MAC Makeup

I just can’t say no to MAC’s Pro Longwear Lipcremes! — not even when they’re in colors I don’t normally wear, like the cool-toned shades in the new Daphne Guinness for MAC collection. I feel like this batch caters to cooler skin tones, but that doesn’t mean warmer ones can’t try to make ’em work. 🙂

When MAC introduced these long-wearing lipsticks last fall with the Styledriven collection, I fell in lurve! They were everything I wanted, everything and more. Smooth, with a slightly shiny finish and plentiful pigment, they quickly became a favorite of mine.

The Daphne Guinness collection brings four more shades to the Lipcreme line, three of them I’m wearing here — Warp Speed (a light silver), Red Dwarf (a blueish pink) and Approaching Storm (a deep rose). MAC describes the fourth shade, Seasoned Plum, as a mid-tone lavender.

MAC Pro Longwear Lipcremes from the left: Approaching Storm, Red Dwarf and Warp Speed

Red Dwarf

Warp Speed
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I love it when life imitates art, or seems to, like it did yesterday when a storm passed overhead while I was contemplating the Eyeshadow X4 quad in Interior Life ($38).

The gray clouds came out of nowhere — clear skies one minute, a downpour the next — and when a blast of thunder roared, I was clutching the quad and its four cool-toned shades.

Remember this scene from the end of the first Terminator movie?

Looking up at the sky and then down at the quad, I realized that both of them were cut from the same cloth, a shawl of moody grays, purples, blues and pinks…

Now, I like these colors. I do. They’re just not the easiest shades for me to wear, and if you’re a damsel with a darker skin tone like mine, you might find that these shadows appear quite sheer when applied.

Who is Daphne Guinness?

The Honorable Daphne Suzanne Diana Joan Guinness, the Irish heiress to the Guinness brewery fortune, is a style icon and world-renowned fashion journalist. Tom Ford once called her “one of — if not the — most stylish women living.” She was also the inspiration behind last year’s holiday collection from NARS.

This year, MAC joined forces with Daphne to develop a 21-piece collection for eyes, lips, cheeks and nails in a mostly cool-toned palette of gray, pink, brown, taupe, charcoal, blue, green and lavender.

I’ve played with nine of the pieces so far, and from what I’ve seen, this release looks stunning for lighter lasses who wear cool-toned grays, pinks and purples well.

With Interior Life, MAC continues to play with sheer pigments. In comparison to Miss Piggy Pink, I think these shades offer a touch more coverage, and while I can appreciate MAC wanting a change of pace, I can see why it might ruffle the feathers of MAC fans addicted to pigment.

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When I find myself tapping an almost empty plastic bottle upside down against the side of the sink to coax out the last few drops of this product, or zipping to the mall minutes before it closes to pick up a spare and coming home with not one but two replacement bottles — that’s when I know it’s probably time to throw my arms up in the air, spin around in circles and sing at the top of my lungs like Maria does at the beginning of the Sound of Music…

“The hills are alive…” with the sound of MAC Cleanse Off Oil/Tranquil! 🙂

Err — so maybe my version of the song doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as Maria’s, but I still think this stuff is awfully amazing. Epic, even.

It’s a mineral oil-free makeup remover designed to whisk away face, lip and eye makeup, and it does such a good job on hard-to-remove products that I rarely feel the need to use it with a secondary cleanser.

As with many great relationships, MAC Cleanse Off ($30 for a 5-fluid-ounce bottle) and I started out as work friends. When I reviewed it the first time last summer, I liked it and gave it a B+, but I felt like we wanted different things in life… I wanted a makeup remover that wouldn’t mess with my vision, for instance, and MAC Cleanse wanted to cloud up my eyes.

We kept things strictly platonic for a while, but then one night a few months ago, one thing led to another (you know how it is), and now I’m completely head-over-heels in lust! MAC Cleanse Off has become one of my favorite products in the line.

Sure, I’ve strayed a few times since then, tried a few other cleansing oils, but none of them worked as well or as fast.

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