Style + Beauty - Page 290
I’m very, very good at finding incredible things that aren’t expensive. I’m an unapologetic fast-fashion advocate, I can forage any cheesy mall store and emerge with a respectable outfit, and I understand the thrill of a particularly successful Marshall’s or TJ Maxx run.
That skill also applies to beauty.
READ: 9 Drugstore Beauty Products With Surprising Secondary Uses
As much as I cherish the feeling of unboxing a beautifully packaged Chanel lipstick or slathering on a ridiculously overpriced skin cream, I know for a fact there’s a cheaper version out there somewhere. It may not come in a gilded package, but it’s made with the same ingredients and does the exact same thing.
As somebody who spends an alarmingly large amount of time testing out (and compulsively hoarding) beauty products, browsing the aisles at pharmacies (and Sephora), and posting reviews on MakeupAlley.com (hey, no judgment — we all need a hobby), I feel qualified — nay, compelled — to share with you four drugstore products I’ll never, ever upgrade. And most are well below $25.
READ: Best Drugstore Products for Makeup Removal
Check out these epic must-haves below:
Have we spent hours lusting after Gucci‘s $1,000 skyscraper stacked platforms? Maybe. Will we settle for some cute cheap platform shoes in the meantime? Sure will.
READ: 5 Ways to Keep Your High Heels From Ruining Your Feet
With Zara, ASOS, Mango, and more offering styles under $100 — and other brands slashing prices for spring sales — there are plenty of ways to add a little height without saying goodbye to half your paycheck.
Ahead, you’ll find eminently-wearable chunky suede heels, thick-soled metallic sneakers worthy of a ’90s hip-hop star, and five-inch sandals in denim and dramatic mesh (only the brave and well-balanced need apply).
So whether you’re an ugly-chic shoe girl through and through, a die-hard minimalist, or the queen of wearing kicks no matter what the occasion, there’s affordable footwear in your future.
READ: How to Wear High Heels Without Pain
Here are four of the must-have platforms you need in your life:
I’ll be the first to admit it, however reluctantly: Vanity can sometimes get in the way of good, earth-friendly intentions. Of course I want to be part of the faction that contributes to saving the planet rather than destroying it, but sometimes, I also spend 45 minutes in the shower.
READ: Alicia Silverstone Reveals Green Beauty Secrets for Ageless Skin
It can be challenging to alter your behavior in ways that benefit the greater good but feel like personal sacrifices. I’m still working on that. There’s one area, though, in which going "green," or at least inching closer to it, shouldn’t feel like a sacrifice.
As recently as a few years ago, having a natural, earth-friendly beauty routine limited you to three brands that were just OK, with colors and textures and packaging and scents that paled in comparison to your eco-unfriendly favorites. And then things got better — much better. If anything, the general consensus is that we’re gravitating more toward the new legion of high-end, high-quality, earth-friendly beauty brands than we are the old stuff that ends up in the ocean choking dolphins and stuff.
READ: White Tea — Does a Cup a Day Keep Wrinkles Away?
These newer, more guilt-free products also happen to be really, really good — and here are the four you should rock now:
Word association: Light pink lipstick. Go!
READ: 7 Matte Pink Lipsticks Under $15
Fine, I’ll start: cashmere twin sets, a tennis racquet, a white visor, a string of pearls, a lawn. Um, horses? Polo collars, popped, and my grand-mère — the one who prefers we call her by her first name.
All reasonable — but not entirely fair.
Light pink lip color has a bad rap, because that’s what happens when you’re the preferred shade of anyone who’s ever driven a golf cart without having stolen it. Chosen out of a lineup, it’s the palest, the least obtrusive, the most unassuming … It’s just there.
But for all those connotations, pale pinks are so much more versatile than we’re giving them credit for: They’re soft and subtle in their sheerer incarnations, a mod pop of color when they’re opaque. I hereby declare a widespread recovery effort to take light pink lipstick off the golf course and put it back where it belongs — so, like, pretty much everywhere.
READ: How to Wear Nude Lip Color at Night
Get in on it with these four unbeatable picks:
I’d say, on average, I wear bold lip color once a week, but apparently my brain processes that fact as "I need 28 orange lipsticks."
READ: Tangerine Dream — How to Rock Orange Lips Like a Star
Indeed, at last count I had 28 shades, from YSL and MAC to Wet n Wild. And while they might look exactly the same to the uneducated beauty consumer, I’m willing to wager that most of you reading this would see clear differences with the majority. Or, maybe that’s me justifying the fact I have a bit of a hoarding problem.
As for the best orange lipstick, though, I’m still very much undecided. My eye is typically drawn to the super-saturated, neon tangerine colors I so often see on the runway (most memorably at Rag & Bone Spring 2014’s show, a beauty moment still referenced today) and the bold, sunny shade J.Crew made famous, although I’ll never kick a bright-red-leaning orange out of my makeup bag, either.
The fact is, there’s a lot written about finding the most flattering orange for your skin tone, but I’ve found that most are more versatile than you’d expect, so long as you look for shades that aren’t too brown to blue undertone-wise, which can make most of us look sallow, no matter what our complexion.
READ: How to Get Perfect Red Lips
Then there’s the issue of longevity — if I’m going orange, I’m going big, meaning I’m looking for the shade that not only says "Hey world, I’m wearing lipstick today!" but one that stays put from my morning iced coffee to my evening glass of wine. (If it can last through a couple slices of pizza too, I know she’s a keeper.)
In the name of VIR (Very Important Research), I’ve spotlighted four shades of orange lipstick, from muted coral to juicy tangerine — both new and classic — and added color swatches and the scoop on how long they last:
The actual shift of the summer solstice is neither here nor there, because life doesn’t wait until June 22 to start behaving like the season is well underway.
Once you’ve got your SPF 50 on, your vacation booked, your three new under-$50 swimsuits in the mail (one must always take full advantage of a good deal), and a strong defense against the ill effects of day-drinking at the ready, the only thing left to do is your hair. As in, make it look like floating around in the surf all day is your reality rather than a thing you saw a model do in a magazine and have been trying to attain ever since.
HOW TO: The Secret to Gisele's 'Effortless' Beachy Waves
If you could only get beachy waves by going to the beach, we’d all be sentenced to an existence of flat hair and frizz, and that would be very sad. That’s exactly why wave-enhancing beach hair products exist: to create the illusion that you spend most of your time on a shore in the south of France, even if you spend almost all your time trying to pick the subway car with the best ratio of number-of-people to quality-of-air-conditioning.
Rest assured: The newest generation of the best beach hair products won’t leave hair sticky or crunchy. In fact, these three top-notch formulas will leave you with surprisingly realistic, totally natural-looking texture — as if #beachlife were indeed your life — and lend you an air of legitimacy you just can’t find in a spray tan booth.
WATCH: Get Blake Lively's Beachy Waves
Who needs the beach? (JK.)
