Beauty videos, to say the least, are all very engaging but sometimes silence and a wash of beautiful photos over some prose is golden. It’s equally relaxing to have a read through some of the most prolific beauty blogs online. By the way this is part 2 of the Lil’ Black Book of Beauty Pt.1 post I began first containing the channels I watch. I sometimes don’t have the time to download or wait for a full video to stream, so reading these blogs is the quickest way to stay updated. To save even more time I don’t always cart around my 17″ ASUS laptop (which baffles everyone who sees it) to read these. I have most of the blogs booted via RSS on my Android Pulse Reader app (available for Apple, too) which allows me to view all the blogs I choose by row and I can immediately scroll to see if there’s a new post or not because of thumbnails then I can read them via Pulse, too. This way I don’t waste precious time loading up each website /channel only to find some may not have an update. Also once you’ve loaded them you can read the posts offline if you’re on the go, great for traffic on certain days.
I have a Pulse page for blogs, local blogs, and a pulse page for YouTube channels. Many of them are British and reading through a ton of British blogs has actually improved my writing because no one writes English like the English…ahem. I do have a certain bias towards European beauty blogs simply because it’s the dead smack center of carefully developed luxury beauty brands using the freshest and best ingredients and also because they’ve banned over a thousand questionable chemicals for use in cosmetics (the U.S. have reportedly only banned 9?). Okay, enough blabber, click read more to see what are more or less my daily beauty reads.
LIPGLOSSIPING.COM / Charlotte Thompson
Twitter & Instagram: @lipglossiping
Let’s begin with my “fevohreht”, after all, I have been following her blog daily for the past 3 and a half years now. It was Charlotte’s blog, Lipglossiping.com that helped supply the main vibe of the inspiration you see on my blog today. We’re in touch personally and have even done a swap. I discovered her blog about mid 2010 when I was excitedly Googling for more information on the Urban Decay Alice in Wonderland Palette and it turns out she was the British blogger sent a package for the UK’s first look at it that year. She won the Johnson & Johnson Best Beauty blog award for 2011(?) and is among the top 3 beauty blogs in the UK today. The pristine photos on her blog absolutely drew me in as well as her proficiently written, thought-filled, snark-y musings on life and beauty. She also does meal and recipe posts once in awhile to change it up. I am also in love with the way Charlotte chronicles the growth of her lovely daughter, Leila, seen here wearing toxin and solvent-free kiddie polish. I’ll never forget the year 2009, it was when the world of online beauty opened up for me and there wasn’t the feel of “too much beauty noise” yet. Everyone just had a happy not-too-annoyingly-uppity vibe about all their new discoveries.
WORSHIPBLUES.COM / Yasumi Toyoda aka “Fushigi Lady”
The Fushigi Lady (as she calls herself) of Worshipblues.com is a London-based Japanese online curator/oversharer of all things artful, beautiful, and dainty, modern or vintage. She does a careful cocktail of beauty, skincare, travel, art, stationery musings, accessories, photos of abandoned buildings, local and overlooked boutiques, and once in awhile or increasingly more often, food…shaken not stirred. She makes trips to and from Japan which makes her blog a delightfully well-written mix of East and West. She’s very sweet and replied joyfully on Twitter when I said I loved her blog and had one of my own. Yasumi also owns a well-loved online shop called “Fushigi Shop” for her handpicked/handmade creations.
INTOTHEGLOSS.COM/Emily Weiss and team ITG
Dita Von Teese to ITG
Laura Mercier to ITG
This is like THE Beauty Blog. Emily Weiss has put up what is now one of the most sought after “IT” U.S. beauty blogs in the world, which is ITG (IntotheGloss.com). Emily and her team have got the front row on nearly everything that’s anything in the beauty blogosphere and being expected in big places they get to travel so much as a result. Her blog is most probably as popular and revered as you wish yours ever could be. Practically every beauty brand in the biz wants ITG to like and feature them. Dior (see first photo) had Emily do an eye tutorial for them. Now a team (so they can be everywhere), ITG has evolved into an online magazine of sorts while still retaining that non-contrived /raw feel which is what makes a blog a blog, but more now a blogazine. They’re still candid in expressing what they think it’s just that now they’ve got an invites to the best sources. It’s a very thin line between this and something like Vogue Beauty branching out on its own, but the line is still there. On ITG it’s like you get a backstage pass to major high fashion events and absolutely fresh beauty reviews, the latest (as in almost to the minute) beauty scoop, intimate word-for-word written interviews with celebrity icons, supermodels, beauty and hair professionals, and chats with unique individuals as they spill the brands and tips in their beauty arsenal. ITG is wanted at nearly every beauty launch that’s at the top. Emily and her team have only interviewed after all the likes of Essie herself (yes, Essie nail polish), Dita Von Teese sharing her cosmetic approach as a Burlesque beauty, Laura Mercier giving her beautiful back story on becoming who she is (and making up Madonna the 1st time), and more recently Drew Barrymore on her latest undertaking with her own new beauty brand. ITG also does videos once every few months on their YouTube channel IntoTheGlossMotion. This is the blog that proves pictures with flash aren’t always uncool…on their end flash evokes reality and popularity. ITG makes me love reading casually about what these “top” individuals are using and some of these revelations show they’re surprisingly simplistic and minimal in their approach to beauty.
