Sometimes, like when you’re Adele Laurie Adkins of Tottenham, North London, 19 plus 21 equals eight.
Eight — for the number of Grammy awards the 23-year-old contralto has already won. Two for her debut album, 19, named for her age at the time she started recording it, and six more for her second album, 21.
Born May 5, 1988, Adele has been on fire this winter, despite stormy weather late last year. A scary vocal cord hemorrhage that led to surgery forced her to take more than three months off to recover, but her performance during the Grammy Awards last weekend showed the world that she and her soulful, world-weary yet life-affirming voice are back.
Just two weeks ago, her single, Set Fire to the Rain (one of my favorite running songs!), became the third number one single on the Billboard Hot 100 from her album, 21, making her the first artist in history to have an album hold the number one spot on the Billboard 200 concurrently with three separate singles at number one.
It’s amazing to me that someone so young can sing country-flavored music and bluesy tunes with so much soul. Even more amazing when you consider that she didn’t grow up listening to country music at all.
She was introduced to contemporary Nashville music in 2008 by her bus driver while on tour in the South. “It was really exciting for me because I never grew up around [that music],” she says.
Adele counts artists from many genres, including country, among her musical influences, also citing the Spice Girls, Pink, Aaliyah, Destiny’s Child and Mary J. Blige.
About a live performance by Pink at Brixton Academy some years back, Adele says it was one of the most defining moments in her life. “It was the Missundaztood record,” she says, “so I was about 13 or 14. I had never heard, being in the room, someone sing like that live [...] I remember sort of feeling like I was in a wind tunnel, her voice just hitting me. It was incredible.”
I’m really looking forward to her next album. 24, perhaps?
From humble beginnings, actress Viola Davis, the second of six children, worked her way up through abject poverty and dozens of bit parts in movies and TV, some of them uncredited (like “unnamed CIA Chairwoman” in Syriana), to become one of Hollywood’s most distinguished and sought after actresses. Born August 11, 1965 on her grandmother’s farm in St. Matthews, South Carolina, Viola is now getting somevery good roles.
Her mother, Mae Alice, was a maid, factory worker and homemaker, and her father was a horse trainer. When Viola was just two months old, the family moved to Central Falls, Rhode Island, where her love of acting began.
Probably best known for her portrayal of Aibileen Clark, a maid and nanny in Civil Rights era America during the early 1960s, in last year’s The Help, a role for which she has been nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award, and also for her performance as Mrs. Muller in 2008′s Doubt, Viola says she was a freshman in high school when she first saw acting as her way out of poverty.
A representative from The Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theatre in New York had visited her school, and when he asked how many of the students wanted to become actors, Viola and every one of her classmates raised their hand. Then, as the man explained how difficult the life of an actor could be, and the hardships that struggling actors often face, half of the hands went down, then more of them, until Viola’s was the only hand still raised.
“When you haven’t had enough to eat,” she says of that moment, “when your electricity and heat is cut off, you’re not afraid anymore when someone tells you life is going to be hard. The fear factor was minimized for me. My dreams were bigger than the fear.”
Lucky for us, she found her niche.
I love the idea of dreaming bigger than the fear. I think I’ll have to add that into my rotation of daily mantras.
Good luck at the Oscars, V!
High up on my list of things to do this week: dreaming big dreams — no matter how silly or far-fetched they might seem.
Because you never know. Casting those crazy ideas out into the ether could be the spark that sets in motion a chain of events that leads to one or more of them coming true.
Of course, a few of my big dreams would have to be related to makeup, right? — like traveling around the world while wearing the colors in the new limited edition Make Up For Ever La Bohème Eye Shadow Palette ($39).
And since we’re talking about BIG dreams, I’d want to wear each of the six baked shadows in this free-spirited palette while exploring a different far-flung corner of the world, and I’d start in Costa Rica with Lagoon Green.
This shimmery teal would be the perfect color to wear out to dinner with my BFF Cindy after a day spent playing in the surf.
From there, we’d zip out across the Pacific to the Garden Isle with mossy Vegetal Green, which I’d love to wear while searching for secret waterfalls on Kauai.
