In Spades

Style... in abundance

2018 Holiday Gift Guide Beauty

1. Oribe mousse + hairspray – I’ve been using Oribe products for years, but didn’t try their mousse until this year.  Hello, game changer.  Paired with the best workable hairspray on the market, your mane will look voluminous and G-L-O-R-I-O-U-S.

2. Oil pulling kit – if you haven’t tried oil pulling, I highly recommend it.  Not only does it rid the body of toxins, but it promotes gum and dental health like you wouldn’t believe.  It naturally makes teeth whiter too – no chemicals!

3. Goop moisturizer set – after going through moisturizers for the last 4 years and not finding one I love, I hit the jackpot with these.  The daytime revitalizing moisturizer and the repairing nighttime moisturizer are the bomb.

4. Dry brushing kit – like oil pulling but for your skin, this kit promotes circulation, cell turnover and reduces cellulite.

5. Francisco Nars beauty book – I love a good coffee table book and this one is visually stunning and has fabulous behind the scenes anecdotes from the man himself.

6. Skin enhancer – hands down the best beauty product I own.  I use it as a concealer, but it can also be used as foundation or highlighter.

7. Le Labo perfume – my signature scent.  Every time I wear it people always ask what it is.  A close second is this one, also by Le Labo.  These fragrances aren’t mixed until you order them to ensure optimum freshness and they LAST.

8. Invigorating mint body lotion – my daily body lotion, it leaves me feeling refreshed and ready to start the day thanks to the intoxicating mint scent.

9. Eye polish + eyeshadow palette – when I do a smokey eye, this is my combo.  Everyone thinks I have professional blending abilities, but it’s truly just the magic of these two products together.  Start with the RMS eye polish as a base, then apply each color in clockwise order from brow to crease.  Instant bombshell.

10. Nail polish kit – I recently starting using this 9-free line of nail polish and am hooked.  The brushes are built to ensure a perfect application every time.

11. Lipstick trio – I’m a lipstick junkie and these 3 shades are best sellers, leave your lips hydrated and smell divine.  Yay for green beauty that’s richly pigmented!

Shop the Post

2017 Holiday Gift Guide: Beauty

Holiday gift ideas for the beauty lover in your life

Click the images above to shop!

1. Byredo perfume – if you’ve never tried Byredo fragrances, get thee to Nordstrom!  Truly long-lasting and luxurious, Gypsy Water is my favorite with woody notes of sandalwood and vanilla, topped with lemon and pepper for a zesty finish.

2. Hair by Sam McKnight – THE coffee table book for beauty lovers, it’s 296 pages of the most innovative and beautiful hairstyles ever.

3. Cirque nail polish – every gal needs a holiday nail color and this one, slightly infused with glitter, is super flattering for any fête.

4. Makeup brush cleaning set – I wish I would have known about this product sooner!  A non-toxic tool for getting your makeup brushes 100% clean, this set is a must-have.

5. Bath oil collection – perfect for soothing winter skin, these velvety bath oils are made of completely natural, non-harmful ingredients.

6. Glossier 3-piece set – Boy Brow is my favorite brow gel EVER and this 3-piece set allows you to customize your color along with two of their other best selling products, Stretch Concealer and Generation G (try it in my fave, Zip).

7. Glamglow mask – hands down my favorite mask, I use this before special occasions and photoshoots for glowing, flawless skin.

8. Highlighting palette – there is a reason this is the #1 selling blush, bronzing and highlighting palette on the market.  Perfect for any skin tone, the quality is top notch and will last forever.

9. Evo She-bang-a-bang dry wax spray – hands down my favorite styling spray, this creates pliable texture and volume without the stickiness.  With cheeky names like She-bang-a-bang and Water Killer (dry shampoo) you can’t help but love this line.  Right now spend $75 and get 25% off your order!

10. Velvet headband – these were all over the runways at NYFW.  I love how they easily and affordably dress up any outfit for the holidays and beyond, in the chicest of ways.

11. Makeup mirror – every beauty lover needs a good makeup mirror for close-up application and this gold cat-eared one couldn’t be cuter.

