All I want for Christmas...

Almost Christmas! Last-Minute Beauty Gifts with an Asian Touch

   

   
In need of some last-minute beauty gift ideas? Beauty products always make a great gift, and -living in Singapore or elsewhere in South East Asia - even more so when they have a quirky local relevancy or exclusive regional nature. Don't forget to indulge and spoil yourself too, nothing wrong with some self-gifting on the side as these products are just too good not to try...

A Sweet & Cute Christmas with Etude House

Still looking for the perfect gift for someone or ready to treat yourself? Make sure to drop by Korean Beauty brand 'Etude House' for their Holiday 2015 "Snowy Dessert" Collection. My personal favorite are the Ginger Cookie Palettes; one is a two-toned blusher and the other one is a two-toned contouring powder - TOO CUTE! 

TGIF! Time to go out and flaunt your best look tonight :)

How to avoid Meltdown Makeup: Urban Decay "All Nighter" Setting Spray

Makeup-wise, one thing that bugs me most about the hot and humid tropics is that after the shortest time my makeup (face, eyes, lips) looks worn out, whipped out and ‘meltdown’. This is the case no matter what amounts of makeup I wear; both light basic daytime makeup and meticulously applied evening makeup quickly don’t look so put together anymore as I would like. Even with the least activity, the temperature and level of humidity make me look like I’ve spent a long night in a club, wildly dancing like there’s no tomorrow. Luckily there's a very easy solution this...

A Quick & Easy Tropical Look with Nailpolish in Splashing Colours

A very easy yet instant tropical touch can be added to your look with nailpolish in colours that emphasize your healthy South East Asian tan. Leaving the tropics behind to celebrate the winter holidays in Europe or the US? Take that happy tropical feeling with you, by painting your nails in these splashing colours upon heading back home to family and friends. Check out these splashing tan-compatible tints, which make everyone envy your healthy bronzed look even more...

Whether it's Makeup, Skincare or Haircare... I'm Sooo Guilty!

Asian Beauty Ingredients Discovered: Pearl

At first sight, ‘Pearl’ or ‘Pearl extract’ sounds like a luxurious and far less frightening beauty ingredient than sheep placenta, pig collagen or Bird’s Nest. It could unquestionably belong to the category of products with pure gold or caviar as ingredient (yes – these exist). What refrained me from trying any skincare with pearl, were the results that products with pearl as ingredient promote: brightening and whitening. Is pearl really a whitening agent? Or do products with pearl merely suggest skin lightening, piggybacking on the attractive bright and spotless attributes of pearls? What else does this centuries old ingredient, that has been worshiped in Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda for ages, do for our skin?

Mascara Test: "Kiss Me Heroine - Impact Frame Mascara" for Asian Dolly Eyes

Dolly eyes, or “big eyes” are extremely popular among Asian girls and women. In Asian culture, large eyes are one of the main features that constitute the ultimate beauty ideal, that furthermore exists of a.o. porcelain white skin, a small face and lustrous black hair. Large eyes are thought to be more feminine and innocent, and align with some of the expected qualities of women in past times – submissive, obedient, naïve and feminine.

Asian Skincare - Your guide to Whitening, Lightening and Brightening

As a result of the prevalent white skin beauty ideal in South-East Asia, it can sometimes be difficult to find skincare products -even shower gels and deodorants- that aren’t advertised as ‘whitening’. Until recently, I would stay away as far as I could from these products. Any substance that is labelled ‘White Perfect’, ‘Blanc Expert’ or that mentions ‘whitening’ or ‘brightening’, imposes an image of a repulsive white-greyish Michael-Jackson-like complexion on me. No thanks, I love my healthy tan. However, even in products that aren’t necessarily advertised as whitening, the same active substances can be found as in those who are. How do we make informed choices of what we apply to our skin? And is a translucent ghost-like skin with all pigment bleached out of it, a realistic expectancy when we use a product that claims to be whitening? 

Happy Wednesday to Me - My Althea Order Just Arrived!!!

Happy Wednesday to me: my order from online Beauty Webshop 'Althea' just arrived! Unpacking my products felt like Christmas came early this year, and was so much fun already - can't wait to try out all the products and share my experiences with all of you! 

Asian Beauty Ingredients Discovered: Snail Slime

Snail Slime Time! With great devotion, yours truly once again conducted some thorough research (you'll be amazed how snail slime is harvested...) and tested another ingredient that is populair in Asian Cosmetics: the secreted mucus from our slimy little garden friends, snails.

Lip Hybrids: All-in-one Sun Protection, Lipcare & Makeup

Yay, the sun is shining again in Singapore! With the South-East Asian haze decreasing, it’s finally time to enjoy more of our time outside. Exposing ourselves to the sun, protection for the lips is often forgotten. Forget the boring, medical-looking lip balms and chapsticks; in Asia, a variety of makeup-like lipcare with SPF is available that make it too fun too to ever forget to care for your lips again.

Asian Beauty Ingredients Discovered: Placenta in Skincare

Upon my arrival last summer, a large, nationwide outdoor advertising campaign promoting Horse Placenta pills was to be seen everywhere in Singapore. In Europe, I had heard of placenta in skincare before, which -not surprisingly- was labelled Frankenstein Business and served as a very vivid illustration of how far people go for beauty, mentioned alongside bee venom and bloody Dracula facials. What astonished me about this campaign in Singapore was the fact that the consumption of placenta was promoted to a larger public: apparently, placenta as an ingredient or supplement is no shady backdoor business in Asia and targets the masses instead.

Versace Eros pour Femme - Sensual Seductiveness that proofs to be fresh enough for the hot and sweaty tropics

As the fragrances that I adored for many years turned out to smell different in the tropical environment of Singapore, this gave me a good reason to shop for a new perfume. Two requirements: (1) the perfume needs to interacts well with the new South East Asian chemistry of my sweaty, spice-secreting skin,  and (2) as I used to liked warm and rich fragrances before, my new perfume should be both deep and sensual, yet fresh enough for my daily life in the tropical lushes. I gladly found a new favourite in Versace’s ‘Eros pour Femme’…

Perfume Panic - Why does my favourite fragrance smell different in the tropics?!

As a fragrance addict, I always imagined that it would be the biggest perfume-related disaster if my favourite perfumes were to be discontinued. Recently I experienced a catastrophe scoring just as high on the disaster scale: the perfumes that I have been wearing for years suddenly smell different since I moved from Europe to Singapore! Why do the fragrances that we otherwise adore and that work very well for us, suddenly smell different in a another environment? It turns out there is more behind this than just a change in mood or preference…

Perfume 101:The Anatomy of Perfume through Top, Heart & Base Notes

Perfumes are amazing - but also amazingly complex. This is why it takes years to develop a fragrance and why perfumers, or ‘noses’ as they are called in the industry, are considered ingenious, skilful and accomplished artists. Composing  a perfume out of thousands of chemical building blocks in order to translate a specific style or feeling into a fragrance, is more an art than a science. Countless books are written on the history, psychology and art of perfume – all is equally interesting, but it is a lot of information to grasp. In order to understand the basics as to better understand perfume reviews and make well-informed choices on what fragrance suits you and why, I will regularly post a ‘Perfume 101’, each time explaining about a different subject related to perfume.  First topic: the anatomy of a perfume and how this influences how a fragrance is perceived over a timespan as short as minutes and hours.

The Beauty of Singapore

I woke up to this view this morning and felt blessed to live in this beautiful Urban Jungle - Beauty in one of its many forms, composed of Sunrise, Skyline and Lush Tropical Greenery. Love! 

Bird’s Nest - Asian Beauty Ingredients Discovered

Living in (South-East) Asia, there is no doubt you have come across exotic and mysterious ingredients in cosmetics that, back at home, you wouldn’t never even consider rubbing on your face. Horse Placenta, Snail Slime, Bird’s Nest, to mention some: by our Western frame of reference, the one ingredient sounds even more shocking and horrifying than the other. Apart from some initial disgust, I can’t help to be incredibly curious to what these ingredients do for our beauty according to local Asian believes. What are the promised results? How do these products feel and what do they smell like? Someone’s gotta do the dirty job, so in the coming weeks I'll go down and dirty to test some products non-Asians would otherwise stay far away from. I bet it’s going to be quite a ride…

Happy Halloween: Creepy Cool Cosmetics & Spooky Skincare

Not directly related to the tropics but way too fun not to share; the best Halloween beauty products! Judging by the amount of Halloween costumes and gadgets in stores, Singapore seems to be getting ready for Halloween taking this holiday very serious. The following Korean Beauty brands offer great products to add to this weekend’s celebration of horror. Colour your lips deep blood red with Holika Holika’s Bloody Oil Tint as the perfect finishing touch to your Zombie Nurse costume, or bring your skin back to life with Too Cool For School’s Pumpkin Sleeping Pack after a long night of spooky partying…

How to smudge-proof your mascara in the humid tropics

Being blessed with a set of long lashes, my mascara tends to smudge on the skin below and above my eyes somewhat, no matter what climate I find myself in. Heat and humidity unfortunately do make matters worse for me – and many others with me.

Palm Oil & Haze: How to Choose Your Cosmetics Well-informed

Haze or not, I'm a firm believer of being conscious about the choices we make as consumers. For example, my preference goes out to beauty products that are not tested on animals and whenever possible I pick these product over others. With the ongoing haze I notice people around me getting more conscious about the relationship between our palm oil consumption and the heavily polluted air we are now suffering from in South East Asia.

Tropically Sun-kissed or Born Bronzed: Where to find the right shade of foundation

Many of our favourite Western makeup brands (a.o. Chanel, Dior, Estée Lauder, Guerlain, YSL, Clinique and Lancôme) don’t carry the same foundation shades in Asia as they do in Europe or the US. Given the multi-racial melting pot that Singapore is, this calls for brands with a wider range of shades, to cater to all of our beauty needs. From the pale-skinned Scandinavian expat with a sun-kissed shade from an afternoon at Tanjong Beach Club to the to-die-for eternally bronzed cheecks of our Brazilian neighbour; finding the right foundation shade is pivotal yet proves to be a challenge in Singapore. If, like me, you need a slightly darker shade than is commonly offered in South East Asia, make sure you check out below brands and discover my foundation beauty hack at the end of this post.

No Stain no Gain: How to get a Healthy Glow on the Cheeks in the Skin-dulling Haze

Ah, the haze. No one told me about this buzz-killer before I moved to Singapore, and it’s an understatement to say that it was quite an unpleasant surprise. Learning about the hazardous effects that the haze has on our health, it is no wonder we all spend more time inside to avoid being exposed to the polluted air – fellow expat women all across South East Asia alike. The lack of fresh air and a healthy dose of vitamin D from the sun leaves me with a dull looking skin. My complexion lost its glow and is less radiant than usual, with an overall less fresh and healthy look as a result. Naturally, we will need to adjust our daily skincare routines to external factors such as air pollution – the right exfoliation, cleansing and moisturizing can do a lot. But sometimes we just need a quick fix. There is one product in particular that I find the ultimate fast and easy solution in this situation: a cheek stain.