Then, and this one would require passing through quite a few time zones, I’d wear Beige on my lids while hiking the hills around Provence with my favorite wide-angle lens, and silvery violet Parma Purple while El Hub and I ate our way through Rome.
Next, silvery peach Coral and I would tour the Taj Mahal (always wanted to go), and then head back home to hopefully wear shimmery reddish bronze Brown out with you to lunch.
Afterward, maybe we could even do some window shopping, and you could take us to some of your favorite places to play with makeup in your town.
I know, I know. Such a crazy dream, but even if it never happens, at least I can still mimic the same sparkle in my eyes that I get when I’m traveling, since MUFE added high amounts of pearl to these baked shadows (which have a new formula just added to the line) to give skin a luminous, almost metallic finish.
The La Bohème Eye Shadow Palette and Aqua Eyes in Gypsy (also from the La Bohème collection)
Swatches from the left: Lagoon Green, Vegetal Green, Beige, Parma purple, Brown and Coral
Unlike MUFE’s regular powder shadows, these six apply somewhat sheer, but because they exhibit very little fallout and are so easy to blend, I don’t mind having to apply a few layers with a wet brush for bold looks.
Since they neither crease nor fade, I don’t have to spend a lot of time on touch-ups, which means having more time left over to dream big.
PRICE: $39
AVAILABILITY: Available now at Make Up For Ever Boutiques, Sephora and online
MAKEUP AND BEAUTY BLOG RATING: B+/A-
Look what the cat dragged in…
Tabs has certainly been having a happy Monday. His Paul & Joe Meow collection order just arrived, and he’s tickled pink (reviews coming soon)!
Initially, I brought home this $5 Burt’s Bees Mango & Orange Energizing Body Bar from Target 1) because I can always use a little extra energy, and 2) because I thought it kinda looked like food, ha!
When I used up the last little slivers of my bar of Becca Brush Soap, I grabbed Burt’s Mango & Orange bar on a whim, using it to clean a couple of skunk brushes that I’d used with a bright blush and a MAC 239 brush crusted over with concealer.
As luck would have it, Burt’s invigorating body bar worked wonders on the brushes, removing all of the funk from their stinky ferules and the gunk from the handles and brush heads themselves.
I’d like to shake the little hand of the bee who developed this bar and thank him/her for doing such a great job. Not only do I think it’s one heck of an energizing, moisturizing body bar, it’s also one of the better brush cleansers I’ve used in a while.
And fast, too. It cuts through hard-to-remove products like dried foundation just as quickly as Becca’s Brush Soap does and rinses without putting up a fight. After air drying, my brush bristles feel soft, clean and malleable, not crunchy or stiff.
For the Mango & Orange bar, Burt and his bees whipped up a 100% natural French-milled bar soap made with mango extract, sweet orange oil and cocoa seed butter to soften, invigorate and energize skin.
What a great find! — and all for just $5, which is $10 less than Becca’s Brush Soap. On top of how well I think it works on both bodies and brushes, it’s available at most drugstores and grocery stores, so it’s also pretty easy to find.
PRICE: $5
AVAILABILITY: Available now at drugstores, grocery stores and also online
MAKEUP AND BEAUTY BLOG RATING: A+
What do you usually use to apply foundation? Sometimes I get the best results when I use my fingers, but I go through phases. One week I’ll use fingers, the next week a skunk brush, and then maybe even a kabuki brush the week after that.
I guess I’m a bit of a wild child when it comes to tools. It really just depends.
Lately I have been rather enamored with fan brushes, though, like the lovely Trish McEvoy 62 ($36), which I’ve been using to apply MAC Studio Sculpt Foundation.
That’s right — a fan brush to apply a liquid foundation.
Weird, I know, but hear me out. I actually got the idea from MAC Senior Artist Keri Blair, who uses it in this video to apply MAC Mineralize Foundation. Her results just looked so flawless and natural that I figured, heck, why not give it a try?
The first fan brush I thought to try it with was the Shu Uemura 7.5EX, a brush I’ve loved for years (as a side, I think it paints scary pigmented blushes like MAC Frankly Scarlet with aplomb).
