Observer Ethical Awards 2014 winners: Beyond Skin

Beyond Skin has been trading for more than 10 years. In that time, Natalie Dean, 40, and Heather Whittle, 32, have weathered a few storms. "We've had our factory shut up shop, boutiques that supply us close down, and a lack of our own funds to buy eco-friendly materials, which have always been – and still are – expensive," says Dean.

Perhaps most remarkably, the vegan shoe line has survived the recession – something Dean believes wouldn't have happened if the brand didn't produce shoes that look good, regardless of their ethical values. "I think that's where a lot of eco fashion brands have gone wrong," she frowns. "You can have as much integrity as you like, but people have got to want to buy you because they're going to wear you."

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While other eco fashion lines floundered post-2008 ("Ironically, the recession came just after fashion magazines began to really support ethical"), the Brighton-based brand flourished, thanks in part to strong celebrity support. The first champion of the original line was Chrissie Hynde, who bought pairs for herself and Beth Orton. Shortly afterwards, Natalie Portman wore Beyond Skin to the Oscars and the Golden Globes. Meanwhile, Anne Hathaway has frequently requested the brand for fashion shoots.

But Dean also believes information about the use of suede and leather in fashion is powerful. "Most people are surprised to discover that agriculture uses 70% of the world's fresh water or that livestock creates more greenhouse gas than transport." In using faux leathers made from PU (polyurethane), and Dinamica (a faux suede using polyester taken from recycled bottles) the brand's alternatives are both cruelty-free and sustainable. Production is now based in Alicante, Spain, where fabrics are locally sourced.

The launch of a diffusion line six months ago has also made Beyond Skin more affordable. "We had to start with a higher-end line because we needed to be able to wholesale," says Dean, "but our intention was always to deliver high-street price points that would make the brand more accessible. One day, we'd love to have our own boutique."

For now, the focus is on trading online, where prices for the new diffusion line currently range from £60 for a pair of heels to £130 for a pair of boots. The higher-end Beyond Skin line retails at £115-£250.

The diffusion line marks a huge move forward for the company, but with plans to launch menswear, accessories and bridal all on the horizon, 2014 is set to be a big year for Dean and Whittle. Helpfully, it's also the year of the vegan. "It's funny," smiles Dean, a former make-up artist, "because when we first started we would try to avoid the term 'vegan shoes'. It didn't sound very sexy. But now everyone seems to be turning vegan. There are vegan restaurants opening every month in New York and tons of celebrity vegans, from Beyoncé to Bill Clinton. The great thing is that it's no longer being seen as a cause but a lifestyle choice."

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Get rid of dark circles with these yoga asanas

Even with good skin and great make-up, a woman can look tired and fatigued due to dark circles. Thought to be caused due to stress, lack of sleep and in some cases due to constant ill health, dark circles are also known to form due to lack of oxygen and blood flow to the face. That is why Ayurveda and yoga practitioners believe that by increasing the blood flow to one’s face it can help resolve the problem. So instead of trying various chemical and cosmetic methods to get rid of them, here is an all natural way to zap those dark circles away.

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Hastapadotasana: Also known as the standing forward bend pose, this asana is the first one you should perform in this series. Hastapadotasna stretches out the muscles of almost all parts of the body, invigorates the nervous system, resolves digestive disorders and helps increase the blood flow to your face. It is also know to help tone the muscles of the abdomen and relieve any stomach disorders.

Steps to do this pose: Stand straight with your legs shoulder width apart. Now, stretch both your hands forward and upwards, making sure you feel a stretch up your spine. Now start bending slowly until your palms are touching the floor and your head touches your knees. For most people touching their hands to the floor might be difficult, so don’t fret, keep trying till you start feeling comfortable. Once in this position, breathe normally and hold the asana for as long as you are comfortable.

Tip: Avoid doing this pose if you suffer from spondylitis, high blood pressure or heart disease.

After you have performed hastapadotasana, you can perform the other asanas in this series. Do not do the other poses before you do this asana.

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Viparitakarani: Also known as the legs-up-the-wall pose, is great when it comes to beating dark circles. It not only increases the blood flow to your head and face but is also beneficial in stretching out the back, relieving lower back pain and calming the mind. One of this aasana’s greatest benefits is that it helps relieve cramps in the back and leg and calms the mind. According to Ayurveda lack of sleep and stress are the number one cause for dark circles and this asana targets exactly those areas.

Steps to do the asana: Lie down flat on the floor, near a wall. Now, raise your legs such that they are rested comfortably along the wall and the base of your back is touching the wall. Stretch your arms out on either side of your body and relax. You may choose to raise your chin towards the ceiling, but do not stress your neck while doing this pose. Close your eyes and breathe in deep allowing yourself to relax. Hold this pose for as long as you are comfortable.

Tip: Avoid doing this pose if you are menstruating, have serious eye disorders like glaucoma or suffer from high blood pressure.

Sambhavi mudra: Is a form of yoga practice that helps awaken the ajna chakra. Although it is called a mudra, this is a form of meditation that is meant to awaken the most important chakra in our body. Apart from that this mudra helps calm the mind, stretch the muscles around the eyes and relaxes those present between the eyebrows.

Steps to do this pose: Sit comfortably in a calm corner of your house and place your palms on your thighs. Make sure your palms are facing upwards so that there is an equal distribution of energy. Now turn both your eyeballs so that you are literally trying to look at the centre of your eyebrows. Breathe normally and hold this pose for five to six counts. To intensify the mudra you can choose to hum ‘Om’. This is not religious in any way but is based on scientific evidence that the word ‘Om’, when chanted produces a type of vibration throughout the body, that is very beneficial to massage the nervous system and activate the chakras. To stop doing the mudra, close your eyes and slowly bring your eyes back to their normal position. Keep your eyes closed for a short while and then slowly open them.

Surya Namaskar: Surya Namaskar has a deep effect in detoxifying the organs through copious oxygenation and has a deeper relaxing effect. It is a series of 12 physical postures. These alternating backward and forward bending postures flex and stretch the spinal column giving a profound stretch to the whole body. You can find out how to do the asanas correctly in our post about surya namaskar.

Kristin Scott Thomas: 'I cannot cope with another film'

Kristin Scott Thomas has had enough. She has been working flat out for 30 years, and made 65 films: having lived in Paris since the age of 19, she effectively has two careers, one in English and one in French. Even her cleaner thinks her workload is insane. Last September, for the first time in her life, she reached a point where she could no longer go on. "I just suddenly thought, I cannot cope with another film," she says. "I realised I've done the things I know how to do so many times in different languages, and I just suddenly thought, I can't do it any more. I'm bored by it. So I'm stopping." Having always been a workaholic, she now likes to think of herself, she jokes, as a "recovering actress".

For the past 15 years, the actor has fashioned a highly respected career out of small parts in biggish English-language films, such as the John Lennon biopic Nowhere Boy, and big parts in smaller French films, such as the prisoner returning home in I've Loved You So Long. But she is tired of working on films whose scripts keep being rewritten at the last minute. "The kinds of films that I do are usually quite rapidly put together, and it always seems to be a little bit of a shambles. I like filming, but what I don't like is having to rearrange things and rewrite scenes. I just can't be bothered."

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She is tired, too, of being cast in films that need her more than she needs them. "I'm often asked to do something because I'm going to be a sort of weight to their otherwise flimsy production. They need me for production purposes, basically. So they give me a little role in something where they know I'm going to be able to turn up, know what to do, cry in the right place. I shouldn't bite the hand that feeds, but I keep doing these things for other people, and last year I just decided life's too short. I don't want to do it any more."

This is the second time Scott Thomas has decided to walk away from work that many actors would kill for. The first was in the late 1990s, when the success of Four Weddings And A Funeral had catapulted her into Hollywood A-list roles in The Horse Whisperer, Mission: Impossible andThe English Patient. "But it was geographically unfriendly, because I just didn't want to go to America." She was married to a Frenchman, had two young children, and the family wanted to live in France or, at the very least, Europe.

