Trends

Celebs like January Jones have let spring’s bright colors go to their heads, and now you can too! Certain salons are now offering color bars, where you can get a temporary flash of color added to your hair via hair chalking or colored clip-in extensions. The best part? There’s no commitment.

I recently got to check out The Color Pop Bar at The Private Room in Beverly Hills, Calif., where they use non-toxic 100% pure pastels from France “to ensure vibrancy and optimal coverage.”

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Just got a tip from green celebrity nail stylist Jenna Hipp that she used HIPPxRGB Nail Foundation F2 topped with Nail Tint T1 on the lovely Scarlett Johansson at The Avengers premiere this week. (See “More” for a photo of Scarlett’s nails.) The result? A perfectly matched nude polish.

If you’re as deeply in love with nude nail polish as I am, this is amazing because it’s often really hard to find a nude polish that matches your skin tone. This is also why I’m obsessed with the HIPPxRGB collection. It’s the first line of skin-tone specific, full coverage, all nude nail color, conceived with the idea that nude polish should match your nails—kind of like foundation or tinted moisturizer matches your face. (more…)

Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics. I was bound to get it someday. After getting my first taste of their amazingly addictive Lip Tars in celebrity makeup artist Kristie Streicher‘s chair this week, I instantly got some retail therapy. (Ahhhh.) Now, I’m considering buying the whole collection. (Um, does anyone have $300?)

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I can’t wait to book my next mani-pedi with the new early spring 2012 Jet Set resort collection from Le Métier de Beauté. The 3-Free nail colors (ShocKEN Pink, Not So Safe Orange and Yield to Yellow) are hot, hot, hot!

Curated by Neiman Marcus Fashion Director Ken Downing, the collection features creamy, highly pigmented primary colors and bold neons that will go almost anywhere — and with anything. While trips to Bora Bora and Miami seem to have inspired the color palette, the 80-degree January weather in L.A. seems fitting. (I know, I’m bragging … but I can so see them with snow, too! What do you think?)

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Last week, I stopped by the L.A. press event for the launch of ULINX, a new jewelry line that lets you create your own jewelry using powerful magnetic pieces. As I noshed on cupcakes and cake pops from Sweet E’s Bakery (yum!) and sipped a Svedka vodka tonic, I got the lowdown on how to create my very own ULINX masterpiece out of LINX, aka tiny silver-plated neodymium magnetic spheres, and CLIX, modular magnetic pieces that look like printed rectangles and doughnut-shaped circles.

Sound like a science project? Yes, especially when you find yourself fighting with the positive and negative poles of the magnets. But really, it’s more like a space-age arts and crafts project.

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Last night, I stopped by Kiehl’s unveiling of its environmental partnership with Golden Globe winners Michael C. Hall (“Dexter”) and Chloë Sevigny (“Big Love”) in support of the Waterkeeper Alliance, an organization dedicated to preserving and protecting water from polluters. As I’m someone who loves to hang out in the ocean and observe marine life off the coast of California, this is an issue that hits close to home, especially with the abundance of waste, plastic bags, oil pollution and nuclear disaster coverage that have unfortunately become part of our lives. But it’s not just the ocean that needs our attention, it’s the rivers, lakes, streams, even groundwater, that affect us and our health on a daily basis.

To show its support, Kiehl’s USA President Chris Salgardo presented the Waterkeeper Alliance with a giant check for $100,000 at Kiehl’s beautiful Santa Monica store while Sevigny, Hall and Santa Monica Baykeeper/Executive Liz Crosson look on smiling. Chloë’s brother, Paul Sevigny, DJ’d the event while guests sipped on cocktails and checked out stacks of Kiehl’s Rare Earth Deep Pore Cleansing Masque, featuring limited-edition label art designed by Sevigny and Hall (see Sevigny’s, left). One-hundred percent of the collection’s proceeds go to the Waterkeeper Alliance.

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One of my favorite things to do is “favorite-ing.”  I like ‘favorite-ing” blog posts, articles I read, websites…my Mozilla Favorites tab is an unorganized mess of links that I’ve saved to read later (like this week’s 25,000 word New Yorker piece of Scientology…I’m getting to it, I swear), to return to, and to recommend to friends.  I also like “favorite-ing” pictures, but I never found a good way to do it, apart from painstakingly right-clicking and saving the “liked” picture onto my computer.

Naturally, in this internet age, there is a solution to my oh-so-painful dilemma: Pinterest, an online bulletin board network, where you can share and re-pin your favorite pictures.  Pictures can be “pinned” onto Pinterest from other blog links or you can upload your own directly.  Text is light, with only a caption option, but this is a great digital way to organize and make online mood boards.  You can create any number of boards at a time, with theme ideas like “Favorite Places and Spaces”, “Home Inspiration”, and “Kitchen Adventures.”  You can browse and follow other member’s boards, to see what they’ve “pinned.”

