By Chrissy Iley
The NARS shop on Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles, is the perfect pick me up and a mood shifter. It’s better than chocolate or a martini. It doesn’t involved guilt or calories, only a natural high.
Everybody there is a fantastic make-up artist and while they are transforming you they give you a lesson. They don’t sell you stuff until you’ve learnt how to make it work. Unfortunately for finances they make everything work.
I now have a new blush/bronzer palette called Adult Content. NARS tend to name their cheek accessories after sexual events or positions such Orgasm and G-Spot.
Adult Content provides the shimmery glow you’d expect. Because I’m so bad at applying blush I have a new brush after the make-up artists persuaded me, ‘You’re only as good as your tools.’
I also have two new eye pencils, both black. One to smudge and blend with eye colour, the other a non-smudge for inside the eye. I could have also had a third, a brown one, for inside the bottom of the eye.
The lesson of how to apply the inside the eye pencil took 45 minutes and much hilarity and references to a former life where I must have had my eyes gouged before I was burnt at the stake.
I know I’ll never be able to do it as well as Alison or Priscilla but it’s always good to learn something new.
I wonder who the person is at NARS who comes up with names. I almost bought a lip gloss in pink because it was called Chihuahua – lipsticks tend to have a dog theme whereas eyes may take their inspiration from Brigitte Bardot or Andy Warhol. Who on the other hand could resist an eye palette of purples and lavenders called Fairy’s Kiss.
I wonder is it a team of people that discuss these names or just one screaming genius who baptises the colours as they are created.