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Jumping the NUDESTIX Train
NUDESTIX have been showing up in my peripheral vision for a year or so now, one of those brands/products that I kept thinking I should try, but didn't in any way need to try. NUDESTIX seems to be in that current club of makeup brands that promise simplicity, "natural beauty" and one-product wonders (except buy more products, K?). Like Glossier and Milk, their PR images feature glowing women of all skin tones who don't even look like they're wearing makeup, guys! Indeed, Glossier wants you spend quite a bit of money to end up showing all  your natural "imperfections", the implication being that you'd better be a bouncy, upper middle class 20-something who can afford to show their natural skin texture and pigmentation, or else just... stay home or something? I don't know.
Check My Box: Sephora PLAY! August 2018
This months' Sephora PLAY! box, was it a deal or a dud? Read on for my (mostly) well organized thoughts on the matter. The Sephora PLAY! subscription is one of the best values in the current, crowded beauty box market. $10 gets you five good sized montly samples, along with a bonus sample (usually perfume or a smaller packet sample) as well as a card that gets you an extra 50 Beauty Insider points if you make an in-store purchase that month. For me, a major benefit to Sephora's subscription is that their boxes will only contain brands that Sephora actually carries. Other similarly priced boxes (looking at you Birchbox and Ipsy) would send some of the very offest of off brands, things I was afraid to put on my face because I had no brand trust or even recognition. I don't think anything I get in a Sephora box will harm me or be full of Chinese factory toxins. Probably. I have been subscribed to the PLAY! box for a year now, and it's been mostly hits and a few total misses, but at least no harmful products or brands that I've never heard of before. Let's see what this month brought us.
The Bag of Incessant Longing: A Saga
I've been having a strange fashion summer, which I will write more about in a future post. (I have Deep Thoughts on the topic, trust.) Part of this strange fashion summer has been a resurgence in my fascination with a few British  lifestyle bloggers, namely The Anna Edit (she does the best capsule wardrobes) and Lily Pebbles (she's in the middle of a captivating house renovation.) Why I care about the lives of some girls almost 20 years my junior living across the ocean, I can't really explain properly, but I do really enjoy their content and like following them. Earlier this summer Lily posted this daily carry Instagram, and I absolutely fell in love with her handbag.
Shop Your Own Wardrobe
I have had to do quite a bit of unintended shopping in the last few months. Due to a size change, I've had to clear out a huge amount of clothing that just no longer worked for me, and I also had to replace a lot of key and basic pieces. I have always been a more "buy what you like, especially if it's on sale" type of shopper, and over the years I have amassed an eclectic wardrobe that I really enjoy. OK— to be fair there were way too many black dresses, but other than that I had outfits for pretty much any occasion and a solid foundation of basics. Cue my confusion and irritation when those basic pieces I relied on no longer fit correctly, and couldn't be belted, tucked or otherwise willed into shape. Nothing for it, I needed to shop. However, I was having a concurrent personal style shift, where the clothing I was used to wearing (lots of black and flowy things, goth accents, skater dresses and quirky pieces) no longer suited the more classic and minimalist aesthetic I was craving. I was looking for a more minimalist and (gasp) grown up style. I knew I needed to invest in new things, but I didn't want to waste money on garments that I couldn't build a decent capsule wardrobe from - I didn't want one-off fashion pieces, I wanted the leggings, t-shirts, jeans, basic skirts, classic white button downs and black dress pants that anyone needs to have a workable modern wardrobe. Very happily around that time I ran into the wardrobing app/website Finery.