NARS

My mom has never really been a makeup girl, but if she were to strike up a conversation with me about NARS blushes, I hope to gawd she doesn’t bring up the new blushes from the Pop Goes the Easel collection, because one of them is called Threesome, and I DO NOT want to be having a conversation with my mom that involves the word “threesome.”

NOPE. Can’t do it. Not gonna do it!

But if it were you and me? Totally fine. Threesome, Misconduct and Peep Show. Those are the three new powder blushes in the NARS Pop Goes the Easel collection. They’re $30 each, limited edition and only available at Nordstrom.

Misconduct is a warm peachy plum with golden sheen (like a really sheer version of NARS Sin), Threesome is a matte cool baby pink, and Peep Show is a matte bright reddish pink.

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OK, NARS, I see you. I see what you’re doing. 😉 I see how you named your new Sheer Pop Multiples after ah-may-zing beaches, all three of which are on my bucket list now.

Navagio Beach in Greece… Girl, mark my words, someday I’ll swim those aquamarine waters.

Someday…

Surf’s up! (But only for a limited time.)

Like a bubble at the beach, these three will eventually pop away. They’ll only be around for a limited time, and they have a very beachy vibe to go with their beachy names. They’re on counters now with the rest of the new NARS Pop Goes the Easel collection, a limited edition Nordstrom exclusive with blushes, lipsticks and these multiples.

Navagio Beach is a luminous, pearly golden beige; Motu Tane is a satiny, rosy pink; and Cote Basque is a satiny, bright watermelon pink with tiny golden glitter pieces.

Purposefully sheer

Like the regular NARS Multiples, these creamy sticks are made for eyes, lips and cheeks, and they have that same smooth texture. They feel like a cream blush that you left open overnight, and the next day it still feels like a cream, only drier.

Unlike the regular full-coverage NARS Multiples, however, the Sheer Pops are semi-opaque, so you really have to be in a sheer mindset.

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Seeing as how it’s *this close* to Friday, why don’t we just take off work early and get Loaded…

Guuuurl, interpret that as you will, but I’m talking about the new NARS Loaded Eyeshadow Palette ($59). 🙂

Isn’t it gorgeous?! Let’s just say all the magic words at once — pigmented, warm, neutral, mattes, shimmers.

YES!

So…this is new. Twelve completely new powder eyeshadows in warm shades. There’s a couple golden matte browns and a shimmery golden taupe, which I’m wearing on my lids in this look, that don’t lean as warm as the other shades, but Loaded is generally a very warm-toned palette. We’re talking reddish browns, peachy browns, warm gold, bronze and copper, and it’s coming to NARS Boutiques and the NARS website March 22nd , and to Sephora, Ulta and department stores March 28th.

Today was my first time using it, and I couldn’t help but think of that first really intense love that you have as an adult where the love is big, beautiful and, yeah, at times, messy.

Exceptionally soft

And by “messy,” well…let me back up a bit. I don’t know if NARS reformulated their shadows for Loaded, but they feel unusually soft, and while that’s great for easy blending, it can also take some getting used to.

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OK, to be blunt…as far as I’m concerned, contouring can just go away already and never come back. 🙂 But highlighting? PLEASE. Highlighting, I beg of you, please stay around forever, because then I’ll be able to keep looking forward to things like the NARS Banc De Sable Palette, or BANK-DUH-SAB-ELLE…

I’m sure I butchered that 100%!

Banc De Sable, a new $49 highlighting palette with three highlighters, arrives March 1 at Sephora and sephora.com, and it’s not your average highlighting palette. These powders have what NARS describes as (insert whispery official voice here) “water-activated highlighters.”

What…?

Well, they supposedly work with the skin’s surface to create a supernatural glow.

Basically? Wet/dry. You can wear them dry for a light sheen or with a wet brush to intensify the shine.

So, the trend over the past few years has been this whole, like, “OMG! You can see my highlight from space,” and yeah, that’s kind of what I expected from this palette, but to my surprise it’s really… What’s the word? They aren’t toned down or subdued. These definitely aren’t as hush-hush as the Hourglass Ambient Highlighters.

They’re more like, “Hey! There’s some shine here! But it won’t smack you across the booty.”

And that’s what I like about it. The finish is like that whether you wear it wet or dry.

