Angelina

She no longer wears vials of blood around her neck and her image has dramatically changed from the wild days of Billy Bob. Still, I remember raising an eyebrow in late 2005 when St. John revealed her as the new face of the brand.

Most of the ads (and even the clothes) weren't so bad or too much in contrast with everything we know of Angelina Jolie. I like the ones above, because they don't take away or try to change who she is. But this last one (below) is a bit too Laura Bush to swallow.

(photos courtesy of TombRaiderChronicles)

"Do you like my lips?"

It looks like Chanel executives have made an important discovery: People who like soft porn are most likely to purchase luxury lip color.

That's the only way I was able to explain this:



I don't find this offensive. Just very silly.

Go Figure

The other day I was looking through my makeup stash and found an Elizabeth Arden lipstick I got as a GWP from StrawberryNet. It was still in it's original packaging and I've never even looked at the color. Upon opening it, I discovered a really nice muted red. It has a bit of a brownish undertone, along the lines of Lancome's (old) Sugared Maple or Dior Addict Digital Brown. It's Exceptional Lipstick number 38, aptly named Beauty and it works for me as a daytime red.

Like most long-wearing lipsticks, I found its texture to be a bit dry. It requires a balm underneath and a gloss on top to feel really comfortable. Besame's red berry lip glaze gave it the nice shine that I was looking for. All in all, not bad for something I forgot I had.

Speaking of Elizabeth Arden, am I the only one raising an eyebrow at their ad for the new Intervene moisturizer and lotion? I saw it on page 13 of February Lucky magazine. It features Catherine Zeta Jones who has been photoshopped within an inch of her life, to the point that she's barely recognizable. Good thing that her name appears on the ad, so we can be sure that it's actually her. But it's not just Catherine Z's face. Apparently, she's now sprouting Keira Knightly's stick figure arms. Only problem is that the torso is still hers and the proportions are slightly off.

How Not to Sell Clothes

I know that I'm not the only one who found the Marc Jacobs ads featuring Meg White as a corpse lying on dirt in the middle of nowhere, to be in very poor taste. It seemed to me as a part of another wave of designers' mysogeny- Louis Vuitton and a few others also featured dead or zombie-like looking models, in scenes that reminded me of Buffy the Vampire Slayer digging her way out of the grave (sixth season, first episode).

I just leafed through Men's Vogue, where I found another Marc Jacobs ad. This one features the man who killed Meg. Wearing a denim trench coat, his face filthy, a crazy look in his eyes, his hand clutching the coat's buckle but it might as well be a knife. Or a gun. Or his penis. Welcome to Jack the Ripper's world. Apparently he wears Marc Jacobs.