MESSYWANDS.COM/Xiao
Xiao’s blog, MessyWands.com is so neat and clean and yet there’s enough rawness in the photos that makes the blog more sincere. Her skin up close isn’t photoshopped to the nines and she’s got a light but skillful hand with color. Her taste in cosmetics, more often than not is luxurious and the blog feels minimal but not at all lacking in content. She really has put the blinders on and focused primarily on high-street to luxury makeup. I do think once in awhile she does a skincare mention but what makes Xiao’s blog exceedingly lovely to visit are her spot on pretty FOTDs (face of the day features) where she combines colors from a lot of the products she is sent or stuff she has bought by luxury brands. To flaunt her reputation, let me make mention of brands like Clinique and Europe’s Rouge Bunny Rouge who usually send her their latest releases.
BRITISHBEAUTYBLOGGER.COM/ Jane Cunningham
On BritishBeautyBlogger.com you’ll find the latest and greatest when it comes to mostly stuff from Europe. UK’s Jane Cunningham is really a beauty editor/insider by day which explains her access to and hands-on reviews for so many brands. Jane gets early previews of stuff sometimes way before other bloggers do. She’s also got a lot of moxie and doesn’t shy away from openly disclosing if a brand’s PR person misread her or communicated weakly (sometimes she’ll take it as far as quoting them openly w/o mentioning who they are) which is partly why a lot of brands trust her honest opinion. She’s not afraid of what others think, on her site her opinion is all that matters. She also has quite a lot of posts tackling blogger, PR, and media issues in the industry that are all very well written.
BEAUTYBETS.COM / Elizabeth Dehn
Elizabeth Dehn is BeautyBets.com and she’s now made it a team. She is as her site says “an editor, lifestyle writer, and beauty enthusiast who worked for Aveda, Kiehl’s, Target and several magazines before launching the blog in 2009. When not schmearing on face masks or battling her new body wave, she covers the beauty and wellness beats for Mpls.St. Paul Magazine, Marie Claire, Divine Caroline, and Twin Cities Live television. Her work has also appeared in Minnesota Monthly, the Star Tribune, Sotheby’s Artful Living magazine, Fashion Weekly, Everyday with Rachael Ray, Rue Magazine and Glamour.” The articles on BeautyBets.com are light, not that long and well edited.
THECHERRYBLOSSOMGIRL.COM/ Alix Bancourt
Her site, TheCherryBlossomGirl.com is primarily about fashion since Alix is a French (yes, not Japanese) fashion graduate from a few years back, but hers was one of the first style sites I visited that once in awhile had beauty features intertwined (here she is with a bottle of Chloe perfume. The photos are nothing short of exquisite (with a lot of drama though, a bit too much sometimes I think) and with her porcelain skin and dark hair she kind of looks as if she could pass as Dita Von Teese’s daughter. What’s amazing is she shoots almost all of her own editorials…it’s a bit flabbergasting because they’re so awesome.
FASHIONTOAST.COM / Rumi Neely
For more laid back, not overly ethereal (unlike the Cherry Blossom Girl) Cali girl street style I always, always refer to Rumi of FashionToast.com. She throws things on and they just look.. correct. That’s pretty much it…anything she proclaims to love or posts on her blog sells like wildfire throughout the U.S. (and parts of Japan since she is half-Japanese) and she really tries to be unpretentiously healthy. You probably have seen her prancing around online with our very own Bryan Boy who happens to be somewhat of a declared soulmate of hers…they are undoubtedly BFFs, but I am very much more interested in hermusings. She, like Alix, once in awhile weaves in beauty items into her posts and I like how Rumi keeps it not too wordy, everything on her blog is what she thinks basically stripped down. Rumi is forever circling the globe to sit in the front rows of the latest runway shows and whatever she chooses to bring with her often become industry highlights.
