Mood Lip Stick is Back!

And it's gotten classy! That's right, I'm talking about the stuff you loved as a child. It came in a tube that looked like any Revlon or L'oreal of the day, but instead of a pleasing peach or perfectly pink when you pulled off the cap, the lipstick shone a waxy green. It went on clear, and supposedly changed to match your mood-think mood ring for your lips. The little catch was that it turned the same shade of bright magenta on most people, the way mood rings had the propensity to change the deep blue signaling "happy" on most fingers.

But now Givenchy has brought back this old favorite, just in time for those of us who loved mood lipstick to have slightly more grown up tastes. It's called Gloss Poetique. Much like mood lipstick, it smoothes on clear, and reacts to the pH of your pout to give you a personalized color matched just for you. Jemma Kid tried the same thing with blush, Cheek ID Colour-Adapt, found at Target. Finally, someone takes the guess work out of finding the hue to match your complexion!

"Fakes are Never in Fashion" -Harper's Bazaar

I own a few faux designer purses. I'm not proud of it, but a small town girl coming to NYC for the first time can't help but be a little dazzled by the deals on Canal Street and the allure of owning a designer knock off for only $5-20!! Who could resist?

My 19 year old self surely couldn't. However, now that I have learned a little more about the world, I know that nothing that cheap comes without a price. The first thing I noticed was the quality. The handles rip off, they wear down quickly, the lining tears out. The next is the sketchy, illegal way you have to obtain them. This didn't totally become clear to me how illegal it really was until the NYPD cracked down on designer impostors a few years ago when it went from fake Louis Vuitton's on every corner to having to follow a strange Asian woman down narrow streets and into back room cubbies to get the goods. I mean, there's a reason that those guys on the street grab their purses and run when the PoPo shows up, and it's not because they don't have the proper permits to sell them. However, the true dangers and social repercussions of buying fakes were only recently exposed to the public.

Call it ignorance is bliss, but the majority of American street shoppers seem happy to buy their fakes without questioning where they come from, or how they can buy them so cheaply. The answer is child labor in other countries. It's how we in the United States obtain many of our inexpensive luxury items, by taking the sight, fingers, and hard labor of children for nearly free. Children make the fakes, and the money gleaned from the sale of fakes often goes to help drug traffickers and terrorists achieve their goals. Not so fun and carefree now is it?

And it's not just the sale of fake designer purses, it's fake anything from bootleg cd's and dvd's to fragrances. Though sold a bargain price tags, the global social ramifications are hardly worth the cheap cost. In addition to endangering children, and innocents in their making, fakes leech money from the already stumbling U.S. economy. Harper's Bazaar posts these striking numbers:

$600 Billion
Estimated annual sales in counterfeit products worldwide

$512 Billion
Global sales lost to counterfeit goods

$250 Billion
Annual loss to American companies from intellectual property theft

$20 Billion
Estimated loss to American companies from counterfeit products

$1 Billion
Estimated annual loss in New York City tax revenues due to counterfeiting

750,000
Number of jobs lost due to intellectual property theft in the United States

10%
Estimated percentage of fakes among all goods produced worldwide every year

Much like illegal downloading has begun to cripple certain aspects of the music industry, buying fashion fakes has real potential to literally cripple children, and further challenge the United States recovery from recession.

I am happy to join Harper's Bazaar in their crusade against fakes, "so cheap they are criminal." Why not save up for the real thing that will last you a whole lot longer and look a whole lot better than the fake anyways? Check out the facts on FakesAreNeverInFashion.com.

Side Ponies Make a Comeback!

I have a little theory that I'm in the process of testing. I like to call it the Side Pony Principle: How to Use the Power of Hair to Conquer the World. It all started about four days ago when I was running late to meet a friend and sweating excessively in my humid NYC apartment. Encouraged my my 80's loving and fashion forward room mate, I pulled my hair into a scrunched up side pony. I had parted my hair deep on the left to the right side, and balled up my hair into a loose little nest on the right side of my head, just below my ear. It kind of went with my tropical outfit, picture a hibiscus tucked behind the ear. It also kind of reminded me of my days of neon, stretch pants and side ponies that I loved. I was sold.

So, I had to go to work later that day, side pony intact, and the response was magnificent. Every single table tipped me over 20%. It could be that the nice summer weather had them in a good mood, or that they felt bad for me working with such a severe sunburn, OR it could be that the side pony had worked some magic on my customers.

Now, here comes trial day two. I pulled out the side pony for another run at my next shift. The money was just too good to be shunning anything that could have been involved in my turn of good luck. This time, minus the sunburn, and with much nastier weather, the tips continued! I even tried purposely being a little rude to a couple tables to see if it was just my improved mood making my tips rise. No change. Solid over 20% tips all around! A male co-worker even told me my hair looked sexy, when normally all he does is shrug and say what up.

Could it be? Is the world finally ready for the side pony to be revived? A few years ago before the resurgence of 80's trends we've been enjoying, and the anything goes recession fashion mentality, a side pony tail would have been mocked and just a slightly crooked hair do. Now, however, the side pony is praised and rewarded with extra money!

I think that now the time is just right for this old favorite to make it's comeback!! I, for one, am pretty excited about it.

Finally it's acceptable to wear jean on jean!