You can browse the range of individual pictures on Pinterest in individual subjects such as Fashion, Art+Design, Food+Drink, Design, Travel, Prints and many others.  I’ve been able to find a ton of things that I’ve been visually obsessed with, such as David Yurman advertisements, pictures of old 1930′s Shanghai for mood inspiration, old Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn photos, Arthur Lindbergh photography, and some lustful travel daydreaming.  This is a great site for anyone planning a wedding, since they have an easy way to collate any of the images they’re currently feeling.  Pinterest is a members-only site, but similar to Gilt Group and other sites of that nature, you can get an invitation from an already existing member.  I love logging on during lunch and seeing what the newest “pins” of the day are.

Check out Pinterest and let me know if you like it!  And if any of you have an interest in looking at pictures of cuddly puppies, bunnies, or kittens, you can find me and my ‘Awww cuteness’  board on Pinterest.

Another holiday, another panic attack: What on earth is there left to get for the man in your life? Well, a good home-cooked meal should work, but if that’s not your idea of a special gift, I suggest you say “I love you” with:

… a Hot Shave
I recently got the chance to check out Alexander’s for Hair, a mid-range, family-owned, all-in-one spa and salon in west L.A., and I thought, “What a great place to take my [insert any family member here]!” Formerly the male-targeted Reeder’s Barber Shop, complete with beers and flatscreen TVs, Alexander’s for Hair has undergone a recent makeover to suit its growing clientele base, offering more services for both men and women as well as eco-friendly hair products by Eufora and high-quality GRAM skincare by Dr. Bernard Gramlich (you should see his skin!). Helmed by new owner Krissy Smith and her mom Jeanne Phares, the salon has both a small-town feel and a cosmopolitan flair — perfect for those who want luxurious treatment but find super-high-end salons and spas either intimidating or just not worth the extra dough. Best of all, while you’re loved one is getting his Signature MVP Hot Shave, you can indulge in a Eufora Deep Conditioning and Scalp Treatment (free this month with any color service), a fantastic facial, a mani-pedi or a delightful (and affordable) deep-tissue massage (ask for Barbara!). Ah, the perks of co-ed bliss.

Alexander’s for Hair is located at 11515 W. Pico Blvd. in Los Angeles. Call (310) 473-0462 to make an appointment. Readers, mention the code AFHGO through February and you’ll get 30 percent off your service!

… Custom Kicks
If the love (or like) of your life is a label-savvy jet setter who frequently blends street style and upscale threads (or just likes any of the aforementioned), he’ll appreciate the new G3 collection by Ryz, the brainchild of former president of Adidas America and Adidas Japan Rob Langstaff. (more…)

So, after all those holiday cookies and hangovers, CLEANSE and DETOX appear to be the buzz words of the month. (And judging by the fact that two local Borders stores were sold out of Dr. Alex Junger’s “Clean” book, I think all of L.A. has jumped on the bandwagon.) Prompted by my curious husband (who despite feeling sluggish after the new year was suspicious of the detox trend), I enlisted us in a cleansing experiment: 5 days of raw-food-eating and 2 days of Lori C. Kenyon and Marra O. St. Clair’s Ritual Cleanse — an Irvine, Calif.-based juice cleansing program designed to “reset” the body.

Now, I know, some people do “Beyonce’s maple syrup diet” for well over a week, and many follow Dr. Junger’s advice (endorsed by Gwyneth Paltrow) for at least three weeks, but honestly, feeling faint, weak, mucus-y and stuck with a headache is not my idea of a good time … no matter how skinny, light or euphoric I’m supposed to feel. One week of abstaining from all the things I love about food — caffeine, all meat, refined sugar, dairy, alcohol, soy, wheat, gluten — was about all I could stomach. That’s why I chose this route. With raw food, we got to eat a bunch of vegetables and feel full; and with Ritual Cleanse, we didn’t have to prepare meals (vegetables are time-consuming!) and worry whether we did so correctly.
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Last week, I thought, it’s almost midnight, I’m wide awake and I have nothing to do. Why not go crash a swim party?!? So a friend and I drove over to a rented mansion in L.A.’s Hancock Park district and indulged in Havaianas’ third Midnight Swim Club, filled with good-looking people and celebs like Jack Osbourne, Devon Aoki, Mekhi Phifer and more. (In the past, Kevin Connolly, Nicky Hilton, Elijah Wood, Shenae Grimes and David Arquette have been spotted.) We oohed and aahed the hanging Havaianas sandals, the bedazzle-your-sandal tent, the make-your-own-photo-book tent and, of course, the bar while gazing at a table full of Crumbs cupcakes.

The Cobra Snake shot gawkers (these are his photos you see) as people debated whether or not to go into the pool (For most people, the answer was no since it was dominated by Havaianas models in teeny swimsuits). But we spotted several brave souls and at least one skinny dipper as we grooved to the DJ’s sounds of everything from Axel F to Jay-Z. This got me thinking, if you and/or your building have a heated pool, or even just a hot tub, why not throw your own pool party … at night? A novel idea. And the perfect excuse to show off my favorite swimsuits of the season … in your best Havaianas flip-flops of course.

Don’t have a pair yet? Score a limited-edition pair by throwing your own Midnight Swim Party and post pictures of it to your Facebook or Twitter account (tag #midnightswimclub). Every week, Havaianas will award the best pool party picture with special Midnight Swim Club Havaianas.