by Claire
When I was in my 20s, my little dopamine beauty buy was a new lipstick. This is before we normalised the £30 designer lipstick, mind: I’m talking Revlon or Maybelline. New lipstick was cheering. For circa £10 I could literally turn that frown upside down, and paint coral! I own about 50 lipsticks, they are all bright festive red or mauvey nude pink with very little in between. Nothing gets worn really, aside from nude lipliner and lip balm. My older face looks wrong with a bright lip in the places I go: the park, the cafe, the nursery, a zoom call. I need a party! A restaurant! (Sorry can’t go, got no childcare. Next year!).
The thing I buy now is base. I am totally addicted (wocka wocka). It helps that I’m now on a salary rather than a bartending wage of course. My overarching quest is to look the opposite of how I feel: fresh and rested, perky, YOUNG, HYDRATED (shouting now). Is that so wrong? My skin type is basically papyrus at this stage, so it must be very moisturising, not sparkly, not require a load of stippling or bouncing a fucking sponge all over my face for two minutes like a wazzock. My dream base can be whacked on, and makes me look amazing and effortless and perky.
I am not an authority, I am just a deranged little consumer with crepey undereyes. There are also NO affiliate links and no sponsorship and no freebies at all! Keeping it real (and further away from home ownership).
Erborian BB cream in Clair, £40 for the big tube
This is I think, the only base I have ever bought twice. Isn’t that mad?? Anyway, this is a truly fantastic product that I usually regret diverging from. The French description on the label reads ‘effect peau de bebe’ which means ‘baby skin effect’: in this case creepy but true. It blurs everything, has a great level of coverage that allows for slapdash application. Comes in a very small shade range (boo!), one of which happens to be the exact slightly grey beige of my face. If you’re in a Space NK they have testers, so you can find out if one of the shades works for you. Evil Amazon usually have it much cheaper, and it’s nearly always heavily discounted on Prime Day. There’s also a BB cream that is white and ‘adapts to your skin colour’ but I find this premise highly suspect, and I prefer the original BB but YOU DO YOU BABE.
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