. It's also undulating to curve with the arc of your feet. How ingenius! At least it'll get rid of icky tanlines on the feet when you're at the beach. They're sold at Nude Sandals in the UK for about SGD$37 (about the price of a Havianas[did i spell that right?]). The glue won't last past a season, they suspect, so they're suggesting a more beachy-outlook to sales. But won't it be cool if it were sold at Manicure salons instead? It'd be perfect for days when you need to go for a pedicure straight after work in your covered toed-shoes!

Regime not regimen

I'm on the subject of product overdose because of a work project. And I'm looking at my two (yes! I don't just have one) vanity tables/shelves and realise that I have at least 40 products out, some half used, some waiting for the last dollop to be spent and others plain used once. And then I remember I have about 3 boxes full of other products including 4 bottles of limited edition Shu Uemura cleansing oils (a relic of my old job).

Of course this all ties into a great article by Fiona MacRae at Femail (Daily Mail) who reports that women are absorbing up to 5lbs of chemicals every year through their skin. Over in her think piece, experts claim that absorption is more dangerous than actually eating it -- their reason being eating it means digestion breaks down some of its parts with saliva and enzymes but absorption doesn't. And for once, the Japanese haven't gotten it right -- using more products doesn't mean squat when it coems to beauty. (The Japs are famous for their 8-step, 40-minute nightly regime).

It brings me to connect a poster i saw at the Changi Airport when i was coming in from Paris -- it was one of those construction partitions that hide scaffolding and concrete debris... along with great factoids about Singapore was this curious one: "Women eat up to 4lbs of lipstick in their lifetime". Haha!

Then connecting the dots, I read about an internet urban legend email that was warning instant noodle fans not to drink the soup the noodles are boiled in. Wax which coats the noodles, simply melts into the soup, then when drunk, doesn't digest in the system and clogs up the intestines.

One+One=Three, as they may say. If wax doesn't get digested, and lipsticks are made of wax, and we lick off so much of it in a lifetime... aren't lipsticks just as dangerous?

There's a great tasting lipstick on the market -- the L'Oreal Glam Shine Gloss. Tastes like berries, if you must know. And no wonder when i commented that this gloss makes me want to reapply my lipstick more often, my sister hastily warned. "Stop eating your lipstick!"

I really should start listening to her.

Snow White Lives

I was browsing at the skincare shelves at NTUC Fairprice today and was reminded of a little ditty that a beauty industry insider once told me. The most popular face cream/moisturiser isn't Chanel, L'Oreal or Estee Lauder.

It's Hazeline Snow.
Yup, that yellow jar that promises a complexion as white as snow. And just as I remembered that, a lady of about 30 waltzed past me and picked up a bottle -- going to show that it isn't just old "aunties" who are buying up the stuff. I remember it being very powdery and creamy and sort of stuck to your face for the entire night until you washed it off the next day.

Hazeline Snow belongs to GlaxoSmithKline, the drug company... so it doesn't really fall in the beauty category, maybe more the sundries? I also noticed a new Lightening Version (In lime green packaging) ... that must be rather new cos i havent seen it before and Hazeline Snow, for the longest time, was the only SKU (that's product category). Do you think the new range deserves an entire set of auxiliary products like cleansers and sunscreen?

I'm wondering if I should buy a pot and give it another go... I have after all crossed the big 3-0 and the skin's in search for more effective stuff. Anybody there tried it recently -- has the formulation changed?

Beauty not brains

I hate to start a new blog with a post about Kate -- she's never been a favourite of mine. I loved her style -- she's got a something-something that no one can really argue or achieve but there was always something offpitch about her for me. But i couldn't really not do a post about her in these times. Recent pictures of the model have everyone talking about how much she's aged.

Kate to me was always a lazy beauty. You know the type, she'll wake up looking and feeling like a million dollars. She won't wash her face but she won't get pimples either. She doesn't exercise but she'll fit into the smallest size. My sister used to be able to do that. She'd wake up and look like she's just been at a facial, skin glowing and all. A sure sign that genes wasn't the reason this special skill gets passed down via bloodlines (Cos I don't wake up feeling like Cindy Crawford!)

Anyway a recent article in UK's Daily Mail made me sit up and notice Kate again. In it, reporter Liz Jones laments how she used to love Kate Moss in her 20s, even with cellulite. But also how recent pictures of Moss's sagging skin and lacklustre looks have only pointed to her beauty sins -- that is coke and who knows what other drugs! Jones apparently saw Moss upclose and couldn't recognise her.

I'm flipping through the TopShop catalogue, heck even the new Cavalli campaign (above, which Moss and druggie Pete Doherty are photographed as Cleopatra and James Dean) She looks bloody the same beautiful girl who stole runways and covers with her sallow chest! The great thing about magazines (or is it the bag thing) is that they're keeping the old Moss alive through digital retouching. And that's probably the biggest lie that magazines perpetuate (bigger even than Britney Spears is getting back with Kevin Federline! Gawd help us!) -- and that's our models are infallible to aging and abuse.

I dont want this to be a moral tale -- but how can it not?

Read more at Perez Hilton, Daily Mail's Cavalli coverage and Hollyscoop