Monday , May 7, 2007
Green Beauty: Perfect Beach Hair, No Beach Required
My hair has never been so good as when I was wee and spent much of summer romping about in the ocean on Cape Cod. Even better than the blonde highlights was the piecey, beautifully messy thing that happens when you've been soaking up the salt all day and your mane acquires the most perfect texture possible. Now I hardly swim at the beach anymore, mostly out of fear of the sun and scary L.A. water but also because I'm so lazy and the Pacific Coast Highway is sooo far from my little Echo Park cottage.
I'm resolving to get myself out to Malibu lots and lots this summer, and in the meantime there's the new John Masters Organics Sea Mist (my number-one beauty obsession of the moment). It's water and sea salt and organic essential oil of lavender, which is there to keep your hair from getting dried out by the salt. I have the thickest, potentially-rat's-nestiest mop in the world, so it takes quite a few shots to effectively saturate my head. But once the salt sets in, it's total beach-hair goodness, and the best part is how all my dreaded frizz magically disappears.
Another yummy John Masters Organics product I'm adoring right now: the Honey and Hibiscus Hair Reconstructor, with mango butter and so many botanical oils to take the beachy crunch away and make your hair all nice and soft again.
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by Liz in Green Beauty
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Tuesday , May 1, 2007
Eco-Pretty: Patyka
Unlike my esteemed colleague, I'm not a big beauty product person. Outside of a devotion to some obscure, embarrassingly expensive skincare products, I don't really wear makeup, cut my hair about twice a year and keep things pared down in general in terms of the products in my life -- mostly because my schedule is so erratic that the term "beauty routine" sends me into paroxysms of laughter at such a ludicrous concept. But the one beauty thing I do get extravagant and obsessive about is fragrance -- I'm crazy about perfume, my idea of beauty heaven being the perfume counter at Barneys and a free afternoon. And lately I'm crazy about Patyka fragrances, which are certified organic and use only the purest ingredients and processes to manufacture sumptuous, fresh fragrances that can rival the best of such heavyweights as Diptyque, L'Artisan Parfumeur and Serge Lutens. Patyka's Hesperidé fragrance is a crisp, sharp lime crossed with lavender that would be perfect for summer, while sultry ladies might go for Ambre, which opens with sharp, green blasts of bergamot that settle into rich, sensual amber and vanilla. Patyka's perfumes are generally very aromatic and are suited to individualists who seek something off the beaten path, something distinctive, slightly unusual and even abstract in nature -- almost like something an intellectual Jane Birkin would have worn in the late 1960s. And god, who wouldn't want to be that?
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by Kat in Green Beauty
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Wednesday , April 25, 2007
Green Beauty: PlantLove by Cargo Cosmetics The darling shade I'm wearing right now is the Sagarmatha, a rosy cream named after the Nepalese word for Mount Everest. Half of the PlantLove lipsticks get their names from "places of ecological beauty" (the iced rose is Yellowstone, the terracotta pink is Killarney), while the other half are I.D.-ed by the celebrity ladies who collaborated with Cargo to create their ideal lipstick shade: There's Lindsay (L.Lo's "California pink") and Cece (Courteney Cox's sheer berry), but my favorite Cargo girl is probably cutie-pie Sarah Chalke, whose petal-pink Sarah is sweet and shimmery and girly in a good way.
This is the post I should've posted on Earth Day, but instead I was out doing Earthy stuff like re-learning how to skateboard (alternative transportation, y'all!) and drinking organic beer in Venice Beach. Anyway: Cargo Cosmetics new PlantLove line. It's eco-fantastic in so many ways, the first of which being the biodegradable tubes created from corn. (And the tubes are so adorable, all dolled up with pretty-pink flowers and hearts.) The outer box is biodegradable too, and it's made from flower-seed-infused paper - which means that if you moisten the packaging and toss it into your garden (or a pot on your windowsill), wildflowers will pop up in just a few weeks. The lipstick itself is free of grossness like petroleum and makes your lips soft and smooth with natural ingredients like jojoba, shea butter, and vitamin E. Oh, and two bucks from every sale of the $20 tubes go toward St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
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by Liz in Green Beauty
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