With Studio Sculpt, I thought it was just a’ight. I liked the thin, light level of coverage, but I also got some streaks.
Hmm…
Not yet ready to give up on the idea, I tried a few other fan brushes, all of them with mediocre results until I came to Trish’s 62.
It was love!
The 62 was designed to deliver thin layers of powder products for faces and cheeks, but I think it does a bang up job with liquid foundations, too. The dense, wide brush head lays down just the right amount of product to cover what I’m trying to cover without leaving a bunch of annoying streaks behind.
To use it, first, I load a bit of Studio Sculpt on the back of a hand (I’m right handed, so I used the back of my left for this), and then pick up a small amount of it with the 62. To apply, I start from the center of the face and work my way out.
It’s amazing how much a brush can help or hurt when it comes to application, and I love the results I get with the 62. I think the coverage looks natural and flawless, and it doesn’t look or feel heavy at all — the coveted “my skin but better” effect.
This has been my first experience with a Trish McEvoy brush, and what an experience it’s been. Too bad it’s such a expensive brush, but at least it looks and feels worthy of the price. It’s sturdy, and over the three weeks I’ve been using it, I haven’t seen it drop a single bristle.
I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled for a drugstore equivalent and will let you know if one turns up.
PRICE: $36
AVAILABILITY: Available now at Trish McEvoy counters and also online
MAKEUP AND BEAUTY BLOG RATING: A+
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
Benefit babes, brace yourself for a bodacious treat.
Yesterday Benefit Global Beauty Authority Annie Ford-Danielson took a few minutes to chat with me over the phone about their newest product, Hello Flawless Oxygen Wow Liquid Foundation ($34), which arrives on counters this March.
You may remember Annie and her sister Maggie from last year’s B.Right Skin Care launch. Together, they travel the world, working as global ambassadors for the brand.
This marks Benefit’s latest leap into liquid foundations, and Annie, who also works in product development, gave me an inside look at the development process and what we can expect from Hello Flawless Oxygen Wow when it arrives.
The following is an interview with Benefit Global Beauty Authority Annie Ford-Danielson about the brand’s new Benefit Hello Flawless Oxygen Wow Liquid Foundation.
So why did Benefit decide to do a liquid foundation?
Well, I think that at Benefit, as you know, we have kind of a small number of products. We’re not like the MACs or Make Up For Evers, where we have 1500 SKUs, so we have to choose our launches super carefully.
We kind of realized that we’ve done concealers, we’ve done highlighters, Fake-Its, brows, skin care, so the next step to really becoming a one-stop shop for beauty was to create a new liquid foundation.
Our girls, our customers, were coming to us for all of these beauty dilemmas and needs, and the fact that we didn’t have a full assortment of foundations was sending them off to other brands, and of course we want our girls to stay with us.
Annie Ford-Danielson, Benefit Global Beauty Authority
I think that really sparked our interest in making a new line. In true Benefit fashion, I’m sure as you know, we’re all about just quick, easy, instant beauty solutions, and I think that foundation can be hard for a lot of women. It can be super intimidating; it can be laborious, so we wanted to create a formula that was really easy, hydrating and brightening.
When you say brightening, does that mean shimmer?
There’s no shimmer in the foundation itself. It’s called Hello Flawless Oxygen Wow, and the really kind of “Fake It” quality that we’ve given this foundation is that it has an oxygen hydrating complex.
What does this mean? It means it’s going to help boost your cellular respiration, giving your skin a really nice plumping effect, so it’s going to make those fine lines, those little crevices, kind of plump up, giving you that healthy-looking skin. And it also helps protect against environmental stresses. It has vitamin C and E derivatives, which are known to prevent the signs of aging.
My favorite part about this is that it’s oil free but has an SPF 25 PA+++. So what does that all mean? It’s very technical. First of all, the Oxygen Wow complex is completely exclusive to our brand. We created it for our liquid foundation, and basically, what it means is that this is not your traditional liquid foundation. It goes on and has the consistency of a really nice, kind of lightweight tinted moisturizer, but it has the coverage of a foundation.