Rivage, the lightest shade, is a cool-toned glistening beige pearl; Sale, the middle shade, is a shimmering peach champagne; and Embruns is a rose gold.

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Prince night at karaoke.

Think about it. All of the only songs are Prince songs. I would totally go! It would be awesome! Let’s find someplace that does it.

I think it would be even more awesome, though, if we went wearing these new $27 NARS Velvet Matte Lip Pencil shades, because of the 10 of them, half are shouts-outs to Prince songs, including Let’s Go Crazy (one of my favorite Prince songs).

(Side note: if you can spot all the ones that are Prince songs, PROPS.)

These are the 10 new shades joining the permanent line, aaaaaand one of them is kinda funky, although it’s a color that’s very trendy right now. It’s a dark bluish black, and I can’t remember seeing anything like it at NARS before.

It’s one of the ones that doesn’t have a Price name, but when you say it out loud, you do have to whisper…because it’s called “Unspoken.” Shh…

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OK, so I know that I make grammatical mistakes left and right, and I make up words like haaay I write run-on sentences like this one I say “yay!” instead of “yea!” and I use too many emojis 🙂 and LOLs and elipses…

But I do make an effort to at least put my apostrophes where they’re supposed to go, although I don’t lose any sleep over it when I make mistakes or write “gonna” instead of “going to.” I’m not gonna (haha) throw a vase across the room when I come across one of my old posts where I said LOL 20 times and used punctuation improperly (although it does drive me batty when I mix up “you’re” and “your”).

That said, it would really help me if somebody over at Team NARS could clarify something about new Kiss Me Stupid Lipstick from the NARS Spring 2017 Wildfire Collection.

Like, is there supposed to be a comma in there? Is it, like, “Kiss me, stupid,” like you’re talking to someone and saying, “Hey, stupid! Get over here and kiss me”? Or, does it need an exclamation mark because it’s a declarative statement? “Kiss me stupid!” Because I want you to kiss me until I can’t even remember my name or see straight anymore?

I’m so confused…

NARS Kiss Me Stupid Lipstick, $28

Oh! I like this color a lot. When you first see it out of the tube, it’s like hmm… Typical matte, ’90s brown, but this bad boy is a desert sunset in a tube. When you try it on, it becomes a warm, satiny terracotta infused with a fiery reddish orange and subtle golden sparkles. It fits in fabulously with the whole Wildfire color story.

NARS Asphalt Jungle Lip Gloss, $26

The whole “You gotta try it on to appreciate it” thing also happened to me with Asphalt Jungle Lip Gloss.

OMG! Swatch it. Ooh. Get it on your lips. Ah! Fall in love.

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Geez, for a blush called Bumpy Ride, this sure is smooth…

Badum-bum. 🙂

Either someone at NARS was having fun on New Product Name Day, or they were thinking about that time they bounced across Idaho in a Pre-Cambrian Era Subaru Outback that practically launched them into outer space every time it hit a pothole…

Wait — never mind. That was me.

Officially, this is pink

NARS calls it a shimmering candy pink. I was dubious at first, so I pulled out a few other NARS pinks for comparison — Gaiety, Desire and New Attitude — and Bumpy Ride looks nothing close to what I’d call a standard-issue pink.

It’s more of a coral with pink dreams to me, and the closest thing I can find to it is NARS Day Dream, which is a tad more coral but less pink.

It’s also VERY shimmery

Holy crap, this is a shimmery blush! And the funny thing, it doesn’t look that shimmery in the pan or in swatches.

Because of that, I grabbed a regular blush brush to apply it, thinking, “This’ll work.”

I swiped it across the pan once and popped it on one of my cheeks, but when I started buffing it out, wow — lots o’ shimmer. We’re talking serious luminosity, but it’s grown-up shimmer…like if the MAC Mineralize Skinfinishes put away their childish dreams of becoming a pop star and finally got a “real job” (air quotes). The pigmented particles are finely milled (there’s really no actual glitter in it), and the effect is elegant.

The thing is, though…this kind of shimmer doesn’t mess around if you have any textured areas on your cheeks from acne scarring, large pores or dry patches. It calls them out, and right now my cheeks are a tad dry, so Bumpy Ride makes them look even drier.

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