Manolo for the Big Girl

Until a few weeks ago, I’d never heard of Coastal Scents, a small cosmetics company based in Florida, and when I visited their site on a whim I wasn’t especially impressed. The site was a no-frills online store, the photographs weren’t professional beauty shots and the menus less than intuitive. But I was intrigued.

Coastal Scents, unlike traditional mascara slingers, caters to a combination of mad-scientists and professionals; make-up artists, resellers and people who want to make their own custom blends. They don’t just sell makeup, they sell makeup components, including pure pigment.

I am constantly on the hunt for intensely pigmented matte colors.

MAC is great and I heartily recommend them, but I have a hard time justifying dropping $15 for a shadow pot I might use once or twice a year. As far as drug store brands go, I’ve had good luck with the L’Oreal HiP line and Milani, which is marketed towards women with darker skin tones and generally contains more pigment, but they’re almost always too sparkly and their lasting power leaves a good deal to be desired. Plus I can’t use their cream-based products because of my eyelash extensions.

Coastal Scents sells their pigments by the half-teaspoon, teaspoon, ounce and pound. I ordered teaspoons of several oxides and micas (at a dollar each!)  which is what they call “sample size”. Sample size it may be, but for the recreational user, a teaspoon of pigment is a LOT of makeup. They arrived packaged neatly in teensy zipper bags. Each bag was labeled with the color, approved uses –eyes, lips, face, nails etc.– and the ingredients.

I popped each pigment into its own five gram jar ($3.49 for 10) and started experimenting.

Using their excellent 13 piece brush set ($16.95 including roll) which is by far the best brush set for the money I’ve ever come across, I began monkeying around with applications. First I applied some pigment with a very wet brush and got a lovely, even wash of color. Then I added a drop of fixative (I think mine came from a N.Y.C. loose powder kit) for a full-on intense look. The color payoff was tremendous as good or better as anything I’ve used including the MAC pro colors. It blended like a dream and although there was a good deal of fallout on the dry applications, that’s to be expected with any highly pigmented powder, especially since I forgot to use a primer the first time.

Using a primer is always a good idea with powders, especially if you’ve got deep set or oily eyelids, because powders as a species tend to “travel”.

Primer gives the powder something to grip, making your application last longer and stay where you damn well put it. The nice folks a Make Up Forever sent me a sample of their HD Microperfecting primer in Neutral the other day which is what I’ve been using and I highly recommend it, but historically my trusty old Rimmel Fix and Perfect primer has never steered me wrong and would probably work almost as well.

My only complaint with the Coastal Scents pigments was they don’t offer a really screaming yellow, which I’ve needed for a particular look for ages. I finally caved and bought Make Up Forever’s Pure Pigment #2, which is good, but not the Holy Grail yellow I’d been searching for, especially not for $20, which was nearly as much as I paid for the entire Coastal Scents 42 Color Double Stack Matte Palette ($24.95).

I am way, WAY gun shy about inexpensive palettes. Too many years of cheap Christmas sets with chalky colors meant for little girls playing dress up have left me with a fear and loathing of the multicolor pack, so I can’t tell you why I ordered this.

Maybe it was because the colors were matte –once you’re past the glitter and gloss stage, mattes are a much cooler look than shimmers which tend to look cheap even if they’re not–or maybe I was hoping for that Holy Grail Yellow (close but not quite) but I wasn’t expecting much.

I’m glad I was wrong.

This is by far the best big palette I’ve seen for under $100. It’s a great combination of neutrals and brights, plus some killer blushes and bronzers. The browns are almost exact duplicates of MAC mushroom and bark, which are great browns I use for eyebrow powders (apply it with an angled brush) and the pressed colors have the same ease of blending and almost the same intensity as the wonderful pure pigments.

Next week I’ll have a review of their mineral foundations and veils, plus I’ll reveal The Greatest Cosmetic Brush Ever.  Stay tuned!

Lovely reader Stella asks:

Plummy, I wonder if someday you might consider writing something up on how you keep your shoes in such nice condition… I wear the &%#! out of mine. I don’t know if it’s because I’m a fast walker or bear down on them too hard, but the heel tips get smooshed and worn out so quickly, and they’re always getting scuffed. One of the reasons (other than $) that I’m afraid to buy really high-end shoes is that I don’t think they’ll last me very long.