But it wasn't just about that. "No, it's also that I can't bear all the kind of rubbish that goes on on those big films. I just can't stand sitting around for hours in a great big luxury trailer, waiting, bored out of my head. I used to do," she offers drily, "a lot of tapestry. Yes, I had a lot of cushions around."

She did have one minor relapse five years ago when she appeared in the airhead comedy Confessions Of A Shopaholic, but at its mention her face freezes in a pantomime of horror. "I thought it would be quite good fun. But I spent my entire time waiting. I hated it, hated it, hated it, and I said that I wouldn't do another one." Grinning, she adds, "Funnily enough, I haven't been asked to."

Actors are seldom this candid. It is an unwritten rule of the profession to speak highly of every film you've ever been involved in – but then, Scott Thomas has always been a singular sort of film star. Very few British actors work in a foreign language, for a start, and when she arrives at the studio in Paris where we meet, she's so out of the habit of speaking English that she keeps beginning sentences in French. She is makeup-free and wearing glasses which, she says, are very useful for deflecting attention: "Because people don't think, oh, who's that old woman with the round glasses?"

There is no publicist in attendance, and she submits to the attentions of the hairstylist and makeup artist without fuss. She has the sort of informality that comes from having done this many times before, and talks freely without appearing to wonder or worry about how she might sound in print. At 53, she is more preoccupied by how she looks.

Scott Thomas is mesmerisingly beautiful, but she refers to herself as an "ageing actress" and keeps saying, "I'm terribly old" or, "I'm positively ancient." In fact, being ancient might make things slightly easier, for she adds, "I'm sort of, as the French would say, 'stuck between two chairs', because I'm no longer 40 and sort of a seductress, and I'm not yet a granny." She got a terrible shock a few years ago when a close-up portrait taken for this newspaper was reprinted in a glossy magazine, without being digitally retouched. "It was a really great picture, and looked fine on a grainy piece of paper in black-and-white," she says now. "But on the gloss of a magazine cover, without being retouched, it was the most terrifying thing. It really brought home to me how the images of women we see are so manipulated." Accustomed these days to seeing faces digitally perfected, anyone who saw the magazine would, she groans, have thought: "My God, Kristin Scott Thomas, she's so ancient!"

As a middle-aged woman, she finds herself increasingly overlooked in everyday life, and has talked a lot in recent years about the unnerving experience of becoming invisible. So it's ironic that her latest film is calledThe Invisible Woman (the title actually refers to its young heroine, Charles Dickens' secret mistress, Nelly Ternan). It is a screen adaptation of Claire Tomalin's biography of the 18-year-old actress, who captured Dickens' heart when he was a married father of nine and more than twice her age. Felicity Jones plays Ternan and Scott Thomas plays her widowed mother Catherine, who oversees the affair with worldly maternal anxiety, part Victorian chaperone and part pragmatic pimp.

It is a slow-paced but beautifully shot and absorbing film. For Scott Thomas, its principal appeal was the chance to work again with Ralph Fiennes, who plays Dickens and also directed the film. Like her, he puts in an electrifying performance – which is all the more remarkable given that he appears on screen in almost every scene and has previously directed just one film. "It's a brilliant performance," she says, "and it was so lovely to work with him again. But it wasn't just that. There was something about playing a woman who has to make decisions about her child and evaluate her child's chances, and I found that very moving, the responsibility of the mother of this daughter. I just wanted to do it."

The only downsides were the corsets and petticoats and bustles. Her waist had to be drawn so tightly that she was physically sick, while the petticoats were so heavy that her arms would ache just to lift them. "I didn't want to wear the wigs and I didn't want to wear the costumes. I don't know how those women did it," she marvels coolly.

Wardrobe discomfort notwithstanding, however, period dramas often seem to provide the most substantial roles for older actresses, raising the disquieting thought that perhaps older women were accorded greater status in Victorian times than they are today. "I don't know," she ponders. "It's an interesting thought. Is it to do with our mania for youth, our kind of addiction to youth?" Then again, she points out, The Invisible Woman is a tale of a 45-year-old man leaving his wife of 22 years in 1858 for a woman not even half his age, so perhaps then and now are not so different after all. If anything, the parallels between the two eras are "more or less literally dramatised by the film – by the fact that Ray is getting to jump into bed with the lovely Felicity Jones". In The English Patient, Fiennes and Scott Thomas played lovers; 18 years later, the 51-year-old actor's love interest is an actress 21 years his junior, while Scott Thomas must play her mother.

I tell her that, for me, the film's most compelling characters are all middle-aged. Alongside Fiennes she co-stars with the magnificent Joanna Scanlan and Tom Hollander, and it's they who bring the screen alive. "Well," she nods, "I don't want to go and see a film about young people. I'm just not remotely interested. When I go to the movies, I'd rather watch people who've lived, who have gone through the mill, who've had their heart broken a million times and are still looking for love. That's what's interesting to me."

She thinks the film industry might just be starting to realise there is a market for films about older people. The population is ageing, for a start – "So they've got to make something to entertain us" – and films now have a commercial lifespan far beyond box-office receipts, making teenagers' dominance of cinema seats less important. "I just think there really need to be stories about people who have been through life and are still hopeful."

She is encouraged by the success of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and by the rumours of a sequel. Even the recent return to TV of Birds Of A Feather is good news, she thinks, its female stars now being in their 50s and 60s. What about Downton Abbey, I ask. Scott Thomas's great heroine, Maggie Smith, is flourishing in the drama at 79, and so is Shirley MacLaine. Scott Thomas starred in Downton creator Julian Fellowes' first feature film, Gosford Park – another country-house period drama – so I ask if she could see herself joining the cast. She shakes her head.

"I can't do miniseries. Once you've got the characters, once you know who they are, they're going to repeat themselves, aren't they, for the next five years? It just goes on and on and on. I get terribly bored. Series bore me."

She is also rather weary of being typecast, playing quiet despair and heartbreak with the particular strain of dignity first showcased in Four Weddings. Scott Thomas hasn't had to audition for a part in years, but as a consequence gets "asked to do the same things over and over, because people know you can do that, so they want you to do that. But I just don't want to pretend to be unhappy any more – and it is mostly unhappy."

I suspect she is cast in unhappy roles because she has a gift for looking so compellingly beautiful when miserable. "Thank you very much, I'll try and make the most of that," she jokes. She has another theory: "Although I don't really think of myself as a sad person, there has been a lot of sadness. I've known a lot of sadness; I know what it's like to be sad. So I guess I have access to that, and can tap into it."

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Scott Thomas was born in Cornwall in 1960, the eldest of five, to a former drama student mother and Royal Navy pilot father who died in a flying accident when she was five. Her mother married another pilot, who died in an almost identical accident when Scott Thomas was just 11. She was sent to a girls' boarding school, before enrolling at drama school in London, where she was told she would never make the grade and so decamped to Paris to be an au pair. There she studied drama again and was spotted by, of all people, Prince, who promptly cast her as his love interest in his vanity project Under The Cherry Moon. She was, critics agreed, the only decent thing in it, and has been working more or less nonstop ever since.

But, by her own account, she was not a happy young woman, and spent several years in analysis. She has been free of depression for years now, and comes across as conspicuously at ease with herself: grounded, good-natured and unflappable. Her comments about all the things she no longer likes about her film career may make her come across in print as rather grumpy, but her critique seems to derive from a newfound sense of liberation and self-belief. She is no longer the guarded, rather remote character who – as she herself says – invariably used to attract freezing water-based metaphors. In recent years, interviewers have remarked on how much she has thawed, and it would be easy to assume this has something to do with her 2006 divorce. In fact, she says, it was her rediscovery of theatre just over a decade ago that transformed how she felt about herself and her work.

In 2001, she played the title role in Bérénice on stage in France, having not been on stage for more than 15 years. It was a revelation. "I suddenly felt independent. You could walk on stage and you could stand on your head if you really wanted to. No one's going to say stop, don't do that, that's a ridiculous idea. There's this feeling of independence and trust – I could give myself permission to play things in a certain way and see if they worked or they didn't. I could trust myself."

