Blow To Go - New Hair Service

There's an exciting new service that my hairdresser friend Oliver de Almeida has set up not long ago and as it's such a brilliant and obvious idea I thought I'd give it a shout out.

Going to the hairdresser's has always been a bit of a pain to me. First you need to book an appointment and then get there, then if you're lucky you don't wait around too much and then you're faced with staring at yourself not looking your best, putting it mildly. If you don't have a life then this might be a fun day out, but for most people it's a chore. 

That's where's Blow To Go different, instead they come to you. Plus they are really good. I've known Ollie for years, we worked together many times and not only he's an amazing hairdresser, but he's super cute and charming, and he's a nicest guy you'll ever meet. Plus he has a lovely Brazilian accent which is a bonus :) The rest of his team are just as lovely!

You do everything online, the booking, picking the stylist, the time and the payment. Then you can get on with whatever you were doing.... Cool, yeah?

This is the website http://blowtogo.co.uk so check it out!

Celebrities No Make Up Trend

You probably noticed since a few months ago that more and more celebrities are going out make up free on purpose. Or are “accidentally” papped with “nothing" on their faces. US television show The Talk had the whole show presented by unmade up presenters. And now W magazine, the holy grail of fashion cool has done a non-scripted, non-made up fashion story with some very famous people. What up, you may wonder? Have they all of a sudden become all devoid of vanity? Yeah, right.

I call it photoshop damage control PR spin. Not thought of a catchy name yet, feel free to drop me a line if you come up with something better.

We have all seen some images of celebs retouched to infinity so they no longer resemble themselves. Call it the ultimate makeover or whatnot. And rightly so, the general public started to complain, especially if that said celebrity is flogging some “looking younger” cream where the “younger” effects are achieved by some skilled individual on their Apple Mac. And their Adobe CS.

Photoshop in modern digital photography is pretty much a necessity. Film used to lose some detail but the digital technology picks up every little bit that the naked eye could not even see. So, it needs to be done, so it would not be detracting the attention from whatever is being shown. Imagine a lovely beauty shot advertising mascara and there’s a zit on model’s face and some fine hairs above the top lip (not calling it a moustache).  Once you “spot” those bits it’s like you can’t stop seeing them. Game over. Mascara what? So you get my point.

But vanity retouching is not just cleaning up the bits like the skin, hair, etc. It’s body reshaping, eye bags removing, double chin-ectomy, bingo-wings de-flapper and the usual “how to lose twenty years in half an hour”.

So some big shot clever PRs, who are paid big bucks to “look after their clients” and assure they keep getting those lucrative endorsements, thought of a great way of doing that. Stars going out with no make up. Genius. The stars still look “good enough” but real. But definitely not perfect to alienate the public.

Except they are really not walking around with zero make up. Just less of it. The Daily Mail machine is working hard to bombard us with those images and make it a “story”. So when you see a celebrity with no make up walking down the street shot, remember they most likely have concealer, a bit of foundation, a bit of blush and some mascara. And lipstick. 

So when the celebs get that beauty campaign and get so retouched/botoxed/filler-ed up they can always credit a good make up artist for looking like that. For sure. 

Post Holiday Blues

I kept meaning to write something for a while but it just wasn’t happening.

I wanted to do a make up feature for Christmas, but I didn’t feel like there was much going on to inspire me… dark lips, matte skin, nothing new, etc. New eyelash lines popping all the time, call it the Essex effect or whatever you want, but nothing interesting.

And then my laptop decided to have a hissy fit again which resulted in me crying at Apple store at the rude and unsympathetic “genius” (they should really stop calling them that, genius means the IQ higher than 140 and I’m positive he wasn’t that smart). Anyway it all ended well due to my sheer determination and persistence, my laptop got fixed without too much expense.  But I was without it for a month.  So I couldn’t write. I mean, I could, but wasn’t feeling it.

So, what now? It’s January, PRs are busy again sending press releases about spring looks and that fake holiday planted in February to make February marginally interesting. And some people lonely. The Valentine’s.

Refuse to add to that, so count me out.

There is one thing I can recommend during this time of year. Pampering. The perfect time. Long baths, oils, skin nutrition, call it whatever you like, it makes sense. Think about it. You’ve probably had somewhat excessive Christmas holidays, even if you don’t celebrate it, short cold days and long nights mean a lot of food and alcohol being consumed. It’s the law. In January we regret it all and want to be “good” so we promise ourselves diet and exercise. And we fail miserably.

One way to go about feeling better about yourself is a little bit of rough loofa love. Exfoliate. Your skin is suffering from temperature changes, central heating, cold and wind. Be kind to it. Exfoliate the body after a good long soak. Massage rich creams and lotions that smell nice. My favourite scented body cream is Narciso Rodriguez, it automatically makes me feel better. Start preparing your body for spring and summer by regular body brushing, get that circulation going.

Apply nourishing face masks. Shed the last year’s skin and let the new year’s skin come shining through. Massage your face. Learn how to do a simple Shiatsu face massage technique, it really makes a lot of difference in skin tone. Generally adopt a "pamper" day as one day of the week. Not talking about a whole day here, but zone out for an hour or so.

That’s plenty to do in January for now. The future will be orange.

Happy New Year!

Sorry I've been away from my blog for a while, computer issues! Will be back soon with some new post!

Hope you've had good holidays xxx