Sneak Peek! Aerin Lauder Beauty is fabulous

Oh, the excitement! There’s a new cosmetic brand in town! And it’s bee-yoo-teee-fulllll!!!!!

It’s Aerin. Now, do you know about it? In fact do you know about her? Well, she is Aerin Lauder, a real person, the granddaughter (I think) of Estee herself. She’s the founder and creative director of a new luxury lifestyle brand, but that needn’t concern us now. All I want to talk about is the make-up, her debut range.

Aerin has had a highly fabulous life, living in New York, being rich and beautiful and serving as a trustee on boards of charities and art galleries and suchlike and all that fabulousness has been condensed into her brand.

I suppose I feel the brand is very New York Wasp - think Tods loafers, Coach keyrings, fawn angora throws and Louis Vuittons’s Neverfulls. It’s evocative and glamorous – it makes me think of the cast of Revenge and I fully believe that all the Grayson women use it. I even imagine Nolan Ross carries one of the rose-gold compacts around in his cashmere pocket and treats himself to the odd sneaky touch-up.

Okay, here’s how it works. Aerin has very much a capsule approach to beauty and her whole philosophy is that there’s very little choice so that all uncertainty and agonising have been taken out of it.

There is The ESSENTIALS COLLECTION,  which features a few permanent must-have beauty items.

There’s a foundation – you have to have a foundation, called Fresh Skin. It’s a creamy block that comes in a compact and which doubles as a concealer. It glides on easily, gives medium coverage and is suitable for retouching throughout the day. (6 shades); Then there’s an Illuminating Powder (again a compact block) which is very finely milled and really lights up the face (2 colours.) Finally there’s what she’s calling  a Multi-Colour (It’s a blusher although she says it can also be used for lips) and it has great colour saturation and a beautiful controllable texture that’s easy to work with.

These are high-end products and a lot of work has gone in to making them into the kind of products that won’t let you down. (The Essentials collection also includes a make-up bag, a collection of make-up brushes, a lip balm and a divine Rose hand and body cream – sometimes I sit at my dressing-table and rub it into my hands and I try to look evil and pretend to be Victoria Grayson, plotting someone’s downfall.) These few but fabulous items will not change from season to season.

But there’s more! Oh Yes! On top of The ESSENTIALS COLLECTION, Aerin has given us THE COLOR COLLECTION. And this will change every season, in response to whatever colours and other stuff is relevant. For Autumn/Winter 2012, there are 2 compacts, each containing a blusher, a highighter and 2 eyeshadows. 1 palette is called Weekday and the other is Weekend – the colours in Weekday are brighter and bolder than the Weekend one, but I suppose the world wouldn’t end if you wore the Weekday blusher on a Saturday.

The idea is though, that you buy both and use them for the appropriate days of the week, so you wouldn’t startle someone of a sleepy Sunday morning with your brighter Monday-Friday blusher! Either way, they look gorgeous. I haven’t experienced these palettes so I can’t tell you about their texture and saturation but if they’re anything like the products in the Essential’s Collection then they’ll be great. I admit I yearn for these palettes, I especially yearn for the Weekday palette with a bad yearniness.

There are 2 lipsticks – a pinky one called Pout for weekdays and the other, Sunday Morning, is unashamedly neutral and the textures are astonishing – creamy, long-last, a joy to use.
Likewise there are 2 lipglosses, one for the weekdays and a more muted one for the weekends and even though I’m not a fan of lipgloss because of the way it glues my hair to my mouth, these are top-notch manifestations of the breed – the gloopiness factor is very low. It goes on where you put it and it doesn’t develop a mind of its own and run all over the place. Also, the colours are very dense for lipglosses.

Every season, the colours in THE COLOR COLLECTION will change to whatever is new and hot and topical and relevant and exciting and all those things. The idea is that it’ll take all the guesswork out of finding the right shades for the new season, which is a big relief for a fearful dithery type such as myself.

My head has been really turned by this brand. I like the smallness, I like the philosophy of effortless beauty and I love the products - even the packaging is beautiful. Almost everything is in rose-gold compacts that manage to look both retro and directional.

The range launches in early September – I like to think the launch has been timed to perfectly coincide with  Graysons and their ilk having closed up their Summer Hampton homes and just returned to ‘the city’ for the Fall. (Or the caravan in Bundoran has had the door sealed tight with duct-tape in the hope that it’ll survive another winter. We can all dream.)

We'll have prices and swatches for you when the collection launches.

Check out the exciting news of Marian’s upcoming book, the Mystery of Mercy Close (Sep 13 2012)
www.mariankeyes.com