The trouble with acting in films, she goes on, is that "you're constantly being told what to do. 'Move your head that way. Can you cry a bit more? Can you do this, can you do that? Oh, that was lovely, that was amazing, that was beautiful.' And sometimes you think, that wasn't amazing and wonderful and beautiful, it was just a look. But you've got this person saying it was. And then it's taken away from you, and it's all mixed up and made into something else. Basically, when you are acting in a film, you're giving the director the raw material to make the film. But when you're acting on stage, that's it. And that's when you discover that you can really do it. It's this word 'trust' that keeps coming to me. It's not a question of whether one person is conning you into thinking you can do it, saying, 'Oh, it was beautiful.' On stage, if it works, it works."

If Scott Thomas used to come across as somewhat aloof, she thinks this had a lot to do with her own ambivalence about her acting, and self-disdain for the narcissism of a career spent chiefly sitting around in trailers, waiting to be told what to do by a director. Since Bérénice she has starred in five West End plays, including two Chekhovs and twoPinters, won an Olivier award for best actress, and every time she talks about being on stage, her face lights up with excitement.

She says she will still make some films, but only those she absolutely can't resist. For the first time since her 20s, she is getting accustomed to the novelty of choice, for her daughter and eldest son are now in their 20s themselves, and her youngest son is 13, so the financial pressure of supporting her family is beginning to ease. She met her former husband, a gynaecologist, when she was at drama school, but since their marriage ended she has been facing a new freedom she's still not entirely sure what to do with. "I'm starting to think, hang on a minute, soon my youngest is going to go off and do whatever he's going to do. But this is what's quite fun about being me at the moment – making one's own choices, for reasons of one's own, and not trying to please a career person, or make money. I guess that's a sign of maturity, I think."

She and her ex-husband share joint custody of their youngest son, and although that makes life "much more complicated – you have to make appointments to talk to the father of your child, which is a bore", relations are amicable. "I know for so many people it hasn't turned out right, and they can't get the other partner to engage, and that sounds like hell. But I've been very, very lucky. Married the right man, had babies with the right man." She grins cheerfully. She does feel lonely sometimes: "But I think everybody does sometimes. I used to feel lonely when I was married and had three children, you know." The worst times are August, when Paris decamps en masse for the summer holiday. "Everyone's gone, you're on your own, and it's agony. You're trying to book a hotel, but you can't because the hotels are all full of these fucking families!" She laughs.

But the biggest challenge is deciding where she should even be. She has often said she feels more French than English, so I'm surprised to hear her say she is seriously thinking of returning to the UK in the not too distant future. Her adopted country appears to be, she says sadly, in terminal decline. "I think so. Everyone says it is, and it's quite believable. Five years ago, I would have said great schools, great education, great transport, trains are wonderful, roads are great, all that kind of thing – great, great, great. You can't really say that any more. And at the moment I'm really worried about the rise of antisemitism in France, which is just really unbelievable." Someone, she says, has got to stop National Front leader Marine le Pen.

Then again, she confesses, she doesn't actually vote, because she has never got round to getting a French passport. "It's about split personalities – it's about my life already being complicated enough. I'm splitting into a million pieces with this job I do, and I feel like I live in two countries, so having two nationalities as well feels too much. But I feel flaky not voting, I'm sort of ashamed of it."

What does she make of the revelations about François Hollande's private life? "Oh, I would really prefer not to know. In France, we are all shocked that the press has been so invasive, because there is a very strong – and I think quite right – belief that a private life should be private. But where I come a cropper is with this 'first girlfriend' business. I'm rather old-fashioned. This idea of being first girlfriend," she says, beginning to laugh, "is just bollocks to me."

Get the Most Out of That Damn DIY Mani

My life is so effing hard. I really enjoy having beautiful/well-manicured nails, but I can't afford to get professional manis, and I hate taking the time to do that shit myself just to have those mofos chip in 37 minutes. Eff you, nail chips. You're a d*ck.

Don't you worry your beautiful little angelfish face about this, though. Over my years upon years of working against the man (a.k.a. terrible manicures), I have developed a system that allows nails to be not-so-the-worst. (Yay?)

Keep That Sh*t Fresh to Death

One of the world's biggest c-blocks to a lasting manicure is oil on your nails that causes premature polish chip-ilation (see what I did there?). The easiest way to wipe out that problematic nonsense is to give your claws the ol' cotton ball swipe with acetone. It will zap the oils from your nails, leaving those bitches primed and ready for polishing.

Tip: Make this the last step before you start mani-ing. (Don't wash your hands, put on lotion, pet a rapid howler monkey after.)

Get Your Coats Right

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Have you seen the sign? Lasting manicures should start with a(n Ace of) basecoat and end with a topcoat. After the above acetone wipe, apply a basecoat, then watch a couple minutes of the Real Housewives franchise of your choice. Then go to town, painting on two coats of your chosen polish. Watch a few more minutes of NeNe Leakes giving it to somebody, then finish off with the topcoat, making sure you get that top edge of your nail, just to seal that mess in right. Get it right, get it tight, as instructed by Bubba Sparxxx.

Tip: To help your nails dry faster, run them under really cold water after they've dried a bit.

Cuticle Oil? More Like Beautiful Oil

I love cuticle oil, man. Not only does it keep your cuticles conditioned, but it also keeps your manicure looking all shiny and shit. The CND SolarOil Nail & Cuticle Conditioner is my favorite of the cuticle oils, but you can even use olive oil, if that cheap tip is more your style.

Stick It Real Good

There is one surefire way to avoid a chipped-ass mani at all costs: NAIL STICKERS. When they start getting weird and peel-y like, you can peel the stickers off and be on to the next one. Suck at nail art but want to be a fancy ass? NAIL STICKERS! Hate waiting for polish to dry because you're impatient? NAIL STICKERS, MOFO! You get the idea.

Tip: For best staying power, start with the acetone wipe from the jump off.

Now, go on and get out of here! Off to the wild you go with a hot-ass, lasting manicure.

Makeup Ideas: Three New Year's Eve Beauty Looks

Unless your plans are watching the ball drop wearing pajamas (which I fully condone), there's quite a lot of planning that goes into New Year's Eve. While I can't help you with the dress—I'm still trying to figure that out myself—I can provide makeup inspiration courtesy of three sexy celebrities. Even better is that they're super simple, so you can spend less time primping and more time popping bottles.

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Bright Pink Lipstick. This is hands down the prettiest fuchsia lipstick look I have ever seen—and I've seen quite a few. I think it's the freshness of Kate Bosworth's skin, the creaminess of the formula she's wearing, and the darkness of her lashes. For a similar lip shade, try MAC Lipstick in Girl About Town, CoverGirl Lip Perfection lipstick in Eternal, or Chanel Rouge Allure Velvet in L'Exubérante. Swipe it on straight from the tube, but then take a Q-tip and run it along the perimeter of your mouth. It sounds odd but stay with me here: Makeup artists use this trick to soften the edges so bold lipstick looks easy and cool rather than painted on and heavy.

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Cobalt Liner. This electric shade is a great way to spice up a plain LBD, and it also complements white and silver. To get the same intensity as you see on Jennifer Hudson, use a liquid or gel liner (l like Stila Stay All Day Liquid Eye Liner in Cobalt, NYX Gel Liner and Smudger in Cobalt and Sephora Long-Lasting Eyeliner in Fancy Blue). If you want something more subtle, smudge a blue pencil just along the lower lashes and load up on black mascara. Makeup artists say it will make you look wide awake—an illusion all of us could use post-midnight.

Sexy Smoky Eyes. A classic smoky eye on the last day of 2013? Yawn. Shake things up with this smoldering winged liner riff modeled by Emily Ratajkowski from "Blurred Lines." Start by lining your top lashes with a pencil to lay down the shape, then add a sweep of shimmery charcoal shadow all over your lids, fading slightly up towards the crease. Then, using a black gel liner, trace over the pencil line. If you're fair, finish with pink blush and sheer pink lipstick. For medium complexions, go for a peachy-pink on eyes and lips; for dark complexions, wines and deep berries look best.

Premium service emphasised

It’s not just about making a purchase as the exceptional shopping experience plays a role in sales.

