It just hit midnight on the East Coast of the U.S., so…HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Sending you all love and good wishes for a very fulfilling, healthy and prosperous 2011.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addicts,

Karen and Tabs

16x — that’s not too far off the mark. We’ve all seen these claims before: 4x brighter eyes, 74% thicker lashes, removes 6x more makeup than cleaning with water alone, clearer skin in 2 weeks guaranteed.

In the December issue of Global Cosmetic Industry magazine, Alisa Marie Beyer has a piece called “The Claim Game” about these bold beauty claims, and how crafting a compelling claim can mean the difference between a bestselling beauty product and a flop.

“Generally speaking…claims fall into two categories: emotional (for example, painful acne blemishes will disappear in two days) and numerical (such as, 97% of women saw smoother skin in two days).
– Alisa Marie Beyer, “The Claim Game”, Global Cosmetic Industry, December 2010

The magazine is a trade publication, and Alisa’s audience is mostly made up of cosmetics company executives. It got me thinking about beauty claims and how important it is for consumers to know what goes into the marketing, and how it pays to take every claim with a grain of salt.

The big companies study the psychology behind our purchase decisions. They know that most of us respond positively to seeing big numbers in claims, but they also know that if they make too many big claims, it’ll sound too good to be true.

It reminds me of that episode of Mad Men where they bring the girls who work in the office into a focus group. I can’t remember the product… I think it was Pond’s Cold Cream, and they talk about all sorts of things, like the ritual of taking off your makeup at night, and the hopes and dreams of the girls in the room — all to better target the advertising.

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When the Dior Holiday 2010 Collection finally arrived at stores in Sweden, of course I was first in line. I got the the Dior Addict Ultra-Gloss Flash in the shade Black-Tie Plum 982, one of four glosses of its kind in the collection. Two of them are completely new colors, but the two others, Black-Tie Plum 982 being one of them, are repromotes.

This season has been all about darker plummy lip shades, and this particular lip gloss is not for the faint of heart. You can wear it lightly as a stain, but that can be difficult with the included brush.

The color reminds me of plums, red wine and, in certain lightning, even purple ink! It has a little red shimmer in it, too.

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I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours. Every so often I’m asked about my skin care routine, and because I make little adjustments to it all the time, I thought I’d share the process and products I’m using now.

Heya Milkmaid21!

(Love your Twitter handle, BTW)

Although I try new skin care products and techniques all the time, I find myself returning to many of the same core products and tactics over and over again, especially when my combination dry/oily/acne-prone skin goes ballistic.

My Skin Care Routine: The Abridged Version

In the morning…

• Philosophy Purity Made Simple
• Clinique Mild Clarifying Lotion
• Korres Quercetin & Oak Eye Cream
• Clarins HydraQuench Cream or Clarins HydraQuench Cream SPF 15
• MAC Strobe Cream
• Smashbox Photo Op Under Eye Brightener
• Laura Mercier Oil-Free Foundation
• MAC Pro Longwear Concealer
• MAC Prep + Prime Powder
• MAC Blot

In the evening…

• Philosophy Purity Made Simple
• Clinique Mild Clarifying Lotion
• Clinique Even Better Dark Spot Corrector
• Korres Quercetin & Oak Eye Cream
• Clarins HydraQuench Cream

Then, one or two nights a week…

• I’ll use the Clarisonic MIA
• Retin A (on the days I use it, I’ll skip using both the Mild Clarifying Lotion and the Even Better Dark Spot Corrector; for more on this, see Your Skin Care Cheat Sheet: Retinols and Retinoids)

My Skin Care Routine: The Unabridged Version

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Blackheads. Most people with even remotely oily skin have ‘em, and everybody hates the little buggers. These spots ain’t cute like freckles; they’re dark, glaring pools of pure, undistilled evil.

First off, just what are these nasty specks? Now, I’m no chemist (I skipped Chemistry in school… Physics-boy, here), but from what I understand, blackheads are whiteheads without a layer of skin over them. Both are a collection of sebum and dead skin cells within the duct of a sebaceous gland, and, to put it mildly, they’re really gross…

Both start out whitish in color, but whiteheads stay white because they have a layer of skin over them, which is also why they swell. Blackheads do not. The layer of skin over whiteheads allows the duct to act as a breeding ground for bacteria. Blackheads, on the other hand, open to the air, quickly oxidize and appear black. Incidentally, oxidation is also the reason why metals rust.

Lovely, no?

Whiteheads are the reason why I’ve been on varying acne medications for the past three years. Duac, Tetracycline, Doxycline, Differin, Monocycline, Retin-A… You name it, and I’ve probably been on some form of it at one point or another. The problem is that none of them seemed to have much effect. They just either dried out my skin or made it extremely red, without much reduction in the amount of acne I actually had. My dermatologist finally put me on a combination of Epiduo and Soladyn, which is my current regiment, and these two, along with my wondrous Clarisonic, have cleared up my skin something fierce.

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