First of all, congratulations on having the good sense to share a name with my beloved Cadillac. That’s the sort of right-thinking behavior I like to see on this blog. Keep up the good work.

So, you’re hard on shoes. Me too.

As big girls even if we walk like little baby angels –personally I don’t, unless the new meaning of “little baby angels” is “drunken circus bear”– we’re just going to run down our heels faster than lighter women.

If you’re just moderately hard on your heels, you can have the tips replaced at a cobbler for about $7-$10. They’re usually sturdier than the tips on the original shoe but if you want to be extra careful (and trust me, you do) buy your own heel tips and either put them on yourself –dead easy with the right tools and a little elbow grease– or take them to the cobbler.

The Stiletto Heel Tips Shop is a fantastic British webstore where you can buy a variety of heel tips, including metal ones and extra-hard plastics. They’re about 2 or 3 dollars a pop and shipping is super cheap, and you can even go on the site to find some humorous instructions on how to replace them yourself. Hint: the best place to store your spare heel tips is in a humidor but I just put them in a Ziploc bag with a wet cotton ball and toss the whole mess into the freezer. It’s probably overkill, but rubber tips will crack more easily if they’ve dried out and it’s not like I’ve got actual FOOD in the freezer or anything.

If you’re tough on your toes too, the site also sells metal toe sole protectors. The other option is to have a rubber half-sole put on at the cobbler. I personally don’t care for rubber soles on high heels. When my regular shoe guy was being punished for ruining my brand new Prada ombre Mary Janes (that collection was what started the whole ombre trend, btw) that I have still NEVER WORN I went to another place and they put rubber half soles on my lacquered wood Zanottis AND my beloved Delman mary janes without asking and I rained down fire on them on the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the angel Gabriel got happy with the lighter fluid.

(alas poor Nottis, I hardly knew ye)

Which brings us to your concern about “really high-end shoes”…I feel ya.

I totally understand not wanting to drop bank on shoes you think you’re going to ruin. I don’t buy fabric shoes for more than $100. That’s not to say there aren’t a few pairs I wouldn’t switch teams over; I’ve been drooling around these Zanottis at Neiman Marcus Last Call for months, hoping a pair will magically turn up in my size:

(The heel is electric eel blue mirror! Love!)

but generally I stick with leather.

In some cases when you spend a shed-load of money for shoes, you’re really just buying the label *cough*Gucci sneakers*cough* but usually the more expensive the shoe –up to a point– the more abuse it can handle and still live to tell the tale.

Think about it like this: you can’t wash a paper plate.

If you strip a heel, seriously scuff or scratch a synthetic shoe, nine times out of ten that’s the ball game. However you wouldn’t believe the damage I’ve seen on some high-end heels that come out singing and swinging and getting merry like Christmas after a brief stint in shoe rehab. You just can’t be afraid to take them in for a little tune up now and then.

The other thing about buying higher-end shoes is they usually come with dust bags for storage.

Some designers give two bags, one for each shoe, which is ideal but rare.  Keeping them in their bags keeps your precious pumps away from danger when they’re not on your feet. They’re also dead handy for when you want to wear flats on the subway or walking to work.

And then there’s The Wayfarer Effect.

The Wayfarer Effect is where you treat something on which you spent a wad of cash better than something less expensive, so named because I was notorious for losing my sunglasses until I bought a pair of Wayfarers. Now I still misplace them from time to time –I’m convinced my church was built for the sole purpose of giving me a place to lose my shades– but I’m a lot more careful with my $150 glasses than I was with my drugstore cheapies.

This doesn’t mean you have to drop $600 on a pair of shoes. There’s a happy medium between the $1100 shoe made entirely out of feathers and the eyelashes of early Christian martyrs and the $11 shoe composed with nothing but  vinyl and the tears of 8 year old Chinese kids. In her comment, Style Spy wisely mentioned Cole Haan and Stuart Weitzman (who makes wide widths) as well-made, easily repaired shoes that won’t cost the world and I think that’s a solid place to start.

Hope this helps, Stella and thanks for reading!

P.S. For those minor scuffs on shoes without a nap (i.e., no velvet or suede) I’ve found the Mister Clean Magic Eraser sponge to be a godsend.

So I WAS going to write a post on how not to leave lipstick marks on a glass, but our right-thinking and well-bred readers beat me to the punch. Just lick the glass (or alternately, your lips) first.

