Caroline's Blog

Caroline, a makeup junkie since an early age, loves nothing more than perusing the West End’s beauty halls. A trained makeup artist (she has worked for Lancôme, Chanel & Clinique), she keeps up her skills running a wedding makeup business part-time.

By day, Caroline works in the Clinique online team. Clinique is part of the Estee Lauder group so she’s oozing with insider knowledge on the likes of MAC, Bobbi Brown & Estee Lauder. Her favourite online stores are Clinique.co.uk (of course!), CocoRibbon.com, TheWhiteCompany.com and Asos.com.

New York New York...

Published on Thursday 5th June 2008

I was in New York last week (so much fun) and whilst there I wandered into the odd(!) shop because quite frankly, it would have been rude not to! Being a makeup junkie I love nothing more than the beauty halls of Bloomingdales and Macy’s and checking out all the latest makeup trends accross the pond.

When it comes to the big global brands, there’s not much difference to what you’d see in the likes of Selfridges and John Lewis etc (big brands tend to launch the same both here and there) but it’s when you turn to the smaller niche brands that have some really quite innovative stuff on offer that it really gets interesting…

Philosophy is very popular. It’s available here but in the US it’s huge. And rightly so. I love their packaging and all the names of their products; I purchased their ‘Raspberry Sorbet Lip Shine’ - it smells delicious and puts me in a very summery mood!

I also discovered a brand called Haute Face in Macy’s which I’d never heard of before; they have some really beautiful makeup palettes that create the whole look from ‘Irresistible’ to ‘Stunning’. I thought the concept of selling the ‘whole look’ in one was interesting.

The mineral makeup obsession that we’ve starting to see here (and that I blogged about a while ago) is huge in the States. Every brand seems to have their own version of it and you see the words ‘mineral makeup’ all over their beauty halls. Bare Escentuals is sooo popular; their advertising is everywhere and in every magazine.

In general I noticed that a lot of the model shots for the latest colour collections featured some serious brights – especially on the eyes.

This summer the look is all about striking blues, aquas and greens. Mostly they were used as eyeliner creating a confident line of colour to highlight the eye, leaving the rest of the makeup quite simple and subtle.

It’s a great summer look if it’s done right. Try MAC’s Liquidlast LinerRemember to use an eyeshadow base or a wash of neutral shadow so that the eyeliner doesn’t smudge or print on the top of your lids.

Colour wise aqua is my favourite and suits any eye colour. It’s especially effective on darker skin colours and tanned skin. Looks like I better get the self tan out… London’s not quite as sunny as NYC!

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