beauty

Three’s a trend – Burberry opens experiential ‘Beauty Box’ store in Covent Garden



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The fashionisation of beauty is rolling along at a jolly pace isn’t it? Following both Chanel and Dior with their standalone luxury beauty stores comes Burberry and its all-singing-all-dancing Beauty Box. The store opened yesterday in Covent Garden’s King Street selling make-up, perfume and accessories.

From the entry-level nail polishes and perfumes plus associated sunnies, scarves and bags, it’s but a short jump to the coveted trench or coat. And thus (the mega-brands hope) a loyal customer for life.

Naturally, a Burberry store isn’t a Burberry store without some digital wizardry at play. So if you haven’t time for a mini mani, try the Digital Runway Nail Bar instead. This ‘playful virtual experience’ lets you try the latest Burberry runway shades by placing the polish onto a radio-frequency identification-enabled platform to match your skin tone to the required colour.

OK, I’m not actually sure what a radio-frequency identification-enabled platform is but it sounds sufficiently snazzy enough for me to seek it out next time I’m in WC2…



Feelgood fashion? Oh MyGoodness!



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Here’s something a little different for Cyber Monday. If you want to join in the excitement, boost the economy, and give back, then why not do your shopping at MyGoodness.com? It’s the latest in social enterprise and means you can scratch the shopping itch while giving something back.

How it works is that for everything you buy, either the brand or the MyGoodness team will donate a percentage of the price to a cause or charity that they currently support. ‘Philanthropic retail’ (think TOMS and Gandys Flipflops) is becoming more common, but it helps that what MyGoodness stocks on the site is an edit of really well chosen products (including fashion, beauty, home, tech and books).

To add another twist, MyGoodness also sells ‘Money can’t buy experiences’ which translates as things like meeting a favourite artist backstage or having dinner with a superstar chef.

On the site right now, you can buy this Clarisonic Plus, this 3.1 Phillip Lim ’31 Minute’ clutch and this Uniform Wares 200 Series Calendar watch (above), all with 10% of the price going to Chickenshed, the children’s threatre charity. Interested? Click here more feelgood fashion from MyGoodness.

 



Estee Lauder’s collectable compacts have just outdone themselves



Be prepared to be officially gobsmacked by Estee Lauder’s exclusive solid perfume compacts for Harrods. Estee Lauder is famous for its inventive compacts but these have to be the best yet…

‘Beautiful’ golden horseshoe solid perfume compact, £120
Estee-Lauder-solid-perfume-horseshoe-compact (more…)



Packaging porn: Aesop’s gift sets



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There are gift sets and there are gift sets. One for the design-o-phile in your life, these Aesop kits tick the style-meets-function box. Based on the Italian Futurist movement, the graphic typography and bold colour palette are pure packaging porn. And the product inside is just as appealing. There are six sets in total but these three are my favourite, Intensity, Alacrity, Agility

The best place to buy Aesop is surely from one of its standalone stores, each one designed to engage with its geographical surroundings in some way. The newest one on Marylebone High Street uses artists Francis Bacon and Lucio Fontana and indigenous UK ferns as its unique stylistic references. Alternatively, you can buy from Aesop.com and Liberty.