Now, this does take a fair amount of finesse. You can’t be all tonguing it up like it’s the last Color Me Badd slow jam of your 9th grade formal; discretion is key, but if you can manage a discreet moistening of the lips or glass, you’ll leave a lip print, but not a smudge of color.

With that handy hint out of the way, it’s time to open it up to the crowd:

Today Miss Plumcake wants to know:

What secret to graciousness would you like to share with the class?  Bonus points if you tell us where you learned it and how it’s improved your life.

So it’s January.

January, well, blows.  The holidays are over, you’ve got a cold, the hangover you’ve been hair-of-the-dogging since Thanksgiving is finally coming home to roost, the grocery store’s stopped carrying peppermint ice cream and you’ve got a stack of thank-you notes that need writing.

It strikes you in the middle of a masterfully composed note to dear Aunt Alberta, whose *delightful* oinking fridge alarm was thrown at astounding speed into the trash immediately upon opening: you feel uncool.

There is nothing worse than feeling uncool. I mean, uh, not that I know what feeling uncool is like since we all know I wasn’t born from mother’s womb like normal mortals, but instead emerged fully formed from Lou Reed’s guitar, smoking Gauloises and listening to Nina Simone.

BUT

If I DID ever feel uncool, WHICH I DON’T (not even when my answer to the relatively simple question of “are you okay” by a Cute Boy is a plaintive “I’m covered in jam”) all I would have to do is step outside and put on these:

The  original Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses.

You just can’t argue with this level of cool. It’s unassailable.

The original Wayfarer transcends age and time. A 15 year-old boy is cool in them, a 70 year-old lady is cool in them. It’s like a riddle. How much more cool could they be? And the answer is none. None more cool.

They were cool when Audrey Hepburn wore them in Breakfast at Tiffany’s  and Andy Warhol wore them to the Factory.

They were cool when Jack Kennedy went sailing

and they were cool when Bob Dylan went electric.

And they’d be cool on you.

The trouble with telling people that you write about fashion is that people automatically ask you what you think about their outfits, and that can end in heartache, and by “heartache” naturally I mean “an entire weekend spent with twelve ounces of the finest porterhouse strapped on your recently rearranged face.”

Do not, under any circumstance heed the old chestnut “unless you have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all” for this will end in heartache as well.  Not saying anything when confronted by a big girl who –from the tip of her Bjork mini-bunned head to the bottom of her  beskulled stirrup-panted feet– is the hottest hot mess in the tri-county area will always fail.

Would that I had listened to my own advice. Thankfully, I escaped what our friend Billy S.  refers to as a “predestinate scratched face”  but not by much.

Which brings me to my second point: unless you are currently straddling a horse, stirrup pants = no.

Until a few days ago, had you bet me cash money that you could go into a store and emerge with a pair of stirrup pants I would have taken your bet and planned all sorts of vainglorious and complicated victory dances plus an array of remarks involving “your mom” to be performed upon my certain triumph.

Yet somehow they are making a resurgence. Who? Who are these people? Do they not know what pants are? Did my 5th grade closet become some sort of sacred shrine without me knowing? And most importantly, if stirrup pants are back, how far away can we possibly be from puffpaint sweatshirts, multiple Swatches and, God help me, butt bows?

The lip, she quivers.

Oh slingbacks. You are so pretty, but so evil…it’s like me in shoe form. You have thin soles, I have no soul at all. We’re like twins.

Yet I have avoided you, as many of us with the Flinstonian feets do, because it’s just so hard to get you to fit right. Oh how I’ve suffered with slingbacks. If they’re wide enough in the toe box, they’re too big in the back and if they’re juuust snug enough to ensure your foot won’t slip down in front, the ding dong (as Style Spy would say) back won’t get up over your heel without a threat, a bribe and three broken nails.

It’s a heartache to be certain.

But Plumcake is here to save you! Last week, inspired by a beautiful pair of Saks Fifth Avenue-brand croc print peep-toe slingbacks –very much an homage to the beloved Louboutin design shown below– I had what can only be described as a remarkably rare fit of brilliance.

These little lovelies fit beautifully in the toe and I knew if I could just get the sling back in appropriate position they would be mine forever. First I tried tugging them up with my finger in the band. No joy. Then I tried coaching them up with my nails. No luck there either, and I broke two nails. All the while a velvet ribbon I was wearing to keep my hair back kept flopping into my eyes. Out of frustration I tore off the stupid ribbon and then a beautiful leather-soled light bulb popped on above my head.

