Estée Lauder blockbuster set 2023 Review

Every year, Estée Lauder famously brings out a blockbuster set. Perfect for breaking up and filling Christmas stockings, these are eagerly anticipated by many. This year, the box is rather different because it has fewer makeup items and sample sizes, instead they've decided on several full size skincare items and a few makeup items. As usual, the box is worth much more than you pay for it. In Black Fridays past, you were able to buy the box alone. This year it was the usual routine of having to spend a minimum amount and then buy the box for £85 but you got 20% off the qualifying purchases.

I bought a lip balm set and a lipliner to qualify. 

The skincare items are

Advanced Night Repair 30ml (everyone’s fave)

New Advanced Night Cleansing Gelée with 15 Amino Acids 75ml, deluxe travel size (good for travel, never tried before but looks good)

Revitalizing Supreme+ Youth Power Creme moisturiser 15ml. (Sample size - giving it away)

1 x Advanced Night Repair Eye Supercharged Gel-Creme Synchronized Multi-Recovery 15ml, full-size (not tried but looks good)

1 x Gentle Eye Makeup Remover 100ml, full-size. (This one is made in China which horrified me. But I’m sure it’s a good one. My favourite is Lancôme but this will be useful or given as a gift)

The rest is makeup…

 1 x Limited Edition Eye Shadow Palette in CELESTIAL GLAM, deluxe travel size (.24 oz./7g) Includes 6 shades

This is very powdery with a lot of kickup and aside from the pink shade, they are very meh very boring. The compact is cute but very cheap looking and wouldn’t make a very impressive gift. Looks very much like a GWP. They used to have gold casing etc. A step down.

2 x Limited Edition Lipsticks, full-size in Starlet Red (A vibrant red with a warm undertone and creme finish) and Saturn Reign (A blue-hued pink with a cool undertone and creme finish.)

These are a moisturising formula and somewhere along the line Estée Lauder has lost that fruity scent and gone for a more vanilla scent (I like that) but again, both these shades are meh. I was excited for the pink to be a bit like MAC Candy Yum Yum but it’s more sedate. It’s not as fun on the lips as it looks like it would be in the tube. Both lipsticks are creamy and a bit sheer until built up. The red is very bold and not great on me but they’re both safe shades. And they have wonderful engraving (but the casing again is a bit cheap and GWP) however overall I think they would make good gifts.

2 x Limited Edition Lip Glosses, deluxe travel size in Divine Plum (A deep wine with a creme shine finish.) and Ruby Quartz (A rich red with a creme shine finish. These will be gifted as I am not a gloss fan. They would make cute gifts.

1 x Double Wear 24H Stay-in-Place Lip Liner, full-size in 07 Red

This is a great liner and I’m a huge fan of Estée Lauder lipliners but for me it’s a bit too red and warm. When wearing red I prefer the more pink MAC Cherry liner. The pencil is the exact same shade as the lipstick. I tried it with the pink lipstick and it wasn’t bad but really the pink is left orphaned. I wore the pink with a pink liner I already had.

1 x Sumptuous Extreme Lash Multiplying Volumizing Mascara, full-size. 

Again, Lancôme is my go-to for mascara, but I have used this one before and it’s very good and I’ll definitely use it. 

There was no blusher or highlighter palette this year, much to many an outrage.

Then the train case - huge and a bit tacky and I will be giving it away but it’s fun and very Christmassy.

Overall it’s definitely worth the £85 spend. Supposedly it’s worth £411! I would only say if you’re a fellow makeup fiend, you’ll already own all of these shades. Aside from the red lipstick, none of it is Christmas themed which is a safe move but a bit disappointing as I love sparkle around this time of year.

Some eye looks and lip looks:

The Cult of Beauty: Exhibition review

There has always been a fine line between beauty as an enchanting glimpse into the heavenly, and beauty as a self obsessed and devilish vanity. Particularly as a woman, this balance is precarious if not doomed.

Death and the devil attack two women who are looking in a hand-held mirror

David Funck, printed late 1600s,

Germany

The exhibition begins with the usual suspects: a reproduction of the Nefertiti bust, reproductions of  reclining Roman sculptures - including the sleeping hermaphrodite (a sensuous mattress later added by Bernini) and moves on to vanitas with the inevitable cartoons mocking such obsessions with attaining worldly beauty.  The way the exhibition is set out is quite haphazard and patchy, with some sections absolutely captivating and some leaving you cold.

Overall I really enjoyed it although it didn’t have the most linear direction and it doesn’t speculate as to the future of beauty. It ends with a sombre look at beauty today. Which naturally is: obsessive selfies and a bland state of endless copycat looks on social media. There was an excellent section discussing how mirrors were originally made from copper and then bronze for instance: The ancient Egyptian mirror they had on show, gave a hazy approximation of one’s reflection. It was strange to look into a mirror like that. 

Ancient Egyptian bronze mirror

Unknown maker

800-100 BCE, Egypt

To know that in ancient times, your audience and the way people looked at you was your mirror; you would never truly see yourself aside from this blurry image. And this they positioned alongside - well who else? - Kim Kardashian and her ‘ironic’ book of selfies, “Selfish.” They could have then built on this notion of how far we’ve come from near blindness of one’s physicality to this omnipresent ability to take selfies and be filmed every time we emerge, to perhaps wonder what the future will be. Perhaps a time when we can see ourselves in 3D not 2D, perhaps even talk or interact with ourselves to the point that future beings would wonder, how did people in the olden days bear to only know themselves as 2D images? But, nothing is said about future projections. And nothing is said about how beauty is connected to health. Instead the exhibition focuses on attempts to attain beauty via makeup, ointments, fashion, medicine, or tools.

Not that this is not a fascinating angle. The highlights for me were: a section recreating beauty recipes aka “Renaissance goos” from the 1500s (apparently often made by Jewish women immigrants who had been expelled from Spain in 1492.) There was an accompanying video showing the recipes being followed and the resulting creams. I would be tempted to buy a jar! 

Ivory mortar and pestle, carved with cherubs, alchemy scenes and a snake

Unknown maker

1501-1700, Europe

Then, a life size Barbie which was both startling and sad. It was so wholly unrealistic and served as ultimate proof that Barbie really always was unattainable beauty which could never occur in real human life. 

Lifesize Barbie and Oriol

Adel Rootstein Ltd.

2009, Germany

The section on beauty spots and corsets and the accompanying Georgian satirical cartoons were expected but no less amusing for it. 

A dandy being laced into a tight corset by two servants

1819, England Thomas Tegg

A young woman greeted by a brothel keeper with prominent beauty patches

A Harlot's Progress series

William Hogarth

1732, England

And the section on trans although not really about beauty anymore, in fact to count in within beauty seemed to trivialise it I thought. But nonetheless quite powerful. A somewhat gory couple of jars hold a breast each. The accompanying plaque quote their original owner, E-J Scott. “In this photo, you can see me holding up a jar of my own chest tissue. In front of the photo, you can see the same artefact. A cis-gaze will inevitably try to piece the body and the person back together. But this optical exercise defies resolution: I have curated my gender with intentionality. My intention is that your inspection does not interrupt my self-reflection.”

This section also had some seemingly innocuous items collected by trans individuals. Handwritten notes about what the objects meant to them and how they had helped them to change their outer body to match their true selves. It was then followed by some modern art installations which made very banal and hackneyed points about how hard it is to be yourself (or whatever a sculpture made out of your mum’s old photos and nighties is meant to conjure up.) 

And then some flashing videos of tik tok etc beauty looks all merging into one being with no individuality whatsoever. Well we knew that too and these hardly need their own section. 

All in all though I found it very interesting and I liked the commentary on L’Oréal’s master stroke marketing line “Because I’m worth it!” Guilt tripping women into thinking if they don’t buy it then they’re admitting they’re not worth it. Genius. And this line is still used today. That’s sobering. 

Men also feature and are also mocked, to a lesser extent. Their position is as the nasty voice abusing and mocking women through the ages. This via cruel cartoons, or cataloguing and awarding women’s beauty rankings. 

Hogarth again.Wigs classified in a parody of the orders of ancient Greek and Roman architecture

   William Hogarth

     1761, England

But, beauty is not just about pleasing others, it is also about the joy of lavishing oneself. And, at times this came across. The ancient Egyptian beauty products in the shape of a turtle, a woman, or a fish, exhibited alongside a 20th Century items such as a British airways compact (lent by Lisa Eldridge of course - who else has such fine trinkets!) 

The section on ethnic beauty was promising but too self consciously done. And putting Rihanna’s makeup in there felt a little gratuitous. She is not above straightening her hair and capitulating to society’s expectations. I don’t believe even if her collection has the most shades, that it was the first to welcome dark shades for the masses. It felt as if the last few sections of the exhibition moved away from a joyful celebration of adornment and took a more watchful approach. The shadow of cancel culture loomed at times.

The Book of Fair Women, German photographer E.O. Hoppé 1810

Josephine Baker in banana skirt , 1930s

The final section left the exhibition on a flat note. Plastic surgery epitomised by a harrowing photograph of a young woman being inspected before getting new breasts, and a despondent vision of chasing beauty being something shameful and to be struggled against.

However the fascinating sections were brilliant… so for that reason I would still give this a solid 4/5

The Cult of Beauty 26 October 2023 – 28 April 2024 - Wellcome Collection

Guerlain Fierce Glow Meteorites: REVIEW!

I haven’t seen many reviews for this new Guerlain Meteorites offering so I thought I’d briefly share my findings. The shade is 02 Light but I have had the standard 02 light and I currently still have the pressed version, and this Fierce Glow seems for starters more shimmery, and also more warm toned. Guerlain have now reformulated to be talc free but this is my first talc free version. I was hoping it would be the same, and it is. The only difference is they seem softer and have much more dust up. The scent (heavenly) and the finish (may I say heavenly again?) is still its hallmark.

One Meteorites will certainly last you a year at the very least and that’s with daily use. Personally I have never finished one but I collect them. I think everyone should treat themselves to at least one. It’s retro, decadent, a pleasure to look at and a pleasure to use. Plus, I do think it does something! Perhaps merely the glow and satisfaction of gilding yourself in something so indulgent and ‘useless’ but I think it’s more. I think it gives the skin a genuine glow and it melds all your previous steps together. If you’ve never bought yourself one, you could do worse than start with Fierce Glow! Adnittedly it’s a couple of grams less and a couple of pennies more than their standard line up, but I think the LE ones are more fun and have more of that delectable glow. It’s a shame the plush puff is a thing of the past and we have this horrid sponge but I knew that would be the case (sigh.)

Crown to Couture exhibition: REVIEW!

Compared to similar fashion exhibitions at say the Victoria & Albert museum, this exhibition at Kensington Palace is rather pallid. The premise is that just like in Georgian times, when people received a Royal invitation, the Met gala is a crucial and life changing opportunity to dress your best and thereby change the direction of your life. Kim Kardashian’s Skims proudly exhibited alongside intricate lace undergarments as proof of how similar today and the Georgian times were. Pat McGrath’s beauty set up sat opposite a silver wear beauty table. A video of Kendall Jenner in a see through Givenchy gown based on an Audrey Hepburn dress, and the actual dress, and a dress actually worn by Audrey Hepburn. And in the same display, the oldest Georgian court outfit in existence.

It’s certainly interesting and perhaps it is meant to imply the Met Gala is just as glamorous as these Georgian affairs and we now have our own supposed equivalent to the Met Gala, Vogue world, and something or other has happened with Edward Enninful stepping down and so Anna Wintour is reigning supreme, or some such; I don’t quite follow them as in my mind Vogue is not the publication it once was and I recommend Vogue covers: on Fashion’s Front Page (link) to see how artistic and creative it once was… though I do still love and collect all the Vogue On… books series on designers; anyhow aside from that initial parallel there was not much more substance to the argument and not much of a story arc leading to any cogent theory as to any historical or social echoes etc.

There was a bit about all the modern attempts to politicise fashion with some unsubtle toile print pastiche depicting capitalism (irony is never acknowledged by celebrities and that’s what makes them so endearing. Or something.) And some attempt to imply somehow all this indulgence is going to be set within a sustainability narrative (insert same point about irony) and of course lots of gold and sequins. Naturally it was a treat to see these items but I would have liked more direction and a sense that the items were telling a unified story which made me really think.

The impression I left with is that Georgians were very catty and opportunistic and shallow but they also had a great sense of fun and humour and a level of self awareness. I wasn’t convinced the modern day counterparts could make the same claim.

My rating:

6/10

Barbie the movie - REVIEW! (spoilers)

*Possible spoilers* Although it's hard to say that for a formulaic and predictable plot device which relies on the tried and true The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe or The Wizard of Oz type affair - i.e. a portal fantasy with a quest like narrative - in this instance if one is being generous one could suggest this is a reversal: transposing oneself from a fantasy into a reality... so perhaps echoes of Ariel from The Little Mermaid especially at the ending, would be more apt. 

But whereas Ariel has immense complexity of character, Barbie is a two dimensional sweet bimbo and that's what's ultimately so disappointing. I'd read about how outraged right wing stiffs in America had lambasted the film and how (male) critics had complained that “the patriarchy” was used repeatedly and unironically. This only encouraged me to see it and see how Barbie, a feminist icon, for yes that is what I see her as, would undo the most misogynist notion of all: that her beautiful blonde, hair coiffed heavy makeup tight clothed and high heeled persona, doesn't in any way indicate that this woman is not also a highly intelligent and thinking individual and not simply an object for the delectation of men.

Instead, we see a film purporting to dismantle these notions yet in effect entrenching them further. This I find more harmful than an overtly derogatory film. Especially when aimed at a young mind. For instance, Barbie is horrified at getting cellulite and flat feet. Apparently a joke - but is it actually? I mean, aside from one token overweight Barbie, who happens to be the most authoritative and bossy, and no overweight men and just one token dweeb who is the only unattractive male in a sea of attractive Kens, are they not hoisted by their own petard? The fact that at the end she has to forsake pink and heels and instead adopt a brown earthy get up replete with Arizona Birkenstocks was to me the final capitulation to the patriarchy and its strict dichotomy. Clever and to be taken seriously = no pink and no heels! Humble yourself and don’t play on overt symbols of femininity if you want us to respect you and not treat you like meat. That was the message I got and I also didn’t like (and as a teen I suspect I’d have hated it even more…) the way that at the beginning we are submerged into this fun and fluff - for make no mistake, the choreography, the set, the costumes and the makeup are all A+, but then suddenly we are being given a hectoring sermon. It’s not even that I disagreed with any of it as I didn’t, but it was clear that the film was contradicting itself. That old adage: show don’t tell. And what it was showing wasn't aligning at all. In fact was I missing something or was the final 'joke' about Barbie's first act of emancipation going to her gynecologist, a reference to her now becoming a real life sexual being and casting her as a fully functional sex symbol now, not merely a doll or a fantasy. Certainly viewed via a male gaze this is what would be understood by this crescendo.

 

There were so many points which could have been made. I liked hearing about the history of Barbie and the political reflection one can see through the decades. Indeed arguably the most interesting part of the film was the end credits when a roll call of past Barbies was presented. There was not enough about the sadness of Ken; yes this undermines the doctrine but young male suicide is a leading cause of death and it's only recently that attempts to get men to show feelings and talk about it have been made. The unrequited love angle was also a chance to make Barbie asexual or lesbian. Yes it was hinted at, but if you're going to be criticised as “woke”which the director knew was inevitable, why not be bold about it?

It was an interesting idea that finding the little girl who was playing with her, in fact led to a grown up mother. But it also highlighted how flawed the premise was. Unless they were implying only an adult level of sadness can penetrate into the er, membrane. As I can personally attest that as a little girl (one of my formative memories dare I admit) I once went to my room and tumbled out all my accumulated pound coins from endless weeks of saving up, and also tore off all the heads of my beloved Barbies. This demonstration for me represented the truest rendition of hopelessness and grief. I'm fairly sure that my experience was echoed many times through various miserable little girls from the 50s and to the present day, so I'm not sure why it was only now heard by Barbie. But flimsy pretext to one side, it was a surprise that this seemed to suggest a little girl could be an adult. More on the theme of how an adult might get comfort from a childhood toy may have opened up themes which weren't covered. 

The myth of sisterhood and how women are often the first enemy of feminism was touched upon but not expanded and the film again said one thing but presented another. After all, during Nazi times when women were given awards for having lots of babies and were encouraged to throw out all notions of feminism and revert to being a housewife and mother, female support for Hitler was sky high. And when looking at patriarchal religion and oppression of women, in particular how they are to dress and behave, you will often find no more enthusiastic proponent than the woman herself. Many women even aside from religious brainwashing, allow themselves to think of men controlling them as simply being seen as being 'prized' rather than controlled. The idea that Barbieland was just as divisive as the real world was not elucidated. The notion that pretending that competition and gender and all sorts of other perceived advantages don't exist wasn't debated. Instead we have an insipid conclusion.

Barbie is likeable, but she and all the other Barbies are very simple and change their minds at the merest suggestion. The aforementioned lecture which changes their mind, one can't help feeling all it would take is one more lecture, this time from a Ken, and they'd agree with that too. The Kens weren't even given this much, they were simply hammy jokes and the unrequited love element which could have humanised them instead was just sketched in and not taken seriously as a theme. 

The biggest problem is that they didn't take the chance for any commentary on social media and fake filters and how that may have originated or alternatively have been avoided if playing with Barbies was still the main pastime of youngsters - who let's face it, are far more likely to be looking at an interactive screen than playing endlessly with a plastic doll. But ultimately this has to be a Mattel advert, and maybe they didn't want to go down that route! 

I will not forgive them for making Barbie apologise for being a fashion icon. Chanel and Birkenstock are strange bedfellows yet these are the brands we saw. Ultimately one was the past and one the future. I would have preferred if Barbie had at least combined the two and become a maverick hybrid thereof. Instead she had to pick one. And in an echo of the 'weird Barbie' who forces her to pick the Birkenstock, here too, there isn't a real choice, or indeed a real point. 

Maybe we'll be seeing an 'ordinary Barbie' as promised, a brown jacketed Birkenstock sandal one. But if you don't look like Margot Robbie, will the outfit still work... because it would if it were a pink dress. A pink dress lets everyone shine. We all wore pink at the cinema. A frumpy outfit, well it's a lot harder to look good in that if you're not 'ordinary  Barbie'. In fact it's probably the easiest way to get someone to feel inadequate. That is, the opposite of empowered.

Overall a disappointment 6/10  

Age old Question of Ageing women in Beauty

Ageing in women has always been the last bastion of prejudice. Perhaps as in the Klimptian way (if I may use such a term) - there are only three stages one is permitted. A child still connected to its young thin and beautiful mother, then there's the aforementioned beautiful mother, dutifully loving and cradling the child with wispy gauze encircling her limbs; aside and apart from them stands or rather hunches, a shameful grey figure with gnarly veined feet and wiry hair which she obediently and carefully uses to hide her no doubt horrible and wrinkled visage. Her bloated belly and sagging breasts are however still affronting our vision but the radiance and confidence of the younger two figures seem fairly safe in their (let's use that term again) Klimptian blue bubble aura whilst the old woman is in her red bubble aura, albeit her ashamed head accidentally bows and intrudes into the blue one as if foreshadowing some inevitable threat which indeed is clear. The message is: you'll be me! And then what! 

Klimt is actually one of my favourite artists so I am not attempting to prove my youth credentials by way of "cancelling" him for being misogynist. Particularly when this vision is still the same as ever and any attempt to correct it is met with anger at it in fact entrenching it. I am referring to the response of Sports Illustrated featuring a suspiciously smooth and glowing octogenarian, Martha Stewart:

In interviews she graciously concedes that she 'had a light spray tan, something she'd never done', a bit like Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner insisting they are horrified and bewildered by plastic surgery. We can speculate and we can, er, use our eyes, but it's true, we are not owed any explanation and I don't know why people think we are. I think it's safe to accept that if we all had unbridled funds, we too could give mother nature a good fight back. I don't know much about Martha Stewart but reading her interview (NYT) it's clear that this fight isn't only about the external, it's also about not being that hunched and apologetic grey figure accidentally seeping into a young world and contaminating it. When asked if she stood by her joke that she was waiting for friends to die so she can get a chance at their husbands, she drily replies: "I don’t take it back. But, well … the husbands do tend to go first. And, really, I prefer younger men."

Of course Sports Illustrated had the previous year already featured another older candidate in her bathing suit, though by comparison a sprightly 69 years old. Maye Musk. However she has short hair which immediately acts as a bulwark against suggestions of impersonating a young fertile (that word had to come up sooner or later) blonde. Her hair is short and white and her demeanor is dignified and without the girlish tousled locks and languid pose. Foliage acts as a slight apology attempting to contain this aberration of nature.

Madonna has become the poster child (so to speak) for women who refuse to accept ageing and in their silly insistence merely look ridiculous and push back feminism. I disagree. In the 50s, actresses, take Marilyn Monroe, were initially given the ingenue roles but by the time of her death at 36 it was only mother roles and she had changed her wardrobe completely. Well if advances in science mean this can be reversed then surely that's to be welcomed, not treated with anger. Now clearly, some people's inherent facial bone structure, or the time they start surgery (hint- the younger the better) or the surgeon they choose and various other factors, determines how pleasing it is to our eyes and judgment. So if the issue is that us mere mortals caught within a cost of living crisis can't do it then that's a different argument. But if Madonna wants to not see wrinkles then that's her decision. The backlash she gets is very cruel - and mocking a woman for being defiant is very misogynist, just like calling women who speak up and complain, Karens. It's a way to put women back in their correct bubble aura and get them to hide their ugly old faces. And the cancel format itself is very medieval and depressing. Once you make a mistake, that mistake will never be forgiven. The identity boxes and pronouns are similarly very strict. Women within this dogmatic logic are also contained and mocked. It's sad that the trend is not towards a more pliant route of people expressing themselves with a freedom to change at will and not because of their age or gender. Perhaps Sports Illustrated, an unlikely champion, will be at the helm of such a change. To my mind, I'd rather see women looking confident in their swimsuits than clunky makeup campaigns trying to sell products or using face creams called 'menopause cream'. Those are an insult to one's intelligence and a bait and switch rather than an attempt to change an ingrained pattern.