Kate Can't Wink...

(neither can I)

Like a kid in a sweetshop

It feels like I’ve been waiting FOREVER for Topshops (badly kept) secret line of slap to come out but the three main ‘need to know’ points are: It’s finally hit the shops this week, it’s hyper affordable (starting at around £4 and hitting £10 for its most expensive piece) and the packaging is AMAZING!





I mean – LOOK!




It’s a colourful, spirited collection of fashion brights, in luxxy professional finishes.
Because, if like me, you’re old enough to remember Topshop’s first ‘attempt’ at makeup in the mid nineties – before it became the Topshop it is today - then you may have had reservations. Will it be a jumble sale of talc-y eye shadows, few shades of waxy lipsticks and horrific gloopy foundation?

Put all that to one side, this time around, they’ve thrown everything at it and ‘completely started from scratch’, according to Topshop Managing Director, Mary Homer.
Shades like The Big Smoke – a putty-coloured nail polish, not dissimilar to Chanel’s sell-out Particuliere, and Thistle – a pretty purple kohl pencil, are inspired by fashion, not makeup trends. And whilst the makeup finish on all products is professional standard, there’s not a huge focus on foundations and bases. Skin Tint, a second-skin tinted moisturiser and Skin Glow, a face brightener (I’d mix the two products together for a dewy, glossy base) are the only bases in the range. ‘We want girls to look real and their makeup to look lived-in,’ says makeup artist Hannah Murray. ‘There are no rules anymore. We would expect and encourage our customers to play and experiment with this range, and make it their own.’ And I can see Topshop’s core customer doing that with this range, especially over the festival season; a little lip gloss on the eyelids, cream blush and glitter on lips. Yep.

Lizzie Dawson (Topshop’s key designer) travelled from Paris to Tokyo to research how girls get ready for festivals. ‘Usually you’ve got to go to specialist shops to find the kind of makeup girls wear at festivals, like glitter, face art crayons and false lashes for starters. We wanted to offer fun, adventurous products on the high street at an affordable price,’ she adds. I wanted to use a picture to illustrate the undone & polished grunge look at work, and could think of anything better than the Topshop Unique fashion show, where Murray created a ‘woodland Brownies’: Skin Tint to warm skin, Tint on cheeks for a weathered effect, and applied gold paint on the inner corner of the eye and down the bridge of the nose, according to WWD

I love LOVE....

...Hell, I love any high end glossy, always have & always will, but something stuck in my throat when I read Katie Grand’s sell in with regards to the current edition:

“[W]e took eight women who are generally acknowledged as the most beautiful in the world, got them to show off their bodies — widely regarded as the most perfect in the world — and photographed them all in exactly the same position for the cover. We did this to show how much they differed physically from one another, which is why we also printed their measurements.

“The point is that ‘perfection’ is not fixed, timeless or transcendent. It varies, as the measurements of our cover girls show.”

Katie, I GET it, fashion editorial is for extraordinarily proportioned woman; tall women tiny of hips, waist & thigh.



Don’t pretend to me that by printing measurements alongside each of them on eight limited edition covers you're in any way presenting ‘diversity’ when the measurements differ by an inch or two here and there.*


The piece is beautiful to look at, of course; we’re looking at supermodels sans clothes(gratitiously. and let me be clear that its not the nakedness I'm throwing strop at, if you want to have a 'is it fashion though' debate, we can get to that some other time...). But it’s not an ‘idea’, its hype and it’s not celebrating diversity, it’s gawking at supermodels.. Plain as.


*to illustrate Pennyluxe has created this layered image. Yup... these ladies are super diverse in body shape...

Sonar Playlist...

One of my very best birthday presents this year was SONAR FESTIVAL TICKETS from my lovely boyfriend.

Given that our household computer has given up the ghost this weekend, and my strict work laptop says a firm NO to anything that would in any way transport aurel treats from the interweb onto my ipod. (yup - no spotify playlists, no itunes) I'm mostly compling 'mixtapes' via the medium of youtube until further notice.

Whinge-y intro over; Sleigh Bells will definately be making an appearence on said list. How amazing is this, please??