Category: natural

Sleepwear fashion shouldn’t be a snooze!

~ Emmie ~ Leave a comment

So winter is upon us and well, after a few years of lockdown, I feel home clothes and pajamas can no longer be sloppy, ugly or unthoughtful. Wearing sweatpants and baggy t-shirts for home and sleep feels almost like a post-traumatic stress uniform. I don’t want to be reminded of the veggie like state that the quarantine had imposed on the world, and the void it put on fashion over the last few years. Isolation had made people unfit and uncaring about looking gorgeous, whether going out or staying home. Nobody cared about image, and it hurt the beauty and fashion industry for a long time.

Fleece jogger pants are softer that sweatpants and much more attractive too!

So now comes the overcorrection; I find myself dying to look amazing even if it’s my day off and I am doing house chores at home. I ask myself why can’t I look cute for that? For answering work emails at home, or for working on social media content online? Wouldn’t it be more honest for me as a beauty professional to look good at home in real time while promoting my services online in the digital world? But on this same note, I don’t think I will be comfortable dressed to the nines at home while doing dishes and taking out the garbage. I can’t be decked in pearls when it’s evening and I want to sit in front of the tv. with a bowl of noodle soup and watch a scary movie. So, what to do?

How do I fix the gap between the stylishness of my outside/work wardrobe versus my home wardrobe? Time to do some shopping and revaluate what makes certain clothing functional and stylish for use at when being cozy at home is the mood:

This is a really comfy and cute set. It almost looks like a romper! but it is a two piece made of a cotton waffle material. The print cheers up the deep green.

Stylish Lounge or Pajama Wear Musts:

  1. Be comfortable. Part of the main function of pjs and homewear is comfort. While at home, the formalities of the work world are far away, loose and boxy cuts can be embraced. But go too oversized and it’s sloppy. There is a fine line between relaxed and just plain messy. Focus on soft fabrics with stretch, breathable cotton and flannel. Imagine a cloud and how to dress if living on one!
  2. Colour: I am not a fan of black for lounge wear. It seems depressing and can look sloppy, because it’s the colour that hides all stains. I like light colours because they are uplifting and remind me of sunny days. They also look fresh and clean and put together.
  3. For the boyish styles: I find lounge wear can be very unisex. Boxer shorts on girls, show off long legs, and waffle henley tees that are fitted show off feminine curves in a rustic, earthy way. It’s a no frills pretty.
  4. For the girly: Sleep dresses come in all styles, lengths and materials. The most casual would be a strappy tank dress style. But for more oh la la, add some lace and satin to the mix. I own a lot of satin/silk camis and find they are so girly while remaining a realistically functional item for sleep and loungewear layering
  5. Stick to the basics: soft leggings, fitted t shirts, body suits, tank tops… if it looks like something American Apparel made, it’ll probably do the job.
The softest leggings and warm socks keep the drafts away! A lace cami is feminine.

Is there any loungewear articles or musts that I have forgotten? Let me know in the comments below and stay cozy and gorgeous at home!

Making the Contoured Face Trend look fresh, not chiseled:

~ Emmie ~ 1 Comment

The contouring makeup trend is upon us, and has been for a while…the only thing is the aesthetic is rather angular, high impact and not soft or natural. For those unfamiliar with the trend, contouring is a foundation application that uses different shades of foundation on the face to create low lights and highlights blended together to give an illusion of depth and dimension. It’s a visual trick. Light surfaces move forward and dark surfaces recede back. It’s actually an illusion to create, the appearance of high cheekbones, an eyelid crease or skinnier cheeks…

My problem with contouring is that it looks painted, unnatural and is based on fooling the beholder, instead of accentuating the natural beauty one’s face already has. It is about following the beauty standards that pointier noses are prettier, or shallow cheeks are better, and that roundness is not. Rounded features I find are youthful, cute and joyful. These features can be desirable things…

I have stayed away from the contouring trend thus long, only recently adopting a more modified version of contouring. No bronzer, and no high contrast lines that need blending. Just airy bliss. I started using a highlighter to make my face glow a bit more, to look more awake and to accentuate what I already have. For me, this is the perfect compromise…looking bright-eyed and bushy tailed, but not overly harsh or made up.

