On.... NARS Carthage

Confession.

Despite owning more makeup than I could ever, ever wear (so much in fact that it’s slightly shameful, and friends of friends sometimes say ‘can I see your makeup drawer?’ when they come over, because they’ve heard through the grapevine just how excessive it is), I just bought a new lipstick.

NARS Carthage.

My first thought, after ‘oooo I look nice!’ was ‘hot damn, this would look great on my friend Amy’. Then I thought how great it would look on Susan, and Sarah, and Catherine, and Kirsty, and Lydia, and Andrea, and Trini and Maddy and Eleanor and Victoria and Kat and Fi and my sister and my mother and my agent and oh my God pretty much every woman I know.

Allegedly Emma Stone is wearing it in this shot. She is cool.

It's a bright hot pink with red and coral in it, super-opaque, smooth, long-lasting. Yah, it's bold, and yah, it takes a smooth chap-free lip (Lansinoh or Vaseline and an old toothbrush will sort you out). The kind of lipstick you would wear if you were one of those bathing beauties in an Esther Williams movie. It’s incredible with pale skin (I am still pre-fake-tan this year, so I'm milky-white. You know, the kind of white with a bit of blue in it? Yah that's me), and I saw a very bronzed girl trying it on and she looked breathtaking. It would look amazing on Asian skintones and phenomenal on darker skin. It makes your teeth whiter and your eyes brighter. It's hopelessly devoted to you. Like a young Olivia Newton-John.

So for Pete’s sake stop reading my stooopid blog and go and buy it. Or at least try it on.

PS Yah I am a writer. Yah I have no right to talk about cosmetics. Yah I'm going to do it anyway.

PPS The other day I found this photo of James Spader on my desktop. How did it get there? I don't know. I like to think that it found me. Let's just run with it and bemoan the fact that in this day an age it's almost impossible to find a man who will rock a sockless loafer, pale grey suit, open-neck shirt, Lady Di hair and come-hither eyes, a lit cigarette and a glass ashtray balanced so perfectly on his knee. I need to re-do my website this year, and get some photos taken, and honestly, I'd be delighted if I could pose EXACTLY like this.