WITH high-end products leading growth within the perfume and cosmetics industry, it is no surprise that beauty brands are placing increased emphasis on the “premium” experience of shopping for their products. Product quality itself is no longer enough. In the premium segment, customers are seeking an exceptional shopping experience and the sense of a certain mystique surrounding the products, explained Jasmine Petiot, Vice President at the Federation Francaise de la Parfumerie Selective (FFPS) and manager of the independent fragrance shop Parfumerie Seduction in Paris.

Although the cosmetics and perfume industry is more vulnerable than other sectors during an economic downturn, it is less likely to suffer from a decreased demand than the fashion industry. And, paradoxically, in the current economic climate, premium brands are leading the growth for the entire cosmetics and perfume industry, while sales of mid-range products seem to have gone down in recent years.

In fact, the most exclusive premium brands, such as Creme de la Mer, have rarely sold so well in the past. “These brands’ sales are increasing at a slower rate than last year, but they are investing in media and advertising heavily to maintain their volume,” said the Vice President of the FFPS.

“The customers who shop here regularly have not changed their habits, those who used to come sporadically sometimes come less often or buy in smaller packages, for example, from 10ml to 50ml packages when it comes to perfume,” she adds.

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More than just the sum of their products, today’s high-end beauty brands are defined by the unique experiences they aim to embody, and services play an increasingly important role in this regard. Petiot notes that “clients are paying more attention to services, sales rituals, anything that gives value to the object they are purchasing: gift paper, scented packaging, a smile, and personal touches ... they are looking for recognition and for special attention. And all of these factors contribute to the memory of a pleasant shopping experience. Life is hard for many people, and walking into a perfume shop should represent an enchanted interlude.”

It is just this type of enchanted interlude that Guerlain hopes to offer through its newly-renovated Champs-Elysees flagship store in Paris. In white marble, wood and Baccarat crystal chandeliers, the new space is more than a boutique: it also includes a gourmet restaurant and a tea room where guests can sip beverages inspired by Guerlain’s iconic fragrances.

Another strategy for cultivating a premium brand image lies in product packaging. In a recent study, British research firm Visionaid revealed that the overall cosmetics packaging market has received a boost due to a stronger demand for premium cosmetics products.

“The trend towards the ‘premium-isation’ of cosmetics and anti-aging products in developed countries could lead to a rise in the price of beauty product packaging overall, as packaging will become more innovative and costly,” according to Visionaid.

Finally, the ambience and narratives surrounding a product or brand can also contribute to its desirability, which is why a number of brands are appealing to story-telling strategies to cultivate a certain mystique. In recent years, Chanel, for example, has emphasised its prestigious and iconic history through its Inside Chanel videos. This month, the brand continues in this vein, launching a campaign based on archival photographs and recordings linking Marilyn Monroe to the famous Chanel No 5 fragrance.

Thanks in large part to the Internet, customers almost always know everything about a product before coming into the store and buying it, Petiot explains. In consequence, brands need to add complementary elements that will make the customer’s experience more positive.

Telling the story of a product or surrounding it with interesting services is a way of inviting customers “to discover what they had not yet imagined, or did not know,” says Petiot. Cultivating the special relationship between each customer and the brand is a vital element for success in the high-end cosmetics and perfume industry.

15 of the best Jennifer Lawrence quotes

If Jennifer Lawrence isn't already your (girl) crush, she should be.

America's motor-mouthed sweetheart is perhaps the most quotable gem of them all, her penchant for off-the-cuff honesty and hilarious quips is off the charts.

Without further ado, we've pulled together 15 of J-Law's best quotes, and trust us - it was mighty difficult to limit it to just 15 because everything that comes out of her mouth is pretty damn good.

1. "Sorry! That was phlegm. That was so powerful. I'm like a dragon!" - after coughing on David Letterman.

2. On meeting John Stamos: "He was at a party, and I turned into a perverted guy. I was like following him into rooms and staring at his ass... He asked me if I was on mushrooms and I said, 'No. I'm dead sober. This is just me." - To Conan O'Brien.

3. "You guys are just standing up because you feel bad that I fell and that's really embarrassing.. but thank you." - Accepting her Best Actress Oscar after tripping on the way to the podium.

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4. "I really would not call myself a fashion icon. I would call myself somebody who gets dressed by professionals. [It's like], 'Dance, monkey, dance' right on the red carpet.' I would call me more of a monkey." -On her new status as a red carpet style icon, to E!

5. On being a teenager: "I was a weirdo. I wasn't picked on or anything. And I wasn't smarter than the other kids; that's not why I didn't fit in. I've always had this weird anxiety. I hated recess. I didn't like field trips. Parties really stressed me out. And I had a very different sense of humour." - to Vogue.

6. "Once I'm obsessed with somebody, I'm terrified of them instantly. I'm not scared of them - I'm scared of me and how I will react. Like, for instance, one time someone was introducing me to Bill Maher, and I saw Meryl Streep walk into the room, and I literally put my hand right in Bill Maher's face and said, 'Not now, Bill!' and I just stared at Meryl Streep. I just creepily stared at her." - telling Vanity Fair about getting starstruck.

7. On bringing little bundles of joy into the world: "I think all mothers are a nightmare - i don't think you can have children and not lose your goddamn mind." - to Vogue.

8. On strange men sleeping on your lawn: "If I were just your average 23-year-old girl, and I called the police to say that there were strange men sleeping on my lawn and following me to Starbucks, they would leap into action. But because I am a famous person, well, sorry, ma'am, there's nothing we can do. It makes no sense." - to Vogue.

9. On eating raw fish in The Hunger Games: "They kept saying 'It's sushi-grade!' And I'm like... 'Put some soy sauce on this. Get me some rice. And cook it. And then get me out of here." - At Comic Con, via Entertainment Weekly.

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10."If anybody even tries to whisper the word 'diet,' I'm like, 'You can go f-yourself."- On being called fat, to Harper's Bazaar UK.

11. On exercise: "I hate saying, 'I like exercising' - I want to punch people who say that." - Glamour magazine.

12. "If I don't have anything to do all day I might not even put my pants on." - responding to a question in Glamour magazine about what she does in her free time.

13. "I think any time a girl has to show her thighs, it's never going to be her favorite look. I love the dress... if someone else wore it." - On the sheer Dior gown she wore to the LA premiere of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, to Good Morning America.

14. "My family went on a cruise, and I got a terrible haircut. FYI: Never get your hair cut on a cruise. And I had, like, this blonde curly 'fro, and I walked into the gym the first day back in seventh grade and everyone was staring at me, and for some reason I thought, I know what I need to do! And I just started sprinting from one end of the gym to the other, and I thought it was hilarious. But nobody else at that age really did. It was genuinely weird." - September 2013 Vogue.

15. On her weight: "I'd rather look chubby on screen and like a person in real life." - to Marie Claire South Africa.

Cate Blanchett skincare secrets

Cate Blanchett says being consistent with the skincare products she used is vital to have a fresh-faced glow.

The 'Blue Jasmine' star knows moving from different film sets means she will always be subjected to different cosmetics, but she always strives to ensure the products she uses to wash and cleanse her face are the same.

Asked her ultimate beauty tip, she said: "Find a good multi-vitamin. And for me it's also consistency.

"Being an actress, you have a lot of different products on your skin, and that's one thing for beauty, but for skincare, I find that the consistency has really paid off for me."

And Cate says her persistence has paid off as it means she can skip some base products when she is short on time.

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She told Marie Claire online: "Working with really great make-up artists, I realised that they prime your skin like a canvas, and I'd never thought of that before. So the moisturiser you put underneath has to work with the foundation.

"I'm pretty time poor like everyone, so often I won't put the foundation on - I'll just prep the skin."

The 44-year-old actress is a particular fan of SK-II's three-step LXP range as she finds them illuminating and hydrating.

She explained: "All of the products have Pitera in them, which no other skincare line has. And it has illuminising properties, it feeds the roots of your skin, it's really hydrating and [great for] that dreaded thing, anti-ageing."

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Power of dressing for success

She's known for gracing the Best Dressed lists and now she wants to help other women feel great in their clothes.

