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

Cinema Beauté: Chanel, Guess, Gianna Rose Atelier, FHI, Beauty Scoop

After 22 days away from home, these are some of the products waiting for me when I walked in the door. Will be collecting the rest from my neighbors in the coming days.

Cinema Beauté: My first NYC blow-out

I flew into town for a whirlwind (one night only) visit, feeling less than happy about how my hair was looking. At Grand Central Station, I found a salon (Francesco's) that could take me right then for a blow-out.

My concern started early in proceedings:

See that big clump of dripping wet hair in my face? Yeah, instead of clipping it back, Eliza let it slap me in the forehead and nose for a good ten minutes before I realized that my hints (constantly pushing it out of my eyes) were getting me nowhere and asked her to clip it. Things did not get better from there.

The end result? What I think of as newscaster hair...for the Retired People News Network:

I was meeting Dr. Jay Parkinson at Le Pain Quotidien, so had to do something fast to fix matters. I ran my fingers through my hair furiously, trying to comb out the hairspray and flatten things. No dice. I tried on a variety of hats at Filene's Basement. I even considered tying a scarf around my head. Finally, a $3 red stripey headband from Strawberry was my godsend.

The cool thing? I haven't had to wash my hair since the blow-out on Wednesday. All the teasing and hairspray has somehow managed to stave off the usual greasiness and itchiness that I experience if I try to skip even one day of shampooing. Right now I'm experimenting to see how many more days I can go with my hair still looking quite good (as it genuinely does). The excess poofiness has gone and now it's just bouncy. In the end, not such a disaster after all.

Cinema Beauté: The (inflationary) dollar store

I've been to dollar stores and 99 cent stores, but never to a $1.25 store. Hillary and I checked one out today on our way to lunch:

Scarily, they also have feminine douche and pregnancy tests. As I said to Hill, I'll know my life has hit a bottom when I'm buying douche and pregnancy tests from the dollar store. (On Friday I was happy to leave with that bracelet, some Colgate toothpaste, and a really cool baby Jesus wallet.)

Cinema Beauté: Packing light

Or my version of it anyway. It's not as if I couldn't just borrow products from Hillary if I needed to...

Cinema Beauté: MAC, Estée Lauder, Farm House Fresh, Summer Soles

Bronzer season has started. [Insert sigh here.] I'm so over this stuff, but a few of the products are interesting.

 

Cinema Beauté: Chanel, Pureology, Avon Anew, Curel, St. Ives

Yes, this is definitely going to be a regular feature here. Full disclosure is a pretty basic feature of communication of any kind, I think, and I hope other beauty bloggers decide to be more honest and up-front about the freebies they're receiving. After all, why hide?

Cinema Beauté: Today's product haul

I thought I'd do a quick video wrap-up of the beauty products I received from various brands and their PR companies today. Now that I've done it, I think I might do a weekly recap. This would give you guys a good idea of how many products I am receiving to be tested - and a grasp on how few products are really worth blogging about. Also, I'd love to get your feedback on any that you've used and that sort of thing.

For now, here's Friday's candidates for review: