BOBBI BROWN PRETTY POWERFUL CAMPAIGN 1ST MARCH 2010

When the credit crunch body slammed the nation and crept into all of our lives whether it was being made redundant, having to do the job of 3 people or having to give up on your weekly high street shopping treat the world suddenly changed.

As a beauty journalist I do lots of lovely teas and lunches with beauty PRS. I remember a couple of years ago in the Wolseley seeing a group of bankers celebrating their bonuses, ordering oysters and champagne like it was going out of fashion doing their best to channel Gordon Gekko from ‘ Wall Street’. If any bankers were to do that today I think they would be lynched even in the posh Wolseley. Anyway, this mood this ‘rage against the machine’ attitude has crept into beauty too, as women are over being fed the garbage that 14 girls who have just hit puberty represent working woman and mothers in their 20s, 30s and 40s in beauty ads.

Bobbi Brown has known what woman really want and she has been giving it to us for years with her beautiful neutrals and wearable colours, which make you look like you only better, that’s a Bobbism by the way. Another one is always applying a pop of blush on the cheeks at 4pm to freshen up your look. Now that’s the stuff women trapped in moisture sucking air con/ heated offices and at home mums with screaming kids feeling crap really want to know.

Now thankfully I have been blessed with high self esteem when it comes to accepting and loving my pretty.  God knows I needed to because in my teens walking around beauty halls was like being part of a beauty apartheid, as I was turned away from make up counters with make up artists saying sorry there is nothing here for you. Bobbi Brown was one of a handful of beauty brands whose make up screamed you are accepted, you do deserve to play with make up and feel and look beautiful. I interviewed Bobbi once on the phone while I was in the cupboard of a Marco Pierre White restaurant (I wasn’t doing a Boris Becker at Nobu but just had to nib out of another launch to do my transatlantic telephone interview) and I gushed to her, “thank you Bobbi for making me feel accepted and not like a freak and for catering to black beauty, it meant a lot to me growing up”. She was very sweet and gracious and I felt like a strange make up groupie all huddled and whispering in the cupboard- but you get my drift. 

In true Bobbi style she is trying to make us all pretty from the inside out again with a new campaign launching on the 1^st March called Pretty Powerful to help celebrate the diverse beauty of real women. Shockingly Bobbi Brown UK conducted a survey asking over 1000 British women about perceptions of beauty and only 50% of them said they were happy with their looks, which is really sad. Bobbi has used real woman, friends and family to champion all types of beauty with her new campaign and explains, “Pretty Powerful symbolizes my belief that all women possess natural beauty, and with the right tools, are empowered to a higher level of pretty… Pretty Powerful, Pretty Amazing, Pretty Gorgeous. Everywhere women look; they are confronted with the same kinds of fashion and beauty images – ones that showcase a perfectionism that’s not realistically achievable. It’s not feasible for women to spend hours in front of the mirror trying to emulate an airbrushed photo. But it’s very real to feel this kind of pressure. I always tell women to be who you are. This means everything from learning to love your lines to appreciating your unique features”. Bobbi again I find myself saying thank you but instead of whispering it in a cupboard I am shouting- you go girl!

BACKSTAGE AT VIVIENNE WESTWOOD RED LABEL A/W 2010 WITH MAC

They say you should never meet your heroes or in my case make that heroine with Vivienne Westwood. Thank God that old adage doesn't apply when it comes to Ms. Westwood. Tonight I skulked along the dark, rainy streets of the Strand and headed to the Royal Courts of Justice (oh Viv that’s so you -genius, a subversive yet beautiful fashion show in a British institution). It took all my courage to talk to her last season but tonight I went for it in the polite stalking stakes. She is not only the most exciting artist and designer she is also very, very warm and cool.

I loved the look at the show as the inspiration for hair and make up was very ghostly with the fabulous Gordon Espinet, Vice President of Global Make Up Artistry for MAC behind the look. Gordon said each girl’s look was very individualist and is based on black and white photos with a high contrast like Richard Avadon’s photography, as if the some girls were lit from the front and others from the right and left. The ethereal look was achieved by sculpting the face along the forehead, side of nose, cheekbones and upper lip with MAC’s lip pencil in Stone and a palette of taupe eyeshadows such as MAC’s Satin Taupe, Copperplate, Quarry was used on the face. With the models with darker skin tones, Gordon used aubergines and navies to get the look with MAC eye shadows in Shadowy Lady, Prussian and Fig. 1. The hair was created by Peter Gray using L’Oreal Professionnel products and he wanted to create textured hair like Mohair, which is very soft, ghostly and romantic. He backcombed the hell out of the hair and tonged it with a big barrel and then spread out the heated hair with his fingers to create the look. The nails by nail expert Sophy Robson also rocked and she said they were based on her mannequin manicure she did last season at Louis Vuitton and used a beige nail colour and matt finish top coat to get the hands to look dead. Darker skin tones should try a dark matt chocolate shade.

Being backstage at LFW you can really feel the fashion- beauty divide, it’s like the East coast v West coast rap beef of the late 90’s with Tupac and Biggie smalls. Lots of my old school friends have gone into both fashion and beauty and let’s just say all the mean girls went into fashion, you know the ones I’m talking about they would whisper, “what the f**k is she wearing?” behind people’s backs. On the other hand, beauty girls like myself would be the ones to try and make people feel and look better, by taking girls to the bathroom and saying, “let’s tone down that blush, have you ever tried a soft pink lip stain, it would really bring out the colour of your eyes”. Being backstage is no different than school. Among the roar and heat of hair dryers and screaming hangers on and models running in late from other shows the most talented and genius people hair stylists/ make up artists/ nail experts and designers always have the time, grace and good humour even under immense pressure to have a chat and giggle. It's always the Hollyoaks and socialite Z- listers and jumped up wannabe hungry (they can’t afford food and wouldn’t eat it if they could) fashion interns, who live in damp bedsits on the edge of the cool bits of East London, armed with a snarl and a clipboard on the door, who are rude and diva like. I always get bewildered stares as I march through the backstage area waving my pass from MAC. 

Yesterday at a show someone clocked me and yelled security (wanker) because I'm black and well over a size 6, make that a galaxy over a size 6. Fashion can be fascist, elitist and painful but what I love and appreciate about it is the ideas, the art and the craft. Only a handful of people really have that gift where their clothes express ideas, a cultural mood, a statement and that's why I love Vivienne Westwood. Whatever her collection she always has a strong theme running through all her work, which is the ultimate oxymoron in that she is an anarchist and monarchist. This odd mix embodies British culture in my opinion. No one in the world understands how the British are so free -thinking (swinging 60s), avant garde (Alexander McQueen) with a sarcastic sense of humour and can produce the punk movement. However, we as a people we still have respect for the Queen, cream teas, institutions like the House of Lords and Claridges and the Rule of Law. Englishness equals British reserve with a stiff upper lip but after a few beers or mention of a knees up, the straightest of men can be seen dressing up in drag a la David Walliams faster than you can say Alex Reid. My American friends can’t believe how Walliams is engaged to Lara Stone, who is all woman and I tell them he’s bloody British-that’s how we do! Unlike France we have never had a revolution, we praise individualism, respect other people’s cultures and choices but in a lovely structured way. It’s this crazy and dotty Englishness, which I see in every Westwood collection from her use of heritage tweeds (very home counties) with a sexy twist, corsets and boudoir feel, pirates and general naughtiness. 

Westwood is forward thinking and uses historical references (me likey) to understand the world around her. She loves the Wallace collection in central London. Growing up the Wallace Collection was like a church to me, dripping in 18^th Century paintings and furnishing. When I found out Westwood also went there and was inspired by the art, the place became holy to me! I find Westwood very interesting in the way she sees the world. The past is there to help us understand the future and understand our nature. Nothing really changes that much because human nature doesn't change.

Backstage at Westwood there were a real mix of girls with dark models and I mean, proper black girls. Beyonce and Halle Berry are beautiful but I hate it when people use them in magazines to represent darker skin tones, as they don't really embody all of black beauty. They are ethnic enough to be mainstream but not too dark and African looking like Alek Wek to scare people. I love the fact Vivienne showed all sides of beauty with her choice of models. I asked her why she chose such dark models, as you don't see them on the catwalk that often and shamefully it feels controversial to have them in a show. She said, “we choose the prettiest girls for the catwalk. We look for girls with nice bodies with good attitudes and it doesn't matter whether they are black or white, they are simply the best”. I loved her even more for saying that tonight, for her colour blindness and I said, “bless you that's how it should be, thank you very much it's great to see”. Look around in ads and TV, everyone thought Naomi was going off on one when she spoke about racism in the industry but out of all the 90s supermodels how many beauty, make up campaigns has she had? God bless Vivienne Westwood for her ideas, inclusiveness (she goes up to a size 16) unheard of for high fashion and her diversity and the fact she doesn't see her model choices as diversity but simply as being pretty. Viva la Viv!

BLACK CAB BEAUTY

As a freelance beauty journalist lots of my time involves going to product launches and fancy central London hotels. In any given day I can be in the Dorchester for a fragrance launch, in Soho Hotel to see new Spring/Summer make up colours and I can end my day in Claridges having tea with some lovely PRS. Today was one of those hectic days and I decided to jump in a black cab (the rain and thought of frizzy hair pushed me over the edge). As I sat in the cab I said, “St Martin’s Lane hotel please” and then it came. The nudge nudge, wink wink and old twinkle in his eye.

Have you seen Billy Piper in ‘Secret Diary of a Call Girl’? She describes this moment perfectly as every time I jump in a cab at 3pm in the afternoon all black cab drivers assume I am a pro and by that I don’t mean a freelance journalist who has been working for a decade in the beauty industry but a P for prostitute.

Every bloody time I get the same banter from male black cab drivers and today was no exception. The conversation went something like this- he goes, “business or pleasure, darlin’”, and I go, “business”, which makes me look like a right slapper. Then he goes, ohhhhh I hope it’s more pleasurable than just business”.

Now what really makes me angry is not that this man thinks I’m a ho but that in 2010, the only reason a woman in her early 30s is going to a posh hotel for work is because she is working on her back. At this point I then say,” I am a journalist, a beauty/ fashion journalist”, because saying just beauty gets confused, dazed looks. They wonder is that really a job or is this prostitute in the back of my cab really inventive. 

Anyway, today after I convinced him I was not an escort he asked me, “what is beauty?”. We had a really interesting chat about this highly controversial topic, in the end I said that depends on who and where you are asking the question. In India, being fair is still seen as the height of beauty, I personally get stalked by Nigerian traffic wardens because of my gigantic boobs and junk in my trunk and up North the pale and interesting look just doesn’t wash, it’s fake tan all the way. I also said beauty changes with time because 60 years ago if I showed him a picture of JLO or Alek Wek he wouldn’t think they were that attractive but culture and historical changes also shape our perceptions of beauty. The taxi driver’s response to this was really interesting in the way he rationalised what I was saying as he said, “what you’re saying is that if you look at someone long enough your perception of beauty can change, like when the new Mini came out, I didn’t like the look of it but now I quite like it”. I loved our chat and my black cab beauty discussion, hopefully if I ever get in the back of his cab again the first thing he assumes won’t be that I’m a happy hooker with well applied make up on.

CHANEL: YOU LOOKIN' AT ME?

I love it when the worlds of Beauty and Film collide and it’s happened again with Chanel. Today Chanel announced a really exciting collaboration with the Oscar winning director Martin Scorsese, who has produced some of the most iconic and visceral films of our times with ‘Goodfellas’, ‘Taxi Driver’, ‘The Departed’ and ‘Gangs of New York’. Marty (that’s want his hard nut friends Bob De Niro and Leo Dicaprio call him) is set to direct the latest commercial for Chanel’s new men’s fragrance launching September 2010 with the French actor and rising star Gaspard Ulliel. I can’t wait to see what they do, perhaps Gaspard can pistol whip someone across the face with the new bottle of cologne. Have it!

LADY GAGA- M·A·C ATTACK

God bless Lady Gaga and all who sail in her. I love the fact this lady pushes the boundaries of her beauty and fashion boxes and I love this look where she is literally dripping in pearls at the amfAR gala last week in New York. She looks like a modern day Miss Havisham crossed with one of those creepy undead sea pirates serving with Davy Jones from 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest'. I love it! La Gaga is the new M·A·C Viva Glam, www.maccosmetics.co.uk, spokesperson along with Cyndi Lauper and I’m so glad she didn’t disappoint with this look at the M·A·C sponsored event. Now don’t try this at home kids but if you want to recreate the look for say, an evening meeting your potential mother-in-law, job interview or an evening down the pub, it took make up artist Billy B an hour and a half to create using M·A·C white micronized airbrush formula avec pearls and the look was designed by artist Terence Koh. Bravo.

CHANEL HYDRAMAX + ACTIVE NUTRITION LIP CARE

As you all know I am a huge Chanel fan and I also am a bit of a lip balm fanatic, as there is nothing less appealing and uncomfortable than cracked up dry lips. So I’m not ashamed to say I did let out a little squeal of delight when this new Chanel Hydramax + Active Nutrition Lip care, £26, www.chanel.com (that’s Chanel speak for lip balm) landed on my desk. It’s a really nourishing product without any sticky tackiness. The balm helps to soothe, plump and protect the delicate skin on the lips with rose wax, cottonseed oil and ceratonia PFA, the key ingredient in the HYDRAMAX +ACTIVE range, which helps to boost the skin’s own natural hydration mechanisms. Apart from that, the Barbie sized dinky packaging is fabulous, smells of white peaches and berries but not too much, as I can’t stand over perfumed products and will look chic when being pulled out of any handbag. Look out for it when it launches on the 23rd April. Chanel you are class all the way! 

FAREWELL ALEXANDER MCQUEEN

It was such a shock to hear of Alexander McQueen’s passing today. I am such a huge fan of his work and his talent, vision and his genius will be missed. It feels so odd that we will never see another theatrical show, another set of ideas and his take on the world. Any art is about ideas, expression and soulfulness and McQueen’s work screamed originality and excellence. I loved McQueen’s hard-edged S&M approach to romanticism and for me he belonged in a romanticism trinity along with John Galliano and Vivienne Westwood some of my other favourite designers. The world has lost an interesting, creative and talented soul. RIP.