The hair envy is real every time I see the Selena Gomez’ Pantene commercial where she’s tousling her hair back and it’s shiny and perfect! Since 1945 Pantene has been studying hair and committed to developing products for all different unique hair types with one goal in mind: healthy, beautiful hair. The brand is all about helping women around the globe be strong and shine both inside and out, which is so evident in their choice of spokespersons. Did you hear they just tapped Ronda Rousey as their new brand ambassador?
Tag: beauty
Strong is Beautiful
A day with Kiehl’s… making a difference and making serums!
Yesterday, I had an epic day with Kiehl’s. The skincare brand has always held a special place in my heart since they have amazing products, do so much good, and I used to work for them! I actually helped launch their social media a million moons ago so stepping back into their corporate office yesterday brought me so much joy. And even more so because it was for an amazing cause! 
Kiehl’s partnered with Feeding America for their charitable holiday collaboration designed by the artist duo FAILE with 100% of the net profits of the “Collection for a Cause” to support Feeding America, up to $100,000. And it’s all of Kiehl’s top selling products in limited edition packaging so why not stock up on your favorites while making a major difference. Just this 3-pack of their Hand Salve ($34) will provide 295 meals, and this Creme de Corps Classic Whipped Body Butter ($15) is going to provide 85 meals! View the whole collection HERE! This is Kiehl’s 3rd year partnering with the organization and has donated $300,000 to date which is 3 million meals to those in need. Food insecurity is a major issue in America. 42 million people are food insecure in our country and 1 out of every 6 children faces hunger. That’s 13 million children in the US who may not be able to eat dinner tonight. With this collaboration Kiehl’s will help provide over 1 MILLION MEALS to families in need this holiday season. I spent the morning with Kiehl’s and Feeding America helping pack meals for City Harvest. Alongside my fellow beauty editors we put together and donated 400 meals!
Silk’n Flash&Go Express Hair Removal Device Review
When you have thick, middle eastern dark hair, the shaving struggles are real! As it is I only wash my hair about 2 times a week, which means I need to shave every time I’m in the shower. And I always miss something — usually it’s around my ankles I notice long hairs when I’m putting on my socks. Personally, there’s nothing about shaving that excites me, minus the instant effect of having my hair gone, but if I never had to shave again, it would be a blessing and MAJOR time saver.
Getting the Party Started with Viva la Juicy
This post was sponsored by Juicy Couture Fragrances through their partnership with POPSUGAR Select. While I was compensated to write a post about Viva La Juicy, all opinions are my own.
Getting the party started with Viva la Juicy. It’s the holiday season, which means it’s time to pop those bottles of champagne and celebrate. It’s my favorite time of year. Sparkly dresses, festive heels and loads of shimmery, fun makeup dominate and joy is in the air. There’s so much magic everywhere, especially in NYC. It’s evident just walking down Fifth Avenue and seeing the Christmas tree all decorated in Rockefeller Center and the magnificent holiday windows in all the storefronts. The creativity never ceases to amaze me. Between Christmas parties, New Year’s (and ahem my high school reunion), there isn’t a shortage of nights out I’m planning for. And maybe it’s because I’m blond now, and I’m ready to test if blondes have more fun, I’m fully in the holiday spirit.
Outfit details:
Ella Moss Dinah Double Ruffle Dress
Sam Edelman Hazel black suede pumps
Viva la Juicy Eau de Parfum, 3.4 fl oz
Jewelry: vintage
The only consistency is my plan to sparkle, shine and be merry. That and going out is all about feeling great – great about yourself and the company around you. Call this attitude my new mantra or checklist, but I plan on spending as much time with my friends and family and having a good time! Nothing adds a finishing touch before going out like a girly, flirty fragrance. Viva la Juicy is the iconic floral fruity fragrance from Juicy Couture. It’s the first fragrance I bought my little sister when she went off to college. It was actually the rollerball so she could travel with it and have a little something from me with her anywhere. It’s ageless, timeless, season-less and just inspires fun! It’s something I think all of us can use a little more of and it makes for a great gift. Especially for a tough-to-for-shop for teen… I wanted to pick a fragrance that represented being flirty and fabulous but also bold, and even a little mischievous. And at the end of the day, it makes her feel confident when she walks out the door.
