Jack & Hill: A Beauty Blog - make-up, cosmetics, perfume, and the substance of style

Bliss Plum Plum Firming Body Balm

I don't care how soft-yet-firm this moisturizer can make my skin. All of its positive properties are negated by the fact that it smells of bad potpourri. It's just not a scent I enjoy at all. The annoying thing is that it's not off-putting enough to make me throw away a $32 jar of moisturizer (though I did get mine for only $7 at TJ Maxx). So this will be my nighttime body cream, I guess, since I'm not willing to wear it around people and my fiancé is back in London right now. Still, what a disappointment. I expected a lot more from Bliss.

(If you want some truly lush-smelling potpourri, go to Wal-Mart and buy a bag of the Simply Cotton scented dried flowers. It's that clean laundry smell, plain and wonderful, and it's now freshening up the drawers of a vintage dresser I bought a few weeks ago. Thanks to my friend Karri for dragging me into Wal-Mart - I hate the place - and introducing me to Simply Cotton. I hear the linen scent, of which they were sold out, is also great.)

20% off all Bliss Spa products

Speaking of Bliss Spa, you can get 20% off all products - online or in their spas' stores - with this Bliss friends and family code: FF2006. The offer is only good until Monday, so get shopping!

Bliss Spa's best treatments?

When I'm in New York (this coming Saturday through Wednesday), I'm thinking I'll go to the Bliss Spa near my hotel and get a full leg and bikini wax. If you're familiar with Bliss's work and want to recommend other add-on services I might enjoy, please let me know in the comments! (Even if you have have general spa/beauty recommendations for NYC, do feel free to chime in.)

Stiff Upper Lip

I was quite excited when I opened the package from Bliss, a favorite company with a superb, user-friendly website--almost unheard-of for a cosmetics company--that always makes me want to buy things I can't afford, like these $235 Masai shoes (the package in hand was too small for footwear).

But I just about blew Kenyan AA Kahuro out of my nose when and saw a tube of special miracle cream specifically intended for the upper lip.  The tendency of cosmetic companies to want to market a cream for every body part, even those that aren't technically "parts" at all, but maybe "areas" at best, is laughable to me.  Why do I need buttock cream, thigh cream and breast cream, I ask?  And am I soon to be expected to purchase ear cream, forehead cream, chin cream, nose cream, nape cream? Feh.

Okay, now for the grudging, reluctant, coming-around.  Stiff Upper Lip has a couple of apparently valid excuses for existing.  It contains whatever that ingredient is that discourages hair growth.  That's one point.  And a skin lightener to counteract the darkening women sometimes get from repeated waxing or what the company calls "hormonal fluxuations."  I once had a sloppy waxer rip the skin right off of half of my upper lip, and ended up with a brown ring around my mouth that lasted for a couple of years, so I can appreciate a skin-lightener.

I don't know yet if it works, and there's still a fairly scoffable reference in the press kit to a "miracle molacule" that promises to "increase lip volume," but I am going to give it a try and report back when the product releases at the end of June.

But if you are prone to darkening of the upper lip, get yourself threaded, not waxed. In Los Angeles, the place to go is Enessa.