Jaime Ridge is the face of The Great Designer Sale, a fundraiser for charity Dress For Success Auckland on November 29 and 30, in which designer clothing - both pre-loved and new - can be snapped up for as little as $5, with nothing on sale for more than $50.

"I really like how creative Dress For Success is and what they do to help people," says Ridge.

"It's not your usual charity. Plus, I love fashion, I love clothes, I love the idea of people going in and coming out different - I find that really exciting."

Dress For Success (dressforsuccess.org) helps women facing tough times find an outfit that makes them look and feel fantastic for job interviews.

Every woman receives a top-to-toe dressing from a specialist volunteer - clothing, makeup, jewellery, shoes, a handbag and anything else she will need to make a good first impression.

Clients get to keep everything they are given, and once they secure a job they can come back for a second dressing and help with mentoring and networking programmes, which are all free.

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While clients are never asked to explain why they need help, Dress For Success is used by women from all backgrounds, from students entering the workforce for the first time right through to women who "once had it all but have been set back" and forced to start again.

Ridge says she knows a little of what it's like to be unsure of yourself.

"I am at uni so I know what it's like to stress out about finding a job and not knowing what the right thing is to wear.

"I do think it's quite important to be well dressed. If I was an employer, I think it also shows how much care you put into your work.

''They say if you present yourself well, you'll do everything else well. And when you are well dressed it gives you confidence and makes you feel good about yourself."

Ridge says she often gives away her old clothes - either to friends or charity- and she wouldn't think twice about wearing something 'vintage'.

But she confesses that most of the time you will find her wearing jeans, gym tights and T-shirts.

"When I go out at night or if I'm doing something nice, then I do put a lot of time into thinking about what I'm going to wear.

''But I try not to spend too much money. I have statement pieces like really nice handbags and shoes and a lovely pair of jeans, but I don't go crazy. I don't go and buy $1000 dresses I can only wear once or anything."

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Dita Von Teese shares her secrets

Dita Von Teese made a name for herself wearing racy lingerie during her shows as a burlesque dancer, and she has now launched her own range of sexy underwear.

Kate Waterhouse caught up with the 41-year-old to chat about how she maintains her porcelain skin, her hopes to one day start a family and how retirement is not on her agenda.

When you go through customs, do you put ''burlesque dancer'' as your occupation?

No, [laughs] I try to tell the truth but I try and be as low-key as possible. I usually say ''entertainer'' or ''dancer'' and hope they won't ask what that means. When people ask me what I do I get very shy about it. I was sitting next to Beyonce's father once on a plane, and I know Beyonce, and I'm sitting there minding my own business and all the flight attendants were coming over to tell me how much they like me, and I was dressed up like I always am, and he finally was like "who are you and what do you do?" and I was like "well, I don't know if you remember your daughter when she did a video clip in a giant champagne glass, that is what I do every day, that is my job". Sometimes I just cut to the chase and say "I'm a stripper" and they get so confused that I am a striptease star and how anyone can make a living out of that, and I get a lot of joy from people trying to figure it out.

How do you prepare for your shows?

In the weeks before, I bump up my workouts. I'm a little bit more careful about what I eat, not so much for how I look but for how I feel as I need to feel really strong. But I'm careful not to get too thin - looking too thin on stage with burlesque is a big faux pas.

How do you stay fit?

I do a lot of Pilates and I also take ballet classes. I do dressage and I just started fencing, which I'm very interested in.

Do you get annoyed at the imitators and people copying your shows?

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It depends where it's coming from. I get annoyed with people who are just doing it for profit. I'm very joyful when girls are embracing burlesque, but at the same time there are people who will copy my show exactly. I have had lawsuits with people who have completely ripped off [my show] for profit and I'll stand up for myself when someone is interfering with my business.

What is the strangest thing a fan has done?

I don't like to use the word strange because I have great fans. But I do get letters from prison that I really do enjoy and I think, "wow, this is old school to be a burlesque pin-up and get a letter from prison".

Why did you decide to release your own lingerie line?

I got my start working in a lingerie store when I was 15 and so my love of lingerie is what led me to my love of pin-up photos and burlesque shows, so it's really interesting to come a full circle.

You are a sex symbol to many men, what do you find sexy in a man?

I think it's really important to be around men who have their own sense of self and own self-worth. I find that some of my best relationships with men are [with those] who understand me and what I do. They want to know Heather Sweet from Michigan [her real name and home town], but they understand that it's not a duel persona, it's not Dita Von Teese and Heather Sweet. Everything that I do on stage is a part of who I am. It's not like two personalities and sometimes men are so quick to want to dismiss the stage persona. I've dated men who have not wanted to see my stage show and I'm like "how can you not want to see my show?"

Have you got a man in your life?

I'm casual dating. I am at this amazing moment where I'm on second dates with several different men. I've always been a serial monogamist, in relationship after relationship, and right now I feel that I don't just want to have boyfriends any more. I want to date and keep it casual until it blows the doors off my life and think "this is the man I want to be with forever''.

Do you hope to one day get married and start a family?

Yes, I would definitely love to be married [she was married to rocker Marilyn Manson from 2005 to 2007] and I definitely would like to have a child but it's really interesting, as women we are told "go, go, go, career, career, career" and then suddenly you go "wait, no one warned me that I should kind of think about, you know".

Will you ever retire?

I think of evolution a lot. There are things that I would never do in my show, the way that I did back when I first started. I now want to feel womanly and there are shows that get retired because they seem a little girlish now, so it's important to always evolve. Some of the greatest burlesque dancers in history were not the youngest, the prettiest or the best dancer, sometimes it's something else and it's a lot to do with intelligence and sense of self. Sally Rand performed well into her 60s but in a different way. When people rely too much on their beauty and youth you have nothing when that's gone, so you have to keep cultivating all the other things that make you interesting.

You have amazing skin, how do you maintain it?

Sunscreen, no smoking, I drink this thing called the glowing green smoothie every morning, by this nutritionist called Kimberly Snyder. She has this book called The Beauty Detox Foods and I follow that regime as best as I can. The smoothie is 70 per cent green and 30 per cent fruit, so I put in spinach, ginger, coriander and add fruit.

Crafting a Custom Lipstick at BITE Beauty's SoHo Lip Lab

Lilac. Melon. Coral. Cantaloupe. The profusion of off-kilter lip colors at the recent spring 2014 collections sent a seismic rumble through my makeup bag last month. Suddenly, basic felt boring—so when I heard about the arrival of BITE Beauty’s new custom lipstick lab in SoHo, I knew what I had to do. Armed with a picture of model Daria Strokous’s punkish, pastel peach mouth backstage at Fendi on my iPhone, I headed to the 500-square-foot space for a bespoke blending session.

Fendi’s neon pink lips backstage at the spring 2014 show served as the day’s lipstick inspiration.

Photographed by Victoria Will

Originally conceived as a summer pop-up shop, the Toronto-born makeup brand’s now-permanent outpost has been fielding lines around the block since opening its doors on Prince Street a few months back. This may have something to do with a) the company’s commitment to using only all natural food-grade ingredients that are technically safe enough to eat, and b) its extraordinary high-impact color pigments, which are totally addictive—even if you’re not the type to worry about silently ingesting trace amounts of your lipstick.

On arrival, I sit down at one of the brightly lit stations with blending specialist Stephanie Spence—an impossibly pretty redhead wearing an impossibly pretty red lipstick—and explain my mission: I want a cool yet bright, powdery yet fresh shade of coral that also happens to look great. Is that so much to ask?

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It is not, says Spence, who starts dipping into dozens of small round pots of pigment—smooth jars labeled with words like white, zinfandel, blue 520, or pomegranate—and then blending them on the flat surface of a sterilized light box with a little silver spatula.

After a few minutes, she offers me a small dollop of pigment to try on in front of the mirror. It’s pretty—but slightly too pink. By round two, we’ve worked our way to a chalkier, more apricot shade that’s weird in all the right ways. Before we finish, Spence lets me pick a finish. There’s sheer, matte, luminous crème, or—my choice—crème deluxe (a velvety finish that contains Japanese silk powder for extra conditioning). Next she asks me if I would like my lipstick to be infused with a hint of fragrance—in mango, cherry, peppermint, vanilla, violet, or citrus mango. I would not, which is fine, since unscented is also an option.