Lipstastic Beauty Finds at Nordstrom
Kiss up to the holidays, with some of my favorite beauty products from Nordstrom. They’re one of my ultimate go-to beauty destination offering discount sets from everyone from Charlotte Tilbury to Diptyque and exclusives not available at any other retailer. While they have a vast assortment of giftables (you can see them all HERE), these are actually some of my favorite lip and face picks on my vanity. Splurge on yourself first… everyone else can wait for Black Friday.
Laura Geller sets – I literally can’t get enough. All are amazing featuring her top sellers with an incredible value — she went so above and beyond with her holiday assortment. The Color Luster Lip Gloss Duo ($12, $38 value) features two of her high shine, sheer to medium coverage lip glosses in Strawberry Creme and Rhubarb Crumble. Glam On The Go ($35, $104 value) is the perfect travel palette featuring three backed eyeshadows (Oyster, Sunstone, and Cocoa), Golden Rose Baked Highlighter, Honeysuckle Baked Blush and her Cookie Dough Lip Gloss. The Best of Baked Palette ($49, $130 value) features her Golden Rose Baked Highlighter, Pink Buttercream Baked Blush, Medium Baked Bronze-N-Brighten and three Baked Eye Shadows in Sand, Guava and Cocoa. The Baked Gelato Swirl Illuminator palette ($30, $80 value) features three minis of her top swirl illuminators, Gilded Honey, Ballerina and Peach Glow. Gilded Honey is probably the highlighter I use the most out of any brand (I’m obsessed), it’s golden perfection! So I also included the full size (pictured above) which is one of my all time beauty must haves.
Ilia Launches New Shades for Fall
As many of you know I’ve been on my naturals kick lately and one brand I’ve been seeing forever and dying to try is ILIA. Their signature lipsticks feature 72% certified organic ingredients that off a creamy, soft finish. For fall they have added three new shades: Madam Mina (nude mauve) and The Brides (warm nude) are limited edition and Lucy’s Party (blood red), will be part of their permanent collection. Just look at that sheen!
All shades are true to shade with buildable color. They go on beautifully and feel amazing and lightweight on. The names of the three new lipsticks are inspired by the leading characters of Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula from the 90s.
New Beauty Tastemaker
Earlier this month, I was really honored to join New Beauty Magazine for their Tastemaker event, as one of their tastemakers! Hosted at the New Beauty offices in Rockefeller Center, it was basically speed dating, with beauty brands — my kind of dating! Each tastemaker had their own table and then brands would rotate visiting me (on a timer) and tell me about their companies and new product launches. There were so many cool indie beauty brand, many of which I worked with in the past so it was exciting to catch up with the founders and hear about the progress their brands had made. While there wasn’t time to meet with every brand in attendance, here were some of my favorites and brands you should have on your radar:
Grande Cosmetics
Grande Cosmetics also has a special place in my heart. I discovered them when I was judging the ICMAD awards a few years ago and they blew it out of the water! Their liquid liner won my vote for the category because it was by far the best product choice in the category. EVERYTHING I’ve used from the brand since has blown me away, I love their GrandBROW-FIll! Their latest addition is a Grande Lips, a collection of lip plumpers available in clear and six additional colors, including my dream pink! It’s the best plumper I’ve used yet, it tingles and plumps and they offer a great shade range. This is a brand to have on your radar! Check it out at sephora.com
Dermarche Labs
Dermarche Labs has a variety of products including Roloxin Lift, which funny enough I was at the launch of this event in 2014! It also won the Allure best of beauty award that year. It’s the perfect mask for when you need to rebook skin since it instantly lifts, hydrates and reduces the appearance of wrinkles and pores. How it works is you activate the formula by massaging the sachet in your hands for 20 seconds, then cleanse and lightly dampen your skin and apply the formula to your face for 7-10 minute or until it dries. Then rinse it off and apply your moisturizer or continue with your regular beauty routine — your skin will feel instantly more even, and your skin will be so soft and glowing! I also learned about two new products Fullfill, which is a big dose of Hyaluronic Acid which is a plumper and wrinkle filler. As well as Biorewind which is two part serum — an AM Full-Spectrum Antioxidant Serum and PM Pro-Grade Retinoid Repairing serum.