Can you describe the coverage a little bit?
It’s interesting that you asked. It really depends on the method in which you apply. For example, I apply — I wear it, and I’ve been wearing this foundation because I have connections here and I get it early (laughs). I’ve been traveling so much this year, and everyone’s like, “What’s your favorite product?” and I’m like, “Well, I can’t tell you…because it’s our liquid foundation and we don’t have it [yet].”
So, honestly, it really depends on what you want the foundation to do. On the weekends, I apply it with my fingers, and I just apply half a pump. It kind of gives me a really nice, evening-out effect, but it’s incredibly build-able.
That was one of the main aspects of the foundation that we as a brand felt was important for our customers, because our customers are always telling us, “We want to be able to customize our look. On Sunday, we don’t want to look as decked out as we do on Friday night.” So we figured that to have a formula that was incredibly build-able was the key, so you can go all the way from light, to medium, to medium-full coverage foundation.
Tell me a little about the shade selection.
It took a long time for us to figure out what kind of shade range we wanted to have. In the past, we’ve always made it super easy by just making two or three shades — for example, Some Kind-A Gorgeous or Erase Paste. We really found that, although it’s good for those products, for a liquid foundation, you need to do more. And we are growing so rapidly and so globally as a brand that we found that to limit this would just not be smart.
So we decided to make nine shades, and they range all the way from a really light, warm eggshell, all the way to a deep, rich nutmeg, and they will be matched not by shade, but by undertone, basically to our Hello Flawless Powders.
We have nine Hello Flawless Powders, and they will have a direct match to every single liquid so that it’s super easy to choose if you want a finishing powder.
How are you envisioning it working with the rest of the products in your line?
Personally for me, I wear it on its own with like a little bit of Hoola and one of our Box-O’s [blushes], but a lot of people, like my sister, for example, she’s a little bit more oily than I am — don’t tell her I told you that! She’ll kill me. She wears the liquid, and then she uses the matching Champagne powder, and she keeps the powder with her throughout the day to touch up. I actually keep the liquid in my bag to touch up throughout the day because it’s so hydrating. And I get so super dry that I can actually layer it throughout the day.
Benefit has become known for this quick, really easy, girl-on-the-go, and to make a formula that was in a glass bottle without a pump was just — it’s not very functional. I don’t know about you, but I need something I can throw in my bag that’s not gonna explode or, you know, crack or anything, so it’s an airless pump. It keeps the formula intact and 100% sanitary. The pump pumps out a really nice amount that’s good for a full layer, and it has this really beautiful finish to it so you can see the shade, but it doesn’t allow the shade to oxidize, when or if you leave it on your bathroom counter, or if it hits the sun.
You’ve been working on this product for a couple of years. What was the most challenging part?
Foundation in general is just really tough. There are so many things that go into it…
When we first started the process, we started with the customer’s needs. In product development, at Benefit at least, we always say, “What beauty dilemmas do our girls still have, and how can we solve them?” So, we were talking — as we like to call it, “freebasing” — at Benefit. We go into a room, we close the door and O.D. on candy and sugar and as much caffeine as physically possible. We just kind of talk about what we all hate about the foundations we use. You know? Like, “It gets dry, it gets cakey, or it oxidizes throughout the day, and I get that awful line around my chin area, and I can’t use it around my eyes because it’s not hydrating enough,” all of these different things. We decided to take every single problem, and then create the solution. And that’s when we really came up with what we wanted in a liquid foundation.
We wanted something super hydrating, with good coverage, but not greasy, that would give you the SPF protection you need. So I think that once you have a strategy, kind of a vision, for what you want it [the product] to be, then what’s really difficult is finding a formula that lives up to your expectations.
It’s interesting, because I had never worn a liquid foundation before I wore this. I always used Play Sticks. But honestly, I always thought — and I think a lot of women think, if they’re not complete beauty mavens, that liquid foundation has a negative connotation. They think heavy, they think thick and cakey, and that they’re going to look really made up and not natural. So, that was one of the key drivers.
