Fabulous Over Forty – Where Beauty Is Ageless

I’ve been reading Nina Garcia’s latest book called Look Book – What to Wear for Every Occasion.   Nina is one of the judges on Project Runway and fashion director for Marie Claire magazine. This is her fourth book since 2007 and I am happy to say I am a proud owner of all of them.    When I purchase the books, I read them from cover to cover and all over again and again.    She’s such a wealth of classy style advice that I take every word she writes and then I wish I was Nina!   

As with all her books she collaborates with Ruben Toledo in the oh-so-fabulous illustrations.   The images just jump out at you and make you wish you could walk into your closet and pull out exactly the outfit Nina was talking about and Ruben so beautifully illustrated.  Nina makes you wish you were her girlfriend and she called you up on a Saturday to go shopping.   You know you’d come home with the most stylish clothes ever and ones that weren’t so trendy that they wouldn’t last for several seasons.   One of her motto’s is “quality is better than quantity” and that is truly something I believe in.  And I also agree with her that quality doesn’t have to mean big designer names either.

In her latest book she discusses every imaginable occasion and offers her suggestions as to what should be worn for such occasion.  It starts out with what to wear for an interview, which is so very important in this economy of people job hunting.   You want to shine above the others and she tells you exactly how you can do that.   Some of the chapters are offering advice on what to wear while working at a fundraiser, your kid’s sporting events, what to wear when you go to your hair salon (which gave me a perspective I hadn’t even thought of) and countless other occasions.

Nina’s books are the girlfriend or sister you want to call up and say “What should I wear for…” and offer how to look the most stylish getting there. 

I’ve given some of my friends that are fashion fanatics Nina’s books as gifts and they love them!  Her other books are:

• The One Hundred – A Guide to the Pieces Every Stylish Woman Must Own
• The Little Black Book of Style
• The Style Strategy – A Less-is-More Approach to Staying Chic and Shopping Smart

Face It is not your typical beauty book.   Written by Vivian Diller, Ph.D and Jill Muir-Sukenick Ph.D., both are former models.  Vivian is a clinical psychologist and Jill is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, both are in NYC.  

This book doesn’t look at the “how to apply makeup” or “skin care for your age”.   Instead it looks at the various feelings we have as women as we age.   We’ve been taught that looks and age don’t matter, yet deep down we seem to feel that looks really do matter.   This book helps us strike a balance of what is a healthy image of our looks vs not accepting our changing looks and offers suggestions on recognizing when we begin to notice that difference.

Face It offers six steps to change our thinking – such as when we have those “uh -oh moments” which are distinctly different than  “aha moments”!  If you’re searching for a deeper meaning and understanding of aging and changing looks, this book offers a wonderful guidance for you.   Fabulous over 40 really is a fabulous time, don’t be afraid of your changing looks but embrace them!

If you’ve been a reader of Fabulous Over Forty for awhile, you know I love books on makeup and skincare.   In fact this past weekend I was going through several that I own and I always pick up a tip or two.    Now I can add Style Eyes to my beauty library.   It’s a book by makeup artist Taylor Chang-Babaian, whose work has appeared in several magazines from InStyle to Town & Country and on several TV shows too.   She decided to concentrate her book on the eyes, since that can really be such an overwhelming part of makeup from making tired eyes look fresh to what and how to apply eye shadows and everything in between.

The book is easy to read and not overwhelming at all.   There are some great visuals with images of things such as good and bad brow grooming, how to properly conceal under eye circles, basic techniques and so much more.   One of my favorite things in the book begins on page 53 where she talks about the different shapes of eyes that we have and how to or how not to do color on them.  This alone is priceless information!   I know I’ve given advice such as “apply this color in the crease”, well that doesn’t always work for everyone, and as we age, many of us get a heavier, more pronounced lid so how we apply makeup has to change.   She also discusses wearing glasses and how to do your makeup with glasses.  It seems we’re wearing glasses more as we age, even if it is readers.  This helps us to figure out how to do eye makeup properly with glasses. 

On page 95 begins the chapter Eye Makeup at Every Age.  Taylor gives us some looks from teens to “Forty Plus”.  At the beginning of this chapter she talks about how not to be afraid to do some shimmer on over 40 eyes and how she has taught more women over 50 that they can do a smoky eye.   I agree to both of those.  But, in her descriptions and images in this chapter on the “Forty Plus” she shows neither of these looks which bothered me, along with putting all women over 40 in one category.   Let’s face it, my eyes at 48 don’t look like they did at even 42 and I know they won’t look like they do now at 62, so I wish she would have added a few more examples for women 50 and 60 and 70+.  

Overall, I think Taylor has created a great book that women of all ages and ethnicity’s can learn from.

Congratulations to Julie and Wordbird – randomly chosen as the winners of Tressed to Kill!

Guest post by Lila Dare: Tressed to Kill

By Lila Dare

Take another swallow of coffee—we’re starting with a quiz.

True or False:  Americans spend more money annually on hair care products than the GDP of Cambodia, Iceland and Albania combined.

True or False:  There are fifty dollars spent on finding a cure for baldness for every one dollar spent on finding a cure for malaria.

End of quiz.  Whew.  Sit back, inhale caffeine, run your fingers through your hair.  Both statements are true.  Americans spend approximately $38 billion dollars a year on hair care products, according to 2006 figures.  (My numbers are a tad out of date.  Sue me)  And Bill Gates supplied the baldness/malaria ratio to a Stanford audience in 2008. I trust Bill has his numbers right.