LiftLab Skincare
Another really cool brand which is basically from my hometown in Massachusetts. I first learned about Lift Lab from Caravan Stylist Studio when they gave me a sample of their face wash. It was phenomenal. It was
Viktor & Rolf Magic Fragrance Collection
Last night was a dream. I met two of my all time favorite designers, Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren aka Viktor&Rolf to celebrate their latest fragrance collection, Magic!
As Beauty Magicians, Viktor & Rolf believe everyone needs a little magic in their lives and to help spread the magic they created a collection of six magic potions – fragrance illusions with a magical twist. The whole event was stunning, hosted at Academy Mansion, an actual Mansion in NYC with magician Dan White levitating people and showing us the impossible, the whole night was magic. In the magical world the impossible is possible. The six scents are:
Dirty Trick – Classified as an Oriental Leathery scent, it’s a unique mix of Iris and Ink Accord, and was possibly my favorite of the collection!
Liquid Diamonds – The most floral of the collection it’s inspired by peonies, which like diamonds has many facets. Blending Peony accord with pink pepper, Bulgarian rose, patchouli and musks it kind of has a floral powdery effect that makes me think this is what laundry smells like in heaven.
Sage Spell – Casting a spell with sage and Absinthe the fragrance sparkles with notes of pink grapefruit essences, pink pepper and peppermint essences.
Lipstick is my Vice Blackmail Palette
No really, Lipstick is my vice. Even after being in the beauty industry for over ten years, it’s still a thrill opening a gorgeous lipstick shade. I was really fortunate to be apart of the Urban Decay mega lipstick launch a couple of months ago, back in May, when the did a complete lipstick revamp launching 100 reformulated shades (74 of which were completely new!) as part of the Vice Lipstick collection ($17 each). They teamed up with 100 influencers for each to be the face of one of the shades.
Being the bright pink queen that I am, I was matched with shade, Jilted (you can see the whole lookbook and everyone featured HERE). It was pretty surreal to see my face on Urban Decay’s website. They really are one of my all time favorite makeup brands and just embrace color and cater to so many different ethnicities. Granted, they picked a really strange image of me — I look so angry, ha! But I’ll take it! It’s hard to believe 3 months ago i had purple and green hair and now I’m a bleach blonde. Jilted is a deep fuchsia shimmer cream lipstick with blue shift. The massive lipstick assortment range in six different finishes from mattes, creams, to sheers.
Swatch of shade Jilted
Now for the holidays they have launched two new limited edition Vice palettes, Blackmail and Junkie. They are a steal at $35 and feature 12 Vice Lipstick shades and the Vice Lip Brush, which is retractable. I’ve been seeing them all over Instagram but not swatched out and I think that’s key to these palettes since the finishes range. The colors you see in the pans completely transforms for a lot of them when you put them on. I only have the Blackmail palette, swatched below:
Left to right, top row: Sheer Shame, Firebirth, Big Bang, Disobedient, EZ, and 714. Bottom Row: Vanished, 1993, Ex-Girlgriend, Amulet, Conspiracy, and Blackmail.
Check it out at ulta.com
Charlotte Tilbury Launches at Bloomingdale’s
Last night was one for the books! Charlotte Tilbury hosted a private master makeup class as part of her major launch event at Bloomingdale’s to debut her exclusive new “Miss Bloomingdale’s Uptown Girl” at their flagship store on 59th Street.F rom the moment I walked into Bloomingdale’s the energy was on fire, so many fun displays everywhere! Clearly Charlie was having a great time…
I’ve met Charlotte a number of times between her personal appearances, fashion week events and backstage at fashion week but I feel like everything was leading up to this moment where I got to take a makeup class with her at the helm.