Edible high fashion: Reed Krakoff x Laduree

Reed Krakoff has announced a collaboration with Laduree, debuting on February 8th. He has commissioned the team at Laduree to create an all-black matte dark chocolate macaron just in time for Valentines Day, so all the singletons out there finally have a Valentines Day treat that reflects just how dark and moody we all are on the one day of the year designed solely for the purpose of making us feel like crap.

The confection will be presented in a custom limited edition black matte Laduree box. So far, it would appear that the macarons are available exclusively at the New York Laduree store on Madison Avenue.
Doesn't Laduree know that there are single people in Hong Kong, London and Paris as well?

But to be fair, I think the macarons were released to celebrate NYFW, so no appeal process for the rest of us around the world!

Now the only question that remains is... can I get some nice human being who will happen to fly from NYC to HKG in the near future to hand carry some back for me? :D

xxx H

Chanel Facettes D'or Gold Fiction

I was reorganizing my Chanel polishes, having bought some new shelves to tidy up in time for Chinese New Year, when I realised that I hadn't updated for yonks (almost a year? :s), and that I should come back.

First, let me share a picture of my lovely reorganised Chanel polish collection :)

It puts a smile on my face to walk into my room every day to see them all stacked and tidy. When I choose my NOTD, I feel like I'm shopping all over again :D

And speaking of NOTD, I have on Gold Fiction today. 

Gold Fiction was released in Fall 2008 together with Kaleidoscope and Fantastic, and was part of the first collection created by Peter Phillips after he was named global creative director of Chanel Beauty. 

He allegedly took his inspiration from Coco Chanel's apartment on Rue Cambon. Gold Fiction is released as a Facettes D'or nail colour rather than Le Vernis; I'm not aware of any other Facettes D'or nail colours though. 

The polish had a US$30 price tag when first released, and there were cries of outrage over this. Chanel's explanation at the time was that there was a higher cost to the ingredients causing the price increase. We laugh at this now, with normal collections going for USD$27-30; we would gladly shell out US$30 now and get a bottle of liquid gold in return!

Gold Fiction is marketed as a pure molten 24 karat gold colour. It fulfils its promises, and is the truest yellow gold colour I own - Gold Fingers, Gold Lame, Diwali, Delight (yes, yes, ok, the last two aren't meant to be yellow gold, but I group them in the gold category nonetheless :p), - none come close to Gold Fiction. I find that I repeatedly reach for this when I want an "in your face" gold. It comes in an opaque bottle, which is apparently to protect the polish from light damaging the pigments. However, this does mean that you won't know how much remains in the bottle.

The application of this polish is incomparable to any other metallic polish I've tried. As in incomparably amazing. There are close to no brush strokes, no matter how haphazardly or wobbly you paint the polish. Don't you just love that in a metallic?

Having said that though, I think that Gold Fiction makes my skin look quite dark; that might be because yellow has never looked good on me, which means yellow gold doesnt either! But I still go back to Gold Fiction when the mood feels right, such as now, when Chinese New Year is just around the corner!

This was meant to be a quick post, so without further ado, here come the photos - they were taken on my iPhone, when I was at work, so unfortunately, I don't have any bottle shots. The pictures show two coats, and were taken after about 5 days wear, so please excuse my cuticles and tip wear!

Thanks for reading!

xx H