Let’s face it:  as a culture, we’re obsessed with hair.  We dye, cut, style, mousse, gel, spike, brush, blow-dry, add extensions, curl, comb, and braid it.  We cringe away from mirrors on bad hair days and devote more hours to sitting in styling chairs than to cleaning our bathrooms.  (Okay, that may only apply to some of us.)  We describe people (mostly female) by the one word of their hair color.  “The blonde jogged on the beach.”  “That brunette over there.”  You get the idea.  Why do we define ourselves by our hair?

I started thinking about hair while I was writing TRESSED TO KILL, the first in my Southern Beauty Shop mystery series from Berkley Prime Crime.  I think of it as “Steel Magnolias with dead bodies.”  My protagonist, Grace Terhune, works in her mother’s salon, Violetta’s, in the coastal town of fictional St. Elizabeth, Georgia.   Three other women, ranging in age from seventeen to sixty, work with them.   I realized early on that when I visualize these women, their hair takes center stage.  Violetta has short, gray-and-white hair, gently spiked with gel so she resembles a kindly Beatrix Potter hedgehog.  Rachel, the high-schooler, has Goth-black hair that looks like she hacked at it with toenails clippers.  Stella, the manicurist, has long, auburn hair, and Althea, Violetta’s best friend and the salon’s aesthetician, has a gray-flecked Afro (until a new boyfriend in the second book, POLISHED OFF, persuades her to get in touch with her African roots).  Grace, my thirty-year-old main character, has shoulder-length, light-brown hair but gets something of a makeover mid-way through the book.

When we re-invent ourselves, the first thing we do is change our hair.  As a child, I had a pixie cut that I hated, but my mom insisted on it.  I got revenge by playing “salon” with Suzette, the little girl next door, and chopping off her waist-length black hair.  In my teens and early twenties, I had the mandatory long hair of the 1980s.  For most of my adult life, though, I’ve worn my hair short and satisfied my urge for change with highlights or demi-permanent dyes (I’ve always been too leery of roots to go with a permanent dye) in various shades of red.  Short hair makes me feel confident, edgy, in control.  (I may not be able to make my twelve-year-old stop rolling her eyes at me, or lose five pounds, but by golly, I can make two inches of hair do what I want it to do.  Mostly.)

How does your hair affect your vision of who you are?  What’s the most drastic thing you’ve ever done with your hair?  Best hair story gets a free copy of TRESSED TO KILL!

Two people can win Tressed to Kill by answering Lila’s questions in the comments.   Please answer by Monday, May 10 at 11:59 PM CST.

Kate Somerville has a new book called Complexion Perfection!  About a month or so ago I made a trip to my local bookstore checking out the beauty section.   I discovered Kate’s new book which had just come out.  Being the “superfan” of Kate Somerville products, I figured I must purchase the book!   And I can tell you it has not disappointed me one bit, even though I haven’t completely finished it.

Kate, a well known skin clinician with a famous Hollywood following, discusses how she got into the skin care business and her own struggles with eczema and her interest in bettering her skin and how it all things are connected.   She also discusses her foray into the eponymous skin care line and how well selected the products in her line are and the purpose of each ingredient within the product line.  I found it all to be very interesting since she talked about how stress in your life can show up in areas on your skin and how when she gets stressed it shows in her skin too.   About the time I started reading this book I personally was going thru some very stressful things and it was definitely showing up in my skin – not only irritated and tired looking, but flare ups of eczema as well, which she discusses how she combats those issues.   I couldn’t have read it at a better time.

Whether or not you are into Kate Somerville products, this is a must read if you are interested in having any kind of procedure done on your face.  If you’re contemplating injections, facials, peels or surgery this book explains all of those things in great detail and results you can expect and why she personally likes some things and not the others.   I also like how she explains certain things in our life can affect our skin as well and how important it is to take care of our skin and our bodies.  

I truly need to take time to finish the book (I’m almost there).  It’s an easy to read, comprehensible book and I now consider my “skin care bible”.

I spent much of my holiday time off reading the newest makeup book.  This one is About Face by makeup artist Scott Barnes.  I haven’t seen a makeup book like this since the likes of Kevyn Aucoin’s collection of books.  He doesn’t just apply makeup to most of the models in the book to make them pretty, he transforms their looks.  

Heavy on the importance of highlighting and contouring, it’s what he sees as the way to transform the face.  He also talks about the importance of having moisturized skin, because your face won’t accept makeup as well without it.   And relax the face by applying pressure at your jaw joint by your ears – hard pressure.  By relaxing the face it makes you look younger.  

There are many models photographed throughout their application of the makeup, and they are many different age ranges including celebrities.   And of course, Jennifer Lopez is on the cover.  He does most of her makeup applications for her cover shots.

Most of the makeup applications shown are not a quick morning, getting ready for work process.   These appear to be more time consuming and detailed with all the highlighting and contouring.  But, I think it would be fun to try some of these techniques when getting ready for a date night.   Then maybe after a lot of practice, some of the techniques could become quite easy.

At $24.99 it’s a great value in a large, detailed book with several photographs.   If looking for a makeup book that’s not your normal,  run-of-the-mill makeup book this is one to check out.