Now, don't get me wrong, I am not condoning a full on denim tuxedo. You know who you are, it is not cute. But I am pretty darn excited that two of my favorite fashion magazines (InStyle and Glamour) have declared this month that it is finally ok to break the denim on top, jeans on the bottom barrier.

I've been rocking this look for a while, my distressed Rocawear jean jacket with my average Gap and G-Unit jeans. And though my friends gently mocked me throughout college, they agreed that though in concept they considered the look wrong I managed to pull it off. Or at least that's what they told me because I insisted on wearing it anyways.

But now I have two valued sources of fashion wisdom to back me up! This is still a high risk area for those who are not fashion savvy. However, the general rule is to mix up your denim. Don't go same rinse, same cut top to bottom. Mix boyfriend jeans with a cropped jacket, darks with faded. Wear jean on jean to your hearts content. I know I will be!

The Disney Vault

Ever get a craving to see The Little Maid, or the less popular the Lady and the Tramp? Own a copy?

Well if you answered Yes of course! and then No!, then you are totally screwed. Too bad if you want to watch a Disney Classic. Thanks to the kind folks at disney who want to keep the value of their movies high, you can't just run out and buy your favorite animated oldie when the feeling strikes.

The disney vault is a cruel invention in which only one to two classic Disney films such as The Jungle Book, the Lady and the Tramp, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, basically any happy title from your childhood are available to buy at one time. And thanks to the dying art of the VHS cassette tape, they can't be found in just any rental shop. The rest are locked up tight unless you can find one on ebay, borrow a copy from a friend, or want to wait 2-5 years for it to pop randomly out of hiding. My advice is to start buying up the movies whenever a new one is released from the vault for a little while, just so you have it when the urge strikes to see a pretty pretty princess with butterflies flitting around her head hits. But this may be exactly what Disney wants.

Lip Stains are No Joke

During my latest run of impulse buying, I purchased a tube of Cover Girl Outlast Lip Stain. Now, I admit, I am extremely susceptible to advertisements, and after seeing about 28,000 commercials in which Drew Barrymore flaunts her lusciously pink lips with color that never fades during today's Burn Notice marathon I was sold. I had to have it. Maybe it was because I just found out that Drew went to Bonnaroo, which ups her cool points and credibility in my book, or maybe it was the promise of a perfect pout for hours and hours at the beach that won't rub off on the coors lights that I plan on pounding this holiday weekend.

So, during the next commercial break, rather than watching yet another round of Drew flouncing around talking about how great it was I decided to run out to CVS, buy a tube, and try it out for myself. As an added bonus, with my purchase I won $2 in ExtraCare bucks for my next purchase. I guess that's what that little red card on my key chain is for after all.

After much debate about which shade to choose, I rejected Wild Berry Wink and Plum Pout, and settled on a tube that was a pleasing pinkish orange. I rushed home, so as not to miss a minute of the last episode in the marathon, and tore open the plastic packaging like a kid on Christmas, absolutely dying to see if it lived up to my expectations.

Well, this little lip stain, which, true to Cover Girl's claims is nothing like lipstick looks like a tiny magic marker. It smells a little better, but the application process is much the same as coloring within the lines. And the color is bright, vivid and apparently permanent. When they called it a stain, they weren't kidding. I have eaten a slice of pizza, had a few glasses of wine, with not tell tale lip print on the glass I might add, and my lips are still the same shade. The color has not budged a bit, and I'm beginning to think my pout will be Coy Coral forever and ever. I guess I'd better get a tan quick!

Nothing Says Summer like Wine Spritzers!

Of rose wine. Now, all you wine connoisseurs out there will be snubbing your noses and me and cringing, but shun it all you want. Rose wine is refreshing and delicious, though only socially acceptable to drink for a few weeks during June and July. Past that you are just a low class, uneducated white zinfandel drinker. You might as well do a bag stand from a box of Franzia while you're at it.

I have always had a soft spot for the pink wines, often called blush wines because of their lovely hues ranging from a slight cheek flush to bordering on the deep red of its more socially acceptable sisters. It all started with a little boxed wine habit that my roommate and I developed in college. Yet since then, my tastes have evolved. I still enjoy the rose, but in a more mature form. And it turns out that white zinfandel isn't even a real rose, but merely a "bleed" red zinfandel. Real rose wines are made by a careful process involving removal of the grape skins just at the right moment before they can darken the tint to a red.

Recently I had a Malbec Rose, which knocked my socks off, although I can say that about most Spanish wines, especially those from the Rioja region. Right now I am sipping a rose from Provence, and it's not half bad. Slightly sweet, and rolling off the tongue like a seltzer bubble popping off the top of my spritzer. It's these ripened rose picks that are helping the category to lose it's social prohibition, and bring one of my favorite guilty pleasures back into the social norm. Cheers to that!

Solo Squared

As I was perusing my Good Housekeeping magazine this morning, I happened across an ad that could revolutionize drinking games as we know them: the square solo cup!

It looks like the standard red solo cup, has handy gripping indents and holds the standard 20 oz of whatever glorious liquid you choose to pour inside. Yet it is square, the corners are slightly rounded, giving it the shape of a square with little circles on each corner.

How will we play beer pong, or flip cup with this new shape? Will the ball ricochet of a corner? Will the square shape flip upside down with such ease and grace?

Only time will tell, but debuting just in time for the 4th of July weekend, this is the perfect date to try out this tricky new invention!