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…