Finally, Spence sets to spinning my formula in a compact centrifuge, then pours it into a neat circular lipstick mold and chills it at precisely -2 degrees Fahrenheit until it hardens into a perfect waxy bullet form. The entire process takes approximately seven minutes from start to finish, right down to the neat handwritten label with my name on the box. The grand total? Forty-eight dollars—and enough newfound lipstick love to carry me through the coming year.

By Terry combines science and glamour

Terry de Gunzburg, touted as the guru of colour, is still raring to go.

IT WAS a product that revolutionised the beauty industry when it was launched in 1991. But Yves Saint Laurent’s Touche Éclat – the brush-on concealer-highlighter coveted by celebrities and make-up artists the world over – would not have existed without French woman Terry de Gunzburg.

Born in a family of scientists, de Gunzburg loved to innovate and “wanted a bespoke house of colour that was very extravagant, completely free with no limits for creativity and luxury”. She launched By Terry in 1998, her own uber lavish make-up and skincare brand.

Two years later, de Gunzburg ended her 15-year stint as the international marketing and creative director of YSL Beauté to forge her own path. The story goes that she took Touche Éclat’s original formula with her, so YSL had to come up with a slightly different version of the product.

By Terry’s Touche Veloutee has been hailed as the holy grail of concealers, coveted for its ability to reanimate tired faces and sculpt a catwalk-worthy bone structure – no Photoshop needed.

Highly sophisticated and incredibly user-friendly, it combines “the purest, most precious pigments with light diffusing technology and ultra precise textures in the most luxurious formulations”.

“From YSL, I learned not only the essence of how to anticipate women’s needs, but how to create unexpected textures and formulas,” said de Gunzburg in an interview with Wall Street Journal early this year.

By Terry’s Baume de Rose, a nourishing lip balm, also gained overnight success among Parisian models and Hollywood actresses when it was launched in 2003.

“I like when science has a huge part in glamour and femininity. It has to have sensible science behind it, but a mascara or lipstick must always be a pleasure to use,” she was quoted as saying in The Formula, a beauty blog.

Now By Terry is in Malaysia, thanks to Kens Apothecary, the same company which brought in Aesop, Annick Goutal, Diptyque and other cult labels. de Gunzburg’s lofty presence was noticeably absent at the brand’s recent launch, but in her place was the affable, platinum-haired Sophie Kilian, another accomplished French make-up artist who has worked with a number of European celebrities and royals. Having freelanced for By Terry for the past three years, Kilian has adopted de Gunzburg’s “less is more” philosophy as her own.

“By Terry personifies French simplicity and elegance. The focus is always on the complexion and using minimal products to achieve a flawless face,” says Kilian, who adds that the skin-loving properties in each and every By Terry product set it apart from other cosmetic labels.

“Touche Éclat is just water and pigments; Touche Veloutee, on the other hand, helps you achieve more luminous, moisturised skin upon each application.”

According to Kilian, many women make the mistake of piling too much make-up on during the day, especially heavy foundation.

This new minimalism is what de Gunzburg has once described to the New York Times as “the colourless make-up, no-foundation foundation” trend. Although the look appears effortless, Kilian pointed out that, in fact, it requires a certain amount of work. But de Gunzburg has come up with the perfect solution, and one that most Malaysian women might appreciate: the Sheer Expert foundation. It’s sheer and lightweight, perfect for our hot, sticky weather.

For those who are into trends, take note: Kilian says brows are big this season. The brow mascara from By Terry’s Autumn 2013 Graphism Collection contains a tinted gel brush that structures the eyebrows, intensifies their colour and fills in gaps.

Meanwhile, Kilian, who has met de Gunzburg a grand total of four times because “she is always in the laboratory in France”, says her employer is a woman with a strong character. She related an incident in which de Gunzburg was searching for the scent of her new fragrance, Parti-Pris.

“She sniffed over 500 scents before she came upon the smell of tuberose. It’s not a very popular scent, but it didn’t matter as long as she loved it. It is her Parti-Pris and no one will change it. That’s Terry for you.”

But de Gunzburg had, for the longest time, yearned for a high-end, finely tuned fragrance collection based on quality, creativity and pure essences.

“My grandmother and mother were obsessed with French haute parfumerie,” she said to Harrods Magazine. “Growing up with that, it was natural to me to refuse an opportunistic, marketing-driven launch.”

And after last year’s successful introduction of her fragrance series, she’s all ready to launch the next batch, this time, an Oriental scent called Terrific Oud, out soon in 2014.

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The domino effect

Cutting-edge skincare technology has resulted in a system that can trigger a chain reaction towards youthful changes.

IT’S a nice idea, turning back the clock so that we can remain young. Or better yet, have time stand still so that we don’t age. But unless there’s some miracle treatment out there we don’t know about, it’s never going to happen.

Nonetheless, the beauty industry continues to strive and work against time, so that we get the Dorian Gray effect. Celebrities seem to have a better handle on ageing in that respect, but not everyone has the money to splurge on plastic surgery, Botox or fillers, or want to go down that path at all.

Of course, it’s not all due to a nip-and-tuck, as there are those who make it a point to lead a healthy life and exercise regularly. And then, there’s also the occasional secret skincare product that does the trick.

In what would seem to be the antithesis of building blocks, Swiss line’s cutting-edge research and development has come up with a system that is claimed to trigger a domino effect in knocking down signs of ageing.

The scientists at Swiss line have referred this revolutionary research achievement as the “alter ego” for anti-ageing.

Children know well what the game domino is all about. It’s knocking down a chip, which falls on another chip, hence creating a chain reaction.

In skincare, this domino effect describes a small change which can cause an effect in linear sequence. Scientists have developed this latest approach to effectuate a domino effect which ultimately leads to changes in the skin, heralding a new era in molecular skincare.

The new Swiss line Cell Shock Age Intelligence Youth-Inducing System has combined a complex series of potent ingredients (Cellactel 2 Complex, Madecassoside, molecules from an algae, cultured stem cells from a coffee plant, collagen promoting peptides and retinol, among others) to act as “dominoes”. These work harmoniously to “knock down the first warning signs of ageing” to create a visible and youth-inducing effect.

According to Laura Nicholson, Swiss line international training manager, the new multi-tasking moisturisers tackle four age markers: firmness loss, deep wrinkles, pigmentation spots and uneven pores.

The Youth Inducing system comprises a Cell Shock Age Intelligence Youth-Inducing Cream and a Cell Shock Age Intelligence PM-Repair Lotion.

An all-in-one moisturiser for day and night meant to address the problems of mature skin, the cream is said to transform the skin’s inner architecture to overcome the signs of ageing and restore the complexion’s luminosity and uniformity.

The key actives are Cellactel 2 Complex, for lifting and anti-wrinkle efficacy, and Madecassoside, to protect the skin from inflammatory daily stress by reducing the release of pro-inflammatory epidermal messengers.

What’s new, explains Nicholson who was in Kuala Lumpur for the launch, is the Rab27a molecule, that’s based on the understanding that certain molecules can trigger or block cellular cascades, and alter metabolic paths.

An active isolated fraction obtained from the red algae, Palmaria palmata from the northern coasts of the Atlantic Ocean, mostly in Iceland and Greenland, it opens an entirely new path to pigmentation control therapy, fighting UV-induced pigmentation and counteracting age spots.

There’s also Stem Cell Pulse, obtained from a stem cell culture of Psilanthus bengalensis (Coffea bengalensis), an unusual type of coffee without caffeine.

It plumps the skin and fills wrinkles by boosting collagen production in the dermis. She adds that it serves to restructure the tissue by boosting the formation of adipocytes and simultaneously decreasing the enzymatic breakdown of lipids.

And then, Polypeptide Arginne-Lysine (dual amino-acid based polypeptide) provides a targeted “surgical” dermis extracellular-matrix action that results in an anti-wrinkle effect while elastomer (complex polymer) refines pores and softens fine lines.