12. Lipstick Queen Trio – I received these as a gift with purchase and was blown away by their transformative abilities.  While I thought I was going to have lips the color of a frog, exactly the opposite occurred.  The green lipstick adapts to your skin to create a beautiful pink shade, the blue a red and the yellow a berry!

13. Body scrub – this raw cacao scrub has top reviews, smells amazing and is only $15.

Shop the Post

A Color Story

The first time I covered NYFW I met two boss ladies crushing the organic beauty scene. Sandra Anderson-Diaz and Nadine Cormier founded Nu Evolution cosmetics with a mission to create stylish, richly pigmented makeup free of toxicity. In the years since their inception, they’ve been the go-to line for fashion mavens, handling backstage beauty for several top designers during NYFW and beyond.

Sandra and Nadine taught me that 60% of what you apply topically is absorbed directly into your bloodstream! If you’ve been reading In Spades for a while, you know that using products free of harsh chemicals is very important to me. While I think it’s relatively easy to find great organic skin care, organic make-up is a different story. The few lines that are out there, quite frankly, don’t really work. Think dulled down pigments, barely there coverage and products with zero staying power.

Enter Nu Evolution. While I’ve been a long time fan of their lipstick – they make the most perfect red that looks great on any skin tone – I had yet try the rest of their line. Since my normal makeup routine rarely deviates from rosy blush and nude eye shadow, I wanted to up the ante with colors that really pop.

Inspired by the F/W17 runways, I gravitated towards green and purple. Each color palette makes for a beautiful alternative to your standard smoky eye, plus they look great during the day when used as eyeliner or in a subtle sweep across the crease.

Check out the two looks below plus my review of each product.

Eyeshadow: Soiree and St. Tropez // Eyeliner: Onyx // Lipstick: Allure
Concealer: Fresh // Foundation: 106 // Powder: 301

Eyeshadow: Couture and Socialite // Eyeliner: Chocolate Mousse // Lip gloss: Fig
Concealer: Fresh // Foundation: 106 // Powder: 301

Complete Coverage Foundation
I like to say Nu Evolution’s foundation provides full coverage without making you feel full – no mask look here! Formulated without mineral oil and dimethicone (found in the majority of foundations) you honestly don’t feel like you’re wearing anything at all. It provides a nice buildable base for concealer and powder, and like all of Nu Evolution’s makeup, it works great with water. I like to apply it with a wet Beauty Blender for even coverage.

Camouflage Cream
Whenever I try concealers, they all tout amazing coverage. The truth is that most of them can’t hide some hyperpigmentation that I’ve been dealing with for the past year. This formulation not only hides my dark spots, but it reflects light so well, I honestly couldn’t believe how awake it made me look. I was literally glowing.

The consistency is similar to what you’d find in a foundation stick and provides a moisturizing, dewy finish. If you prefer a matte look, I recommend topping it off with their loose powder.

To give you an idea of how gorgeous the coverage and finish is, the below photo is completely unretouched.  While I never overly retouch my photos, I want you to see the real deal.  No Photoshop here.

Loose Powder
Great for setting your look or using it as a standalone foundation, their powder doesn’t contain any talc, so it’s good for you and feels so light and fluffy when applied. I love that you can dust it on or build it up to achieve a full coverage look.

Eye Shadow
The shining star for me in the Nu Evolution line-up is their eye shadow. With pigment levels that rival and even surpass Nars and Mac, I’m hooked. When I showed them to a makeup artist friend, she couldn’t believe how smooth they went on. “Like a hot knife through butter” were her exact words.

Perhaps my favorite part is that they can be applied wet or dry. I used them not only for eye shadow, but also as eyeliner. I’m wearing Onyx in the purple palette on the upper and lower lids and a combo of Chocolate Mousse (lower) and Socialite (upper) as a beautiful shimmer in the green palette. For a truly vampy look, I’ll apply them wet on my eyelids to really bring out their pigment.

