#105: eau de nymphette, diet pepsi & romantic comedy
good morning princess!
anyway, welcome back (okay, presumptuous of me!!!) to sent from my iphone with love, your hot links to epic things that i have found On The Line and the irl bit, which is hot reccos for Real Life Living™.
balenciaga fw23 campaign
this is the online bit:
eau de nymphette, nymphette alumni
last week at work i was asked if i would like to write a review for a perfume. of course, i said yes to this task without the foresight that my two descriptors for scents are usually as insightful and incisive as:
yummy
and/or
stinky
panicked, trying to remember other flavours (?) of smell (jasmine? pachouli? piss?), i stumbled upon this podcast and thoroughly enjoyed the dissection of the bella hadid’s new (flopping) spiritual perfume business, the history of the smell industry (whiffstory? sorry…) and general perfume parlance. inspired, fired up with notions of rich notes and heady florals, i was ready to spray.
the review: the perfume gave me a headache.
diet pepsi, addison rae
obsessed, banger, so good, etc.
quick fire: creation anxiety, burn after reading
i have been thinking about this video a lot since i saw it last week. this essay expands upon this idea of creators vs observers vs participants, and the democratisation of access to creating culture through social media vs people creating culture because they feel that is the only way to interact with that.
To summarise my earlier comments, I believe there are three cultural ‘roles’ that people are commonly divided into, namely ‘producer’, ‘participant’, and ‘observer’. In recent years, as social media has taken over so much of our social lives, the role of cultural participant feels as if it’s fading away. Herded into the opposing camps of producer and observer, we feel increasingly under pressure to appear culturally productive in order to access the spaces where culture ‘happens’. Hence the sudden emergence of an unprecedented number of DJs, photographers, poets, and the ever-nebulous creative.
obviously i acknowledge me writing this on a substack of my own creation is feeding the beast. tangentially related: emily sundberg’s latest piece:
Substack is making everyone into writers the same way instagram made everyone into photographers
if you’ve read it, hmu i wanna talk.
this is the irl bit:
anastasia beverly hills ethereal eye gloss
i work at a woman’s magazine. this means that i work with someone whose official title is a beauty director, who is sent a metric tonne of serums, oils, polishes, liners, shadows, gels, so on and so forth on a daily basis, which we are encouraged to sift through and take home once she has taken her pick of the litter. all this is to say; i did not know this singular pot of eyeshadow cost £26 until i looked it up just now.
instead of using it as an eyeshadow, i prefer to apply the product as a highlighter. i am writing this delicately, because my parents read these musings, but when i have deigned to experiment (read: use the product as intended) with it as eyeshadow, it has felt like i have spunk coating my eyelid. perhaps less delicate than intended. however, once applied to cheekbones, cupids bow, inner corner, etc, etc, the gel gives you this ethereal glow, a natural glossy beauty. exquisite. although, perhaps i will be using it less liberally now i am familiar with the price.
romantic comedy, curtis sittenfield
an initial realisation; i have only been reading books about disaffected 20 something girls because i buy my books and want to guarantee buyer satisfaction. an auxiliary realisation; libraries exist. last week i joined my local, and walked away, vision obscured with a wobbly stack of books.
to start with, romantic comedy is a real does what it says on the tin type situation. surprisingly, i am not a big mills and boon or colleen hoover girlie. i find romance books to be cheesy and predictable and the lead character to be insufferably insecure despite her luscious locks/tiny frame/big doe eyes/quietly intelligent humour etc etc. misogynist check!!
despite me struggling with the genre, i picked up this book on a whim and have been barely able to put it down. it’s actually romantic and it’s actually funny and it’s actually not cheesy, or it is self referential and amusing enough that it makes you feel like it’s poking fun of itself. j’adore.
saie slip tint dewy tinted moisturiser
because i am in my vanity era (as if i ever wasn’t lol), i have been enjoying applying more products to my face than usual. the discovery that you don’t have to look like death warmed up after you’ve been staring down the barrel of a bottle of orange wine for the better part of the previous 48 hours has been both revolutionary, and a disaster for my alcohol moderation. or perhaps that’s just what summer is all about.
regardless, this product (disclaimer: another work find), makes you look like you have some sort of inner radiance, perhaps a pregnancy glow, your skin look all even and lush without seeming as though you’re wearing anything at all. not to alarm you, but i would go as far as to say i would purchase this product myself.
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