I put the shoe on as far as I could, looped the ribbon around the pesky elastic so I was holding the back of the shoe in a sort of sling, and just pulled up. It slid onto my foot bee-yoo-tifully and the slingbacks, ribbon and I have lived happily ever after.

The End.

Style Spy who has just returned from London and Paris, has a part-time job of systematically turning me on to Expensive Things I Didn’t Know I Needed like niche perfume or, oh, Hermés scarves. Have I always sort of just back-of-the-mind-y wanted an Hermés scarf? Mais bien sur (that’s French for “boy howdy”) but did I know until she returned with two of the sexy beasts that I could not possibly live another red hot second without 35 square inches of incredibly expensive silk wrapped around the place my neck would be if genetics had seen fit to endow me with something other than 2 inches of alabaster tree stump to separate my head from my torso? No friends, I did not.

I asked if, upon her return, she would be kind enough to help me find a new perfume and she –a self-identified “frag hag”– graciously obliged. Saturday night found us on the floor of her apartment drinking sparkling pinot, talking about boys and spraying scents on blotter of at least thirty hand-labeled tiny vials of perfume.

For those of you new to the world of decants –I’m a recent convert myself– it’s a way to inexpensively test pricey or hard-to-find fragrances without shelling out for a whole bottle. A decant is a small glass vial containing between 1/2 and 5 ml of “juice” that has been measured out from a larger bottle using medical-grade equipment. You cannot buy decanted perfume on eBay, but never you fear. The Perfumed Court sells decants of just about every fragrance you can imagine, including many discontinued scents and a special section of perfumes that are not available in the United States, usually for somewhere around $4 a pop.

The Perfumed Court even offers sampler packs, including various introductions to perfume houses like Lutens or Caron, noses (perfume designers) or scent families, so you can decide which flavor works best with your skin.

Oh and they are a positive wealth of scrabble-winning words. Example: “sillage” n., The scent trail a woman leaves as she walks by. Forty seven points on a double word score!

Internet Friend Brittany writes:

I’ve never been a tights girl. I’m from Texas, it’s just unnecessary. But now I live in place with an actual winter so I’m intrigued by this whole tights thing. I understand that a good way to wear them is with tall boots. I do not own tall boots because I have big thick tree-trunk legs and as much as people insist that boots exist for me, I am also without the budget for such a purchase as we approach the holiday season. So, what are the other shoe options for tights? Black pumps seem boring and pumps of another color seem too Minnie Mouse. Flats perhaps? See, I need help!

Brittany. Do not panic. We know you’ve been kidnapped. If you’re reading this, you have access to the internet, so let’s walk through this together. I want you to open a new window and type in www.mapquest.com. Are you there? Good. Now click on that button that says “Directions” it’s got a little blue car underneath. Excellent. Now click that and when the next screen comes up, I want you to type in where you currently are being held. No, you don’t need to know the zip code. Okay, now where it says destination, you just type in TX. Don’t worry about where, the important thing is we get you back into the state and away from those godforsaken places where people need things like “coats” and “heaters” and “toboggans” (which is TOTALLY a made up word and does not fool anybody)

There are a few keys to mixing tights and shoes. If you’re going with a statement shoe, keep the skirt on the short side to give the eye enough space to rest between objects of interest.

The shoe itself ought to be substantial –no frippy little sandals- and closed-toed. If you want to get really “editorial” I suppose technically you could wear a peep-toe, but I’ve rarely seen it pulled off with much success, so unless you’re positive it works, I’d avoid it.

Flats are an option if you’re not worried about the enstumpening (I love the idea of a prosh tartan skimmer with poms on the toe!) t-straps are great because they lend an architectural element and if you must wear ankle boots, pairing them with a contrasting tight shows makes a definite statement. For my money though, you cannot beat a nice suede maryjane. My current faves, by Charles Nolan, can be purchased for 40% off, perfect for the girl on the budget. Let’s see them again, shall we?
Here’s the green:

and here’s the plum:

Here are some more helpful visuals, courtesy of
Above is a t-strap by Alberta Ferretti, I love the way the strap lengthens the leg, a great way to wear metallics for day.

Some molto expensive ankle boots from Jimmy Choo. They give a strappy look, but have the bulk you’d need for a winter weight tight.

A green pump from Chloe. I particularly like the platform. It anchors the line and balances out the skirt.