Turn your eyes into a work of art
Painterly maquillage is all the rage. This is brilliant for everyone, from the cackhanded to those who are good at art, because its carte-blanche ethos makes it simpler than all that blending malarkey you were required to excel at with traditional eye shadows. While the inspiration behind this SS20 Salvatore Ferragamo look – Venetian meets abstract expressionism – sounds convoluted, the reality isn’t. Mix tanning drops into your moisturiser for a natural-looking glow, paint a myriad of colours over your eyes and finish with a light-reflecting clear gloss.
Pat McGrath Skin Fetish Sublime Perfection Concealer £25, patmcgrath.comMAC Pro Palette Paintstick £60, maccosmetics.co.ukMAC Lipglass in Clear £16, maccosmetics.co.ukIsle of Paradise Tanning Drops £19.95, theisleofparadise.comGlossier Skywash in Lawn £15, glossier.com
I can’t do without... The high-end lipstick to end all lipsticks
There was a period where liquid lipsticks landed on my desk so consistently I began to wonder whether the traditional bullet lipstick was becoming extinct. I loved the textures, the finish, the ease of application of the liquids. And so the ratio of lipstick to liquid lipstick you’d find in my numerous makeup bags was probably 1 to 25 (I know, ridiculous).
This launch, however, from Hermès, has made me reevaluate my choices. It is the brand’s first foray into cosmetics and to say the beauty world has gone gaga over this is an understatement. There are 24 shades – Orange Boîte, the perfect elegant orange, is set to be a classic – that have all been chosen from the brand’s colour archives.
The tri-coloured cases – created from the lacquered metal used on the hardware of its bags – are not only aesthetically desirable (they also come with that expensive click when you close them), they are refillable, too.
And the actual lipsticks? I’ll be honest, when I first received them, I wondered if they’d live up to the hype. Well, they did not disappoint. The textures – in satins and mattes – are mindblowingly velvety. You can’t feel a thing on your lips as they are so lightweight and the pigment is magnificent. It went on my lips in a single swoop and stayed there all day. It’s worth every penny and will be giving my liquid lipsticks a run for their money.Rouge Hermès lipstick, £58, hermes.com
On my radar... Smooth serum,beauty bargains and night magic
Time for a lift One bottle of this powerful serum – think of it as a plumping treatment sans needles – is sold every minute in the US. Finally, it’s available here, too. L’Oréal Revitalift Filler Hyaluronic Serum, £24.99, boots.com
Cheap and chic Anyone who is not familiar with Beauty Pie, the high-quality low-priced luxe brand, should head to its pop-up shop. You are bound to discover a few gems. Beauty Pie Pop Up at Harvey Nichols, beautypie.com
Seeing the light Battling with pigmentation issues, be it from sun damage or from acne scarring? Try this. It reduces the appearance of spots in seven days. REN Overnight Glow Dark Spot Sleeping Cream, £49, spacenk.com
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satin devalue the act itself? Is this “an empowering message or a piece of progression from past underwear advertising tropes?”, or all of the above. The societal norms for beauty and sexiness have been changing for years, though the tipping point was, in my mind, the “Are you beach body ready?” campaign of 2015 – after which point abs on ads became toast.
Fashion has yet to agree on what is “empowering”, though. Choice seems to be paramount, though for every feminist slogan there was a latex bodysuit (at Saint Laurent), or a bare bottom (in the Bottega Veneta SS20 campaign). The #MeToo movement has attempted to crystallise this, bumping overtly sexual dressing into limbo and turning awards season red carpets (formerly curated, as Beckinsale discovered, by Weinstein) black.
But it’s arguably underwear that has seen the biggest change post-#MeToo. See Kim Kardashian’s brand, Skims, and Rihanna’s Savage X Fenty line, which both feature underwear in a range of sizes and muted colours, alongside
Heist, another hip new name in the underwear game, which goes one step further with a call to arms: “Shapewear is anti-feminist, right?”. Wrong! Almost half their sales come from shapewear.
Myriam Couturier, a fashion academic at Ryerson University in Toronto, isn’t convinced. Citing other brands such as Glossier and Outdoor Voices, she claims brands broadcasting a message of acceptance and empowerment are merely “trying to get women to continue spending money on fashion and beauty, [while] attempting to give them a sense of agency”. The context may differ but the product hasn’t – it has simply been rebranded.
Like many a fashion brand, Agent Provocateur has used risqué marketing to get attention through provocation. The clue is in the name. This approach served it well in those apathetic 1990s (it launched in 1994) and noughties. And since nothing is resistant to rebranding, here we are now with #Metoo.
It’s hard to think about Agent Provocateur without pivoting back to its bigger, creepier cousin Victoria’s Secret, a company that weaponised the million-dollar bra and turned the female form into content. That brand has now cancelled its shows, and seen one of its company founders linked to Jeffrey Epstein, but its ghost continues to haunt the industry.
Serena Rees, Agent Provocateur’s co-founder, recently launched a gender-fluid brand, Les Girls Les Boys, by way of repudiation of what she created. Her new venture is, she told the New York Times, “a reaction to the social and political climate we are currently living in”. What was acceptable in the past is now seen as embarrassing, even shameful, and requires some form of atonement.
What Agent Provocateur is conscious of, I imagine, is being deemed exploitatively sexy in a world that is beginning to tackle exactly that. Knowing we wouldn’t buy an earnest International Women’s Day video, it did it another way. The campaign isn’t quite as absurd as oil giant Shell saying it would rebrand as She’ll for International Women’s Day, but the intention is clear: yes, lingerie advertising has a history of turning women into sexualised objects but look, we’ve turned our women into protagonists. You could call it moving with the times.