Lipstick
To say I’m obsessed with Nu Evolution lipstick is an understatement. It’s rare for a lipstick to be nourishing and long lasting, but this is the real deal. Applied in the morning it’s still going strong over lunch. Any fading that does occur fades evenly, so you’re not left looking like you applied some aggressive lip liner and forgot to fill in.

Lip Gloss
The little sister of a fantastic product, their gloss isn’t sticky and has rich color and beautiful sheen. For this green palette, I applied Fig and then blotted with a tissue to achieve an effortless stained look.

Favorite Things Giveaway

With Valentine’s Day around the corner, I wanted to share the love by hosting a giveaway of my favorite things. Head over to my Instagram for details on how you can win everything in this photo, including a few extra surprises!  From my daily beauty essentials, to the best everyday accessories, this is definitely one you won’t want to miss.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Gift Guide: For the Beauty Guru

Today’s gift guide is a special one because every product on the list is one I swear by and have personally seen amazing results from.  Read below for why they’re my favorites.  You can shop the guide three ways: by clicking the product images above, the links in the descriptions below, or within the slideshow at the bottom of the post.

  1. Cane + Austin Miracle Pads – comprised of glycolic acid, you wipe these pads across clean skin to exfoliate and build collagen.  I noticed results after just one use – reduction of dark spots and wrinkles, overall even tone – and almost missed a flight once because I was out and couldn’t bear a weeklong trip without them.  They’re that good.
  2. Foreo Luna Mini 2 gift set – this facial cleansing brush uses T-sonic pulsations to deeply cleanse and exfoliate the skin.  I use it each night to take the day’s makeup off and have found no equal when it comes to truly cleaning my skin.
  3. Diptyque gift set – this set is a great departure from the norm, offering more robust scents like my all-time favorite Feu de Bois (smells like a crackling fire).
  4. Lorac Pro eye palette – every color you’ll ever need from an everyday look to a smoky eye is included in this richly pigmented palette.
  5. Sunday Riley Good Genes serum – the third weapon in my trifecta of good skin (along with the Foreo and Cane + Austin pads) is this serum.  Its powerful lactic acid treatment is the closest thing you’ll find to making your skin look like Cate Blanchett’s – luminous and otherworldly.
  6. Nu Evolution lipstick in Femme Fatale – every woman searches for the perfect red lipstick and I can proclaim the quest over with this shade.  It truly looks amazing on any skin tone and comes from the cleanest, greenest cosmetics line on the market.
  7. R + Co. dry shampoo – nothing smells or works better than this miracle dry shampoo.  No powdery, flaky mess or residue. It zaps oils quickly and gives your hair amazing volume.
  8. Rudolph Skincare gift set – I’ve written about this amazing skincare line out of Denmark before (even Helena Christensen swears by it).  This set of their four best selling organic skincare products is a steal and ships free for the month of December.
  9. Sigma Beauty brush set – one of the best valued brush sets on the market, these brushes are super soft and durable.  You’ll own them forever.
  10. Maison Margiela Replica fragrance in Jazz Club – I’m in love with all of the Replica fragrances, but Jazz Club is the perfect sexy, winter scent.  Not heady or overpowering, it makes me think of chic parties in NYC during the Sammy Davis Jr. era.
  11. Benefit Gimme Brow Gel – three words: quick, easy, effective.  It takes 3 seconds to apply, is foolproof and makes your brows look like Brook Shields during her heyday.
  12. Smashbox lipstick set – every color in this lush lipstick set is wearable (even the vivid lavender) and comes with a mattifying gel should you want to change the creamy look to something more editorial.
  13. Making Faces by Kevyn Aucoin – the holy grail of makeup application, this book covers every look you could ever want to recreate with easy steps, tips and amazingly beautiful photos for inspiration.
  14. Beauty Protector Protect & Detangle Spray – I’ve tried a million different detanglers and leave-in conditioners and this one wins, hands down.  I believe the secret is in the consistency – it’s more of a silky gel than a liquid, yet comes out in a super fine spray to strengthen follicles and make for the smoothest comb-through post-shower.

Shop the Beauty Gift Guide