Last night I went along to the Chanel Cruise Collection 2010 fashion show in Brown Thomas and what a night it  was. Women turned up in their finest Chanel fashion, from darling gold-tipped shoes to green 2.55s, it was a veritable playground of Chanel. And that was just the audience.

After a lot of sighing over the beautiful precious jewellery that was on display - I spotted one Camelia diamond ring worth €80,000 - ZOMG!!! - we went upstairs to watch the fashion show. When the first model hit the catwalkl in a My Fair Lady ensemble, I knew this was going to be something special.

Check out the beautiful, dramatic eye make-up and Maude Gonne hair. I'm so loving this return to tousled romantic elegance.

I'm so going to adopt this look. I'm thinking all you need is curling tongs, a blender brush and a can of hairspray. Curl the hair into tight curls, then loosen with fingers and back-comb at will. For the eyes, bring a lighter colour (in this case it's red, but you might want to substitute it for gold, bronze or navy for everyday wear) right up to the brow, and then use a dark eyeshadow in the socket and blend, blend, blend; then get your kohl liner out and smudge, smudge, smudge. Instant romance - Beautiful!

You can see the entire collection here on Fashionologie http://www.fashionologie.com/3151655 and this red dress is my favourite look of the collection. Get along to Brown Thomas Dublin to see it in real life!

Technorati Tags: Chanel Cruise Collection 2010

Normally Christmas make-up collections are all about the sparkle, the predictable shades of red, gold and silver, the ritzy, glitzy eye shadows that you wore once a year to the office Christmas party before banishing them to the bottom of your make-up bag. I love them, but I have to say it's what we've come to expect. This year however, has been a really pleasant surprise with nearly all of the big beauty houses opting for softer, pastel shades for their Christmas collections.

My favourite so far this year has got to be Chanel's spectacular 'bird of paradise' collection featuring the beautiful Latitia Casta. Les 4 Ombres (€45.50) are three golden shades of green, orange, and yellow with the bam! punch of an exotic turquoise blue, exactly like the plumage of some fabulous bird.

The campaign picture is reminiscent of one of my favourite Chanel campaigns, Vanessa Paradis in the gilded cage for No5 back in the day. Le sigh!

For lips, their new Aqualumiere gloss in Hirondelle (€24.50) is a pale pretty pink that plumps lips with some fancy reflective particles. I feel almost ready to face Christmas.

Technorati Tags: bird of paradise, Chanel, Christmas make-up collection, Laetitia Casta

This morning I'm somewhat crestfallen. Having spent four days in the make-believe world of a person with perfectly manicured nails, the facade finally shattered. In a classic me moment, I pulled the top off one of my perfectly manicured nails this morning and ruined the whole effect.

Le sigh.

Okay, so it's not the end of the world but I was so pleased with my new shade, Revlon's new soon-to-be-cult Plum Night. It's a dark plum but unusually warm for such a deep shade, which means it looks good on Irish skin. My hands are generally a reddish-purplish hue so if it works on me, anyone can wear it. Just try not to chip it!!

An expert tip I learned from manicurist Andrea Fullerton was to use a concealer brush dipped in nail varnish remover to remove any smudges and to give an absolutely perfect finish.

Technorati Tags: Revlon Plum Night

As regular readers of this blog will know, when it comes to beauty I'm all about the natural look. The one area I make an exception is with fake tan because I feel fake tan face looks better than my 3am grot-skin grey face, but I could be wrong. Still, one product that adds normalcy and bloom to fake tan face is YSL's new creme blush.

It also happens to be one of the most youthifying products I've come across this year. Something about the apricoty shade makes you look like a teenaged Austenian heroine who is in full bloom as Jane herself might say.   

Creme de Blush No 1 Velvety Peach (€42) goes on like a cream and finishes powdery but it's the shade that is the real success here, perfect peachy youthful vital loveliness.

I've got a bad habit of staying up past my bedtime. I get home from work, pet the cats, facebook, twitter, dinner, faffing, then all of a sudden it's 11pm and I'm wondering what the hell I'm going to wear tomorrow and why the laundry basket is overflowing with all the items I want to wear and the dishes need to be done and I need to finish reading that book before tomorrow and and and...Hmm.

Another side effect of staying up late is that my skin sometimes responds by looking frighteningly grey when 7am trundles round the next morning. It stares back at me from the mirror, declaring loudly 'you reap what you sow'. Normally I just scowl back at it but this past week I've found an even more effective way of dealing with my dull morning skin - Clarins' new Instant Light Complexion Perfector.

This is part of their new Palazzo D'Oro range. It's being sold as a base but I've been wearing it on its own all week and loving it. It evens skin tone, erases imprefections and leaves a kind of shimmer - not teenagery glitter-tastic shimmer but a shimmer like sunlight reflecting off water. Irridescence. Sheer and lovely.

Technorati Tags: clarins, Complexion, dull skin, gold

So this morning, for the first time this year, my ears were freezing by the time I got to work on my bicycle. The seasons have definitely changed.

With autumn/winter comes fabulous new outfits, but also pasty skin. Last week I cracked out the false tan for the first time in ages. I was feeling resolutely grey as I tried the new Rockstar Tan. I'm a big fan of mousse tans as they go on so easily and thankfully this brand has that option (€29.99).

When I woke up the next day and looked in the mirror I gulped - eek! Quite intensely brown. But after a quick shower I had an excellent - and natural-looking - deep glow that seemed to come from within: score! (It's kind of like the St. Tropez tan, in that it goes on a bit scarily dark but when you shed that chrysalis in the shower you emerge with a gleaming golden tan.)

I'm totally won over by this product, even if I did go a bit heavy on my hands and ended up with orange knuckles. A quick lick of their Rehab Tan Stain Remover (€24.99) returned me to tan perfection in no time. I'll be rocking this one all winter long.

Technorati Tags: Rockstar Tan, St. Tropez, Tan Stain Remover, winter

 The weather has started to turn and with that, it’s time to start adjusting our beauty look from summer to autumn trends. If you’re on a budget (who’s not these days?), Boots has some top tips for autumnal beauty.
 

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“For the eyes, I like to mix it with pale, sheen eyeshadows and blushers to highlight brow and cheek bones, and I have even used it to tame flyaway hairs and for slicking eyebrows in place.” It won't wash the dishes, however.

We’ve said it about Bobbi Brown’s shimmer bricks before, and we’ll say it again. These are must-have multi-taskers that should be in every woman’s make-up bag.

Bronze shimmer bricks look great on perfectly tanned skin. Aviva have just introduced their new in-salon product, Aviva Express, a rapid tanning solution for those short of time.

Salon tanning normally means hiding yourself away until your tan has developed and you can take a shower. Aviva Express works in one hour (for a light glow), two hours (medium) or three hours (deep).

No need to shower off either as it stops developing after three hours and is odourless so you can do it on your lunch-break too. The formula contains 66% less ingredients than any other tan on the market and is what the VIPs chose to wear to this year’s Oscars ceremony in LA.

Available in Jules Beauty salon in Malahide

The palette includes classic Parisien shades of gold and vibrant red, and the nail polish comes in two soon-to-be cult shades - Indigo Paris and Pure Gold (€20.50).

The eye palette ‘Liberte’ (€45)  contains four shades (two gold-based, two indigo) and are adaptable for both daytime and dramatic night looks. The gold face powder with embossed rose detail (€42) is almost too pretty to use.

Technorati Tags: Indigo, Lancome