It took us two years just to create the formula that we wanted. And it’s really amazing. I can’t wait till you get to try it. It’s unbelievable. I have a coworker who has really, really oily skin; she usually stays away from products that say “super hydrating,” but she wears this every single day, and she’s like, “This is the best foundation I’ve ever used.”
How many versions did you go through before you got to the final one?
I can ballpark for you. Honestly, I think we probably went through, in terms of just base formulas, maybe 40?
I think as a brand, we realize that we can’t just come out with a liquid foundation and not have a really, really great exclusive complex in it, because we’re up against other brands that are very forward in terms of their technology, and this has the complex in it with the SPF that really does allow your skin to breathe and have that wonderful oxygen in it to keep your skin looking healthy and young.
Do you guys have labs in your offices?
We have a section of labs; we also work with other labs in terms of creating exactly what we want. So, you know, if we decide that we want an awesome, awesome new box powder, for example, the best labs to work with are all in Italy. So we’ll go to Italy, we’ll tell them what we want, we’ll create it with them, and then find something amazing.
For this [Hello Flawless Oxygen Wow], because we wanted such a scientific formula, we went to our parent company, LVMH, and we asked them to really push the envelope, and to give us something that only Benefit could have. Something that truly, truly works.
I think what was really interesting about this, too, was that we wanted something that worked as well as a Dior, a Guerlain — all of those really top brands — but we wanted it to be at an approachable price point, because our girls, they want something they can go through and keep buying, and not feel like they can’t go out to dinner that month. So, you know, we kept it at $34 because we felt it was a really good price point for the formula that you’re getting.
The other part that was super hard was the shades. You just have so, so many under tones and basic skin tones and different ethnicities, and we’re such a global brand that to create nine shades that work for such a range of women was challenging.
Swatches from the left: I’m Pure 4 Sure Ivory, I’m Plush & Precious Petal, Cheers to Me Champagne, and I’m So Money Honey
From the left: I’m All the Rage Beige, Warm Me Up Toasted Beige, and I’m So Glamber Amber
From the left: I’m Hopelessly Hot Hazelnut, and Gotta Know Me Nutmeg
And that’s a wrap! 
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
Meet the newest member of the Benefit B.Right Skincare clan, the repackaged andreformulated Benefit Boo Boo Zap ($16).
Its objective remains the same, even though it’s decked out in new digs — to banish blemishes and reduce the appearance of redness and swelling.
Like the current formula, this one’s clear, so it can be worn beneath or on top of makeup. It also contains salicylic acid (0.5%).
Say “bye bye” to boo boos with this fast-acting invisible acne treatment. It purifies & dries out blemishes and reduces the appearance of acne-related redness & swelling. Perfect for all skin types, this clarifying wonder is gentle enough to be used multiple times a day, but powerful enough to prevent new blemishes from forming.
I’m going to miss the comic book packaging, with that zit-fighting superheroin leaping high above the San Francisco skyline. It was always so easy to spot and such a favorite at the Benefit counter.
Benefit trades the comic book flair for more sophisticated beachy attire in green, tan and white, keeping it consistent with the rest of the B.Right line. They also increased the amount of product while decreasing the price, which is always nice to see. The old/current zapper held 6 milliliters and cost $20; the new one houses 7.4 milliliters and costs $16. A pretty significant change.
But even more important than that, Benefit adjusted the ingredient profile. It still contains salicylic acid, but they removed the witch hazel and camphor, and added glycolic acid, bisabolol (an extract of chamomile believed to soothe flaky dry skin) and a couple of acronyms, PPG-26 and PEG-40 hydrogenated castor oil, a compound some folks try to avoid.
The old Boo Boo Zap ingredient list…
And the new one…
I haven’t put this new formula through its paces yet, but I’m a little nervous. I went through a bottle of the current version a couple years ago and had good luck with it. I hope the product hasn’t lost its charm (I’ll let you know).
It’s scheduled to arrive at Benefit boutiques and counters in May, but if you’d rather not wait that long, you don’t have to. It’s available now at benefitcosmetics.com.
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen