decisions - The Seventh Sphinx

March 21, 2014March 21, 2014

into: Japonesque Color

Japonesque has long been a manufacturer of professional makeup brushes and tools, for their own brand as well as other high-end brands. An American company out of Northern California (a little over 25 years old now), the name comes from being inspired by the tools of Japanese Kabuki theater (and benefits, no doubt, from the association with Japan, where many sublime brushes are born). It’s a great brand to turn to to get the brushes of the quality that brands like MAC and NARS promise for a bit less (a number of companies doing this well now), and they have a good variety of shapes and sizes.

The general verdict on their makeup line, Japonesque Color (launched last fall), is that the quality of the formulas in the line are solidly good with the exception of the powder products, which are excellent. I realized I was in the market for an excellent powder. And a blush, maybe…

Then of course I got a lipstick, too.

Japonesque Velvet Touch Finishing Powder, Pro Performance Lipstick in Shade 7, Velvet Touch Blush in Shade 3

These powder formulas are indeed excellent. These are finely milled, which is key, and are of that new generation of powders that seem to melt into the skin, serving their function of mattifying or providing a smooth surface for subsequent applications without leaving the impression of a powdered face. Other examples include the Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powder and the Urban Decay Ultra Definition Pressed Finishing Powder (which I haven’t tried, but Sali Hughes gave it a glowing review). I also use and like the Rimmel Stay Matte powder, which is $5 or so and does the job it is meant to do, but these new formulas are in another league altogether in terms of transparency and lightness.

I use this as a transition product between the cream and powder stages of a makeup. Say I want to use a cream illuminator but a powder blush, I apply the cream product, swish some powder (with a brush*) over that area destined for the blush, and am able to apply the blush without getting uneven patches where the skin was more or less dry.

*Not a sponge, which I find applies too much product. These products don’t come with built-in brushes, which I like very much. Let’s all stop pretending I want to have anything to do with those.

The blush is my favorite of the lot, very similar in hue to the Bobbi Brown Pink Coral blush I like so well (fractionally darker), but with fine gold flecks that set it entirely apart. This is Shade 3, a rich cactus flower pink. I am, when browsing for makeup, like someone browsing paint swatches in a hardware store. It often comes down to a matter of color, a visceral affinity for a given color with a background check on the formula and a quick cost/benefit analysis to give the go ahead. I only partially succeed in my attempts to avoid shade duplicates, though I admit I am not always trying very hard, and alternate justifications for acquisition are a dime a dozen.

wearing here

As with the finishing powder it is beautifully sheer and light, and as with the Bobbi Brown blush it instantly brightens the face. The shimmer is subtle and fine, and I am for it. The formula is as beautiful as blushes twice the price*, and I think these powder products are offer great value for money. The lipstick I truly did not need, and it is good. It is not so mind-blowingly good that I would exactly recommend it at this price, but it is good. I took care to select a shade not yet represented in my stash, and I have no regrets.

*Though there are also blushes nearly as nice for half of the price, or a quarter of the price. And to be nearly as nice as something unnecessarily nice…is often nice enough. What I tend to turn to higher end brands for, beyond exceptional textures (drugstore and budget brands offer many great formulas now, and excellent ones here and there), is a compelling color range.

Then, a fan brush. I’ve been wanting a fan brush, you see. They are notoriously good at sweeping highlighter over the cheekbones. While it does do this, and is a great balance of stiff and flexible, for me it is mostly for show. Let’s face it, it’s beautiful. I’ve been hearing great things about this Eco Tools fan brush, too. The position of fan brush has been filled now but still kind of want to check it out…

[The other brush pictured is an angled kabuki-style buffing thing, a gift with purchase. It buffs. I like it, but I like the Real Techniques Expert Face Brush better.]

March 5, 2014March 5, 2014

trending, part i

Being on trend (let’s put off for now whether or not this desirable) is both more difficult and easier than ever before. There are currently, in this era, this time, more trends simultaneously alive and well than ever before. Pick up a magazine, read the fashion and style pages of some newsmonger or another, poke around on pinterest and street style blogs, watch Bill Cunningham, pay attention when you’re walking down the street – once you hit a certain threshold of data the trends jump out at you left and right. No matter how many there are, though, there’s still a [shifting, arbitrary, somewhat mysterious] hierarchy of cool.

Trends used to be small, powerful details, widely adopted, one following another from season to season. The length of a sleeve, the height of a hem, the volume or cut of a skirt, the placement of a broach. A distinct silhouette can be identified (there are fascinating charts for all kinds of fashion patterns) for almost every year throughout the 1800’s and much of the 1900’s.

image via dressmakingresearch.com

After this dating a photo with clothing gets a bit more difficult, perhaps you can only guess within a decade. We can still do this well up through the 90s. Perhaps there is a bit of branching off, several schools of trends can identify (or evoke) an 80s look. The Madonna school, the Michael Jackson school, the Pat Benetar school, and so on, but even these share umbrella traits of bold, geometric/unnatural silhouettes (think cone bra, think boxy shoulders), bright colors, loud accessories, over-the-top patterns. Like so many things that are tiresome or tricky to define, you know it when you see it.

Today, though, even aside from the fact that it’s impossible to have a comprehensive perspective on your own time, the trends are multiplying faster than we can wear them, and many of them stay active for years. There are so many it’s almost (almost) as if there aren’t any, and we have entered a new era of freedom and flexibility of dress*.

*Still nothing like what the future will see, surely.

There is no getting around it, trends are strange, complex social phenomena. Often baffling (if not outright awful), once in a while classic (a revival of some historic style of dress, maybe), or sophisticated to the modern eye. Highly mutable and notoriously difficult to predict, often with murky origins, they remind me a little of traffic patterns, which I understand to be difficult to predict and untangle cause-wise, approaching true randomness. They sometimes peter out within a month or so, and sometimes persist for many seasons, or persist to graduate out of trend status and into just…stuff we often wear. Some seem to become (or seem to be becoming—historians, I do not envy you your job) part of the conception of basic modern style.

Like anyone, I like some and don’t like others. I do sometimes find it difficult to suspend the awareness that something is a trend while assessing it, which can have a negative impact on my take. When I’ve seen something over and over…sometimes I start to come around. Some are broad (skinny jeans with heels), and some are almost comically detailed (dainty gold knuckle rings with a hammered finish, worn on multiple fingers at different heights). I suppose one convenient thing about trends is that they provide a straightforward formula to follow to look fashionable in the mainstream sense, and if you like the trend, why not? On the other hand, they can leech originality and personality right out of things, such that everyone looks kind of vaguely nice, and kind of vaguely like everyone else*. Then, too, there is the difficulty of discerning when a trend is on the wane, when it has passed some critical point of popularity and takes on an element of vulgarity (one sense of vulgar is simply common to the masses). I think ombre hair is entering this phase now, for example (I was never too keen on that one).

Sporting a trend successfully is about timing, and an ill-timed trend (at least, blindly followed, in the absence of individuality) undermines its own aim. There is something tiresome about the game of this, especially when they can turn sour so suddenly, but I think if you like a trend, go for it. If you stop liking it, you know…stop going for it (and question: did you really like it in the first place?).

Part ii will be a little list. Stay tuned.

*Type any keyword from the next post into pinterest and see what I mean.