How I use highlighting daily:

  1. After moisturizing, I apply my favourite foundation. These days I’m loving the Revlon Photo Ready Color Stay foundation with an spf of 20. It gives me added protection from UV rays, while still giving me a creamy, barely there coverage..
  2. Here’s where it gets fun. Add in a highlighting pen, crayon or cream. Any brand will do as long as it is lighter in shade to your real skin tone. There needs to be a reasonable difference in shade between the highlighter and foundation. Too light and it looks unnatural, but too close and it looks like nothing…

    As I mentioned in the steps the best places to highlight: the nose bridge, the forehead, the corner of the eyes, the bags under the eyes, and the cheekbones. Oh, also the cupid’s bow on top of the lips.
  3. I gently draw the lighter color onto my face. Must hit areas: the cheek bones, the crease at the bottom of any eye puffiness, the corner of the eyes, a small triangle on the forehead, the ridge of the nose, my cupids’ bow above my lips, and last but not least a round spot on my chin.
  4. The magic happens when I blend the makeup shades by dabbing a blending sponge on the edges of the highlighted spaces to create a blurred effect. Once all blended, I dust lightly with ;face powder to set and all looks beautiful!
  5. I then apply my eye makeup as usual and end with 2 generous coats of my current favorite mascara…

I feel this leaves me with a dewy, flawless glow on my face that just looks natural as if I was born with it…and not trying to fool the onlooker. Because at the end of the day, makeup is supposed to make me look better, but not like somebody else.

The finished product. Don’t I look alive but not too chiseled? That’s what we want!

Preventing wrinkles: it can be as simple as your expressions!

~ Emmie ~ Leave a comment

When I was a young art school student, studying Fine Arts and Theory at the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, I was always inspired by my professors. They were so accomplished, talented and brilliant. Intellectually strong and academically enriching able to carry on discourse deeply, engagingly. One of my professors that I really liked was a cerebral Art seminar instructor who was heavy with her ideas. She often dawned very politically charged, raw topics, and presented them to her students with a lot of open minded energy. She also re-affirmed and validated my artistic ambitions, whether in positive critiques of my essays or in actual pieces. And that’s why I adored her. But one thing I noticed about her was how when she was deep in analytical thought, she would furrow her eyebrows so deeply, they had a permanent wrinkle on her forehead. She was a handsome woman who didn’t seem to care about superficial beauty, but was after what her mind could embody and the intellectual beauty of that. I could respect that, and still do.

But I work in the fashion industy, and also have my own cosmetics line, dream e beauty, so I know that physically aesthetic beauty is valuable too. I will never teach Art at a University level, but I will have to represent daily, my more tangible skills…and that is…avoiding wrinkles by not emoting too much. It’s sad, isn’t it? That deep thinking, stress, and expressing emotions like joy, anger and fear, can cause wrinkles–but it can. When we pose our faces in certain expressions everyday, we are training our skin to crease in the same areas, and like a piece of paper, we will crease, especially as we age and our skin gets less elastic and less supple.

Is there a solution to preventing this? My advice is to be aware of when we are making certain expressions that will cause wrinkling. For example, when I get excited, suprised or angry, I often lift and furrow my eyebrows, causing my forehead skin to wrinkle. And I noticed over time, that these wrinkles are starting to stay. I use my anti-wrinkle antioxidant balm every night on my forehead to increase the skin suppleness there, but another guard is to just stop making expressions that cause wrinkles. And here’s the hard part…I have to make myself aware of which expressions, and facial muscles make these creases, and stop doing them. So hard…especially since they are natural reactions to my life and my world.

Which brings me to what a wise friend once told me. To stay young and creaseless, one cannot smile, one cannot frown, one cannot laugh, or worry, or scowl. We have to remain expressionlessand emotionless to maintain flawless unwrinkled skin. And that’s a tall order…are you willing to trade in your human personalities and expressions for the sake of flawless skin? Is being less emotive and human worth it? Maybe, maybe not…but it’s useful to know that some wrinkles can be created, and therefore can also be prevented.

The gamut of expressions a gal might make; looks cute in these manga drawings…but in reality, they could mean a whole bunch of wrinkles after a few years of emoting too fiercely!