The lotion is touted to be a high-performance night time pre-lotion which repairs metabolism and maximises the cream’s action during the night. Apart from Cellactel 2 Complex, the key ingredient is Retinol Cyclo Complex that encourages cell turnover and exfoliation. Used in combination with retinol, there’s also panthenol that contributes to skin renewal, while preventing skin irritation.

Meant to replace a toning lotion, the booster should be applied at night only before the cream.

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Katy Perry Goes From Sweet To Sexy In London

Katy Perry, 28, looks like she’s having a great time while in London. The star was seen out and about with boyfriend, John Mayer, and pal, Anna Kendrick, on Oct. 20, where the star opted for a fun get-up for her night out. Katy chose to rock a sexy look that included a black satin corset, shiny skirt, and thigh-high boots. The singer styled her look with red lips and her signature shiny, black curls — but that wasn’t the only get-up we saw on the star while she enjoyed herself across the pond!

Katy Perry’s London Dinner With John Mayer — Details On Her Dress:

Just a few days earlier on Oct. 18, Katy was seen sporting a completely different get-up. She looked sweet and chic in a pink Dolce & Gabbana dress that covered her a lot more than the corset and skirt. The conservative ensemble featured a much higher neckline than her black corset and the sleeves fell just above Katy’s elbow. The singer styled her look with a pair of retro-looking purple velvet pumps, a white leather handbag, and shiny, straight locks — and Katy looked amazing in this ensemble. She’s confident enough to pull off the boxy silhouette, and the color of this dress compliments her skin tone much better than her other ensemble. Even her fuchsia lips and purple shoes work in this look!

While we commend Katy for switching up her style, her sexy look almost looked like a costume. Sure, she’s loving the sexy schoolgirl look lately, but we’re a bit bored of it on the star. The fabric on the corset and skirt was ill-fitting and her gold necklace is an awkward size for the strapless top. All of the black also seems to make her fair skin look more pale, washing her out from her usual creamy complexion.

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Skin-saving foundation secrets

This season when your skin is working towards a healthy glow, one of the best brightening tools in your makeup arsenal isn't some fancy-named new discovery. No, it's foundation.

This beauty staple can combat anything from dry, flaky skin to a still-sallow complexion, just with a few quick changes to your regular routine. Find out how to make foundation your changing-seasons secret weapon when you read more.

If your skin feels dry: You may have already switched to a lighter foundation for spring, but are you allowing your moisturiser to work to the best of its ability? "Even if you've had moisturiser on all day, once you're ready to put on your foundation, I suggest putting on more moisturiser and waiting three to five minutes for that to set in," says celebrity makeup artist Lusine Galadjian. "Then the foundation goes on a lot smoother and blends in with your skin. If you don't do that, it can look blotchy like it's sitting on top of the skin instead of blending with the skin."

If your foundation seems chalky: Skin can look slightly sallow before we've gotten enough SPF-protected summer sun, so if your foundation has your skin looking greige or ashy, use less. "Mix it with a little bit of moisturiser," Galadjian recommends. "Just put it in the T-zone where you really need it, because if you put it all over the whole face will look chalky." Another way to warm up the complexion is to add bronzer on your cheekbones and along the sides of the face.

If your neck is too light: Although the neck is already lighter naturally, you'll want to avoid the floating head scenario. Blend foundation down the neck, then strategically apply bronzer to contour. Sweep the shade underneath the jawline and up the sides of the neck for added definition.

Out to Lunch with Giancarlo Giammetti

Giancarlo Giammetti—for 45 years the power behind the Valentino fashion empire, alongside Valentino Garavani—was unavoidably delayed cruising round the Aegean when I arrived for lunch at his penthouse in Manhattan, which is one of his five homes. But thanks to the wonders of Skype, we enjoyed our lunch together just the same.
“Can you hear me, John?” he asked, inaugurating my first “Out to Skype” from Valentino’s yacht midst windy seas.
“I can hear you,” I said. “How’re you doing, Giancarlo?”
“I don’t see you very well, John.”
He is a man known to leave nothing to chance, however. A computer expert fixed the picture on my end, while no less than three lovely ladies and his housekeeper fussed over me as a selection of William Poll gourmet sandwiches was placed before me, along with cherries, blackberries, chocolates, and a choice of wine.
Mr. Giammetti, strikingly handsome, tanned, and poised, was having a late lunch on the yacht,T.M. Blue One (which has a staff of 11), and he sweetly held up his plate so that I could see it clearly—shrimp salad and a glass of Brunello di Montalcino. He was sailing, he told me, with Valentino and members of their extended family, whom he calls “the tribe.”
Valentino: The Last Emperor, directed by Matt Tyrnauer (a contributing editor at this magazine), presents a remarkable backstage view of their rarefied world, but until I read Mr. Giammetti’s memoir, Private (published by Assouline this month), I hadn’t realized that he and Valentino had stopped being lovers more than 40 years ago. “You became inseparable blood brothers?” I asked.
“I was just 30 when the physical part of our relationship ended, and it was difficult in the beginning,” he explained. “We had to solve problems with jealousy. But we’re all grown up—very grown up—and we know that time solves every problem. We’ve always wanted to be the best for the other. But, you know, from the beginning Valentino and I never lived together.”
“That’s probably why your love for each other lasted.”
“Exactly! We want our freedom. We want to be able to close our doors.”
Giancarlo Giammetti is a man of natural charm whose English has improved over the years. When he first met the supermodel Jerry Hall in Rome (before she married Mick Jagger), she told him that she came from Texas, where she was a cowgirl—which he heard as “call girl.” “I was really shocked,” he explained, starting to laugh. “So I very shyly ask whether she arranged to meet her clients by phone or in person. She say, ‘What clients?’ I say, ‘You say you are a call girl.’ And she say, ‘No, no, no! I am a cowgirl!’ We became great friends.”
In the 1980s, Valentino was among the first fashion houses to license merchandise in Japan. “I can’t resist mentioning this,” I said. “How could such an elegant label as yours sell Valentino toilet seats?”
“Just one word,” he replied. “Money.”
“Were they hard to design?” I asked.
He laughed again. “No, I will say that.”
The licensing deals Mr. Giammetti made in Japan were worth many millions. “But the toilet seat didn’t destroy the name of Valentino,” he added.
Merchandise sales subsidize the haute couture collections, just as museum stores help support the art. But are fashionable clothes—rather than accessories and fragrances—the point any longer in what Giancarlo calls “a corporate game run by luxury titans”?
“It’s true the hot company is the accessories company—but a label like Louis Vuitton is still very important in fashion. And 60 to 65 percent of the profits of Valentino, owned today by the Qatar royal family, still come from the clothes. So I think the combination can exist.”
“But, amidst the ruling conglomerates like LVMH,” I suggested, “only a handful of independent fashion houses like Armani or Ralph Lauren still survive. We can no longer be certain who the designers actually are.”
“Yes, but I think women no longer need designers to decide what they want to wear! Before, they were waiting for Givenchy, Dior, or Valentino to decide the dress, the shoes, the bag, for them. But if they like the dress, they like the dress! I think it’s a good thing. It gives women a lot of freedom.”
“What ever happened to style?” I asked, reminding him of red-carpet disasters and hobo-chic celebs dressing democratically, unglamorously down.
“It’s a different style,” he responded, “and it’s a different—how you say?—moment. You cannot fight it. One of the biggest changes in today’s fashion is the influence of stylists. There used to be much more involvement when a star chose a dress. But today’s superstars and celebrities are offered so many clothes to wear, they’re spoiled. There’s no commitment involved, no work, no fittings. They wear the dress and it has a short life. They don’t have time to love a dress.”
And so my “Out to Skype” with Giancarlo Giammetti came to a close. “Thanks so much for lunch,” I said. “I hope you enjoy the rest of your cruise.”
“Nice talking to you, John. Bye-bye.”
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"Real Girl" Beauty Backstage At Lanvin

“Dreamy”: The glittering script on the lamé T-shirt model Jamie Bochert wore to open the Lanvin show was the perfect adjective for the shine-inflected, tinsel-fringed frocks and glittering, oversize accessories Alber Elbaz sent down his spring runway. Backstage, however, the conversation was grounded firmly in reality—Bochert’s off-duty style specifically. “[Alber] really loved the way Jamie looked in the collection when she came in,” Pat McGrath explained of the deliberately “natural, individualized” makeup she’d devised for the show. “We’re keeping them as they are, but it’s enhanced,” she added, swiping on a slight contour, a hint of highlighter, and a bit of blush that was purposefully muted to offset the flush that many girls had acquired naturally, thanks to the unusually warm fall temperatures that have been the talk of the Paris collections. She finished by applying mascara only at the roots of lashes, grooming the brows, and giving the eyelids a wash of taupe shadow for definition.

“It’s a very simple look—again,” hairstylist Guido Palau added of the side-parted, low-slung ponytails he was prepping with Redken Guts 10 Volume Spray Foam for a lived-in texture, alluding to one of the season’s overarching themes that calls for easy, effortless beauty, over anything too complicated or fussy. “It’s how girls would really wear these clothes,” he noted while applying a few spritzes of the brand’s Quick Tease 15 Backcombing Finishing Spray for a small dose of volume at the crown, breaking apart strands across the forehead for a “bed-head” quality. He had a point: With anything too contrived, model Janice Alida’s full-length, glimmering copper jumpsuit might have veered into costumey terrain. Worn with Palau’s pared-down updos and McGrath’s “anti-makeup makeup,” on the other hand, it captured just the kind of unstudied ease that is so utterly wantable—and yet often so hard to achieve.

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Giving Color The Green Light, Backstage At Giorgio Armani

This season, makeup artist Linda Cantello categorized the Armani woman as “delicate” and the “antithesis of the Prada lady,” which, funnily enough, was one of the few other shows to employ a bold use color on the lids for Spring 2014. The face painter’s approach, however, was less about women in revolt and more focused on creating a “passive” femininity on the runway. And while the underlying theme of the collection was Jardin Majorelle, she grappled with the choice between purple and green (not blue, which would have been too obvious a choice) to pick up on the amethyst and anemonelike tones in the clothes. In the end, a gentle wash of emerald won out. “Mr. Armani was very specific that it shouldn’t be too green—he wanted it to have a diaphanous, photo-transparent [quality],” she explained.

After priming skin with a BB cream to eliminate redness or any lingering effects of summer (i.e., a tan), she used Giorgio Armani Beauty Maestro Foundation to create the “pale perfection” requested by the designer. Complexions were then dusted with powder for a matte—but still luminous—finish. The alluring malachite shade wrapped around lids was a combination of sea foam and slightly deeper jade pigments (inspired by a Sarah Moon image from the seventies that was pinned to Cantello’s mirror). For translucency and the “essence of speed,” she mixed the eye shadow with Fluid Sheer in 2, the lightest hue in the range of radiance boosters. The formula was initially applied with a brush along the crease, outer corners, and lower lash lines, but Cantello used her finger to blend it out and down. To cancel dark shadows, a concealer was dotted on the inner corners of the eyes and a light stain was tapped onto lips to make the girls “look more healthy than dead.”

In contrast to the gentle makeup, the hair by Franco Gobbi was a bit more aggressive. There was certainly an eighties reference, illustrated by the side-swept waves (similar to the swoop seen at Emilio Pucci), and the length was pinned up off the neck to resemble an undercut. To finish, strands were misted with hair spray to lock in the fluffy texture. While I’m not entirely sold on this particular swoosh, Cantello’s gauzy shadow makes being green look absolutely gorgeous.

Chemical Peach Lips and Choppy Black Crops at Fendi

“Eighties Linda Evangelista meets the Beatles—with a Japanese thing thrown in,” said Sam McKnight backstage at Fendi this morning, explaining the inspiration behind the choppy, jet-colored wigs he was custom-cutting to suit each model’s face shape with a slim men’s razor. “Karl [Lagerfeld] sent a sketch last week. He wanted short black hair, something graphic. From there, it evolved into something boyish and a bit messy,” he said of the bowl-shaped silhouette, which featured heavy blunt-cut bangs that hit just below the forehead, nearly obscuring the eyes. Currently on his eleventh girl of the day, he was snipping away furiously at a section near the ears. “It’s a bit shorter at the sides and back, and it’s not supposed to be perfect,” he emphasized, finishing each model’s hair with Oribe Dry Texturizing Spray before adding with a devilish smile. “You know, Karl likes a look.”

Even in the light-filled upstairs space of the house’s Via Solari compound, the uniform hairpieces rendered models like Joan Smalls and Lindsey Wixson all but unrecognizable, save for their famously pillowy lips—now rendered in a punchy shade of neon coral.

“I keep calling it chemical peach,” said makeup artist Peter Philips of the bright pastel pigment he was using to carefully fill in models’ mouths. It wasn’t hard to figure out where he came up with the vibrant hue. A few feet away, the fashion houses’s spring 2014 show invitation—featuring a series of color-block motifs in an identical shade—was propped up along the makeup mirror. Philips said his choice of color also made reference to a tongue-in-cheek written brief about the collection that Lagerfeld had sent him in the days before the show, a quirky play on words inspired by the now all-encompassing reach of today’s Internet culture. “It’s quite futuristic, almost synthetic,” he explained of the similarly manufactured shade, which he achieved by using Make Up For Ever’s brightly colored pencil in #18C all over the mouth as a base, then going over it with the company’s matching lipstick in #39. “The shape is classic,” he said simply of its precise outline, “but the color is not.”

The same could be said of Lagerfeld’s lineup of streamlined silhouettes—simple chiffon shifts in fluorescent sherbert hues, tailored pencil skirts with eye-catching pops of color at the hem, and, perhaps most memorably, a discreet midi-length cocktail dress rendered in what appeared to be a bright, bold bolt of cardinal red fur.

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Tattooed sergeant, a disabled beauty and two Crystal Lees - meet Miss America finalists

The finale of the Miss America pageant returns to Atlantic City on Sunday night, with plenty of drama to augment the glamour.

Will the next Miss America be the tattooed Army sergeant, Miss Kansas, or the inspirational Miss Iowa, who was born without part of an arm? Will it be Miss Hawaii or Miss California both of whom are named Crystal Lee?

How will Miss Florida, hobbled by a knee injury she sustained in baton-twirling rehearsals on Thursday, fare in the live national telecast? Can hometown hero Miss New Jersey capture the title less than a mile from where Superstorm Sandy came ashore last October?

Sam Haskell, CEO of the Miss America Organization, is delighted it will all be playing out in Atlantic City again after a six-year stint in Las Vegas.

"This is where we belong," he told The Associated Press. "This is the home of Miss America, and this is where we're going to stay."

The show will begin with the traditional parade of states, where each contestant briefly introduces herself and her state, usually in a humorous or attention-grabbing manner. Take Miss Kentucky's intro, for example:

"From the home of fast horses and beautiful women - better not get those two things mixed up - I'm Jenna Day, Miss Kentucky!" she said during preliminary rehearsals.

Much attention has been given to Miss Kansas, Theresa Vail, a U.S. Army sergeant who is believed to be the first Miss America contestant to openly display tattoos. She has the Serenity Prayer on her rib cage and a military insignia on the back of a shoulder. While other contestants wore glamorous costumes and elaborately decorated footwear during Saturday night's "show-us-your-shoes" parade on the Boardwalk, Vail wore camouflage gear and Army boots.

In a Twitter message Sunday, Vail wrote: "Win or not tonight, I have accomplished what I set out to do. I have empowered women. I have opened eyes."

And Myrrhanda Jones, who is Miss Florida, will be wearing a knee brace after tearing a knee ligament Thursday while rehearsing her baton-twirling act. A pageant spokeswoman said Jones will compete while wearing the brace Sunday night if she is one of the 15 semifinalists.

The pageant started in Atlantic City in 1921 as a way to extend the summer tourism season for an extra weekend.

The move from Las Vegas cut short the reign of the current Miss America, Mallory Hagan, who was crowned in January and expected to have a full year as the title holder. The pageant is compensating her for the shortened term.

The pageant pits 53 contestants one from each state, plus Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands in swimsuit, evening gown, talent and interview competitions.