Product: Revlon Just Bitten Lipstain

Cost: around $9

What they say it does: “Stain + Balm for a beautiful wash of kiss-proof color and moisturizing, soft shine”

Our review: Our love for red lipstick is well documented, as is our quest to find something in between Kiehl’s lip balm and 3 coats of matte, red lipstick. While reading one of our favorite magazines last week, we saw a small picture of a lovely colored lip – and, it had been done with lip stain and gloss. How easy! And, best of all, how Diet Coke – Twizzler – kissing the dog on her head friendly! No more feathering! No more eating funny ways to preserve lip color. Bring it on!

We couldn’t find the lip stain that was recommended, but we saw the Revlon Just Bitten (really, Revlon? You had to jump on the vampire bandwagon too? For shame, makes of Real Raisin and Fire and Ice). We picked it up in (gah) Frenzy – a pinky, berry color. We tried it on the second we got home, and we were in love. It was so easy to apply! Perhaps this is obvious to others, but it’s really just a marker. With a stick of lip balm on the other end. We were super into it, and we swore to wear it out and about the next day.

We did, and we admit; our love faded faster than the lip stain. It applied spotty – this was most noticeable in the light of day. There were just some spots on our lips that refused to hold the color. It wore so spotty it almost looked as though we had a disease. Sure, we could drink all the Diet Coke from the bottle we wanted, but our lips looked like we’d be smacked by flying raspberries. We’re not sure if the product is meant to be long wearing (it’s not), or just easy/pretty (it is). In a pinch, it’s something we’d throw on if we felt compelled to have some kind of lip color and didn’t have time for lipstick, or if we were driving or something. We’ll keep it in our purse as a backup. But otherwise? Eh…we’d suggest skipping it.

In short: For a $9 backup, it’s fine. For a regular addition to our makeup bag, we’ll pass.

Our grade: C

-LB

We realized the other day that despite having 16 or so pairs of shoes, we have about 2 that we wear. Some we keep for sentimental value (like the pair our mom got us on our first trip together to London), some we keep just in case we need them (like, say, running shoes). But the majority of them are so painful or ugly, we never wear them. We told ourselves, if we can get rid of most of them – donate the ones in good shape, toss the super worn ones, we can start to rebuild our shoe collection. Read rest of story…

We can’t help it. Perhaps it’s because we grew up in New Jersey, or because we have always hated wearing shorts, but back to school/fall shopping is our favorite shopping, even though we’ve been out of school for a decade. We spent the weekend shopping, and we were quite surprised to find so many things we love at Gap. We, apparently, also just realized that it is Gap, and not THE Gap. We will try to correct ourselves here. There were some missteps – seriously, can we please get away from the beaded, faux necklace, striped shirts? You are not J. Crew. Step away from the Bedazzler. We do not need flair. Overall, though, we saw a number of key/standard pieces that we’re excited to fold into our wardrobe for this fall. Is any one piece earth-shatteringly inventive? No. But well-fitting, well-priced, and attractive all are enough for us. Here are our favorites! Read rest of story…

Product: Smashbox Beauty in a Box: Walk the Line

Cost: $34 (items purchased separately would be around $63)

What it is:
A limited-edition kit featuring a handpicked collection of our favorites from Smashbox, plus a how-to guide.

What it does:
Sephora has teamed up with Smashbox to bring you this exclusive “Beauty in a Box” set featuring our latest product fixations, plus a step-by-step tutorial. Available for a limited time only.

This set contains:
- 0.04 oz Limitless Eye Liner in Onyx
- 0.06 oz Cream Eye Liner in Caviar
- 0.12 oz Jet Set Waterproof Eye Liner in Midnight Black

Our review: We had a credit for Sephora that we were desperate to spend. We bought some lipstick for our co-editor, some fancy bath products for our mom, but we couldn’t find anything we were crazy about. We have a ton of mascara, 8 red lipsticks, 2 gold eyeshadows, and 1 pot of black eyeliner. We don’t wear anything else, ever – we’ve tried. It doesn’t work. While we love our Clinique Cream Eyeliner, that is like, pro-level use only. It is smeary and slide-y for the first 23 seconds, and then it dries into never, ever budging despite how much water, eye makeup remover, and spit you use. We love the definition, we hate the hassle.

We saw the Smashbox kit while we were walking around Sephora, and we were at first intrigued, and then immediately suspicious. How could it be so cheap? Perhaps they’re crappy colors, or weird, miniature sizes. We grabbed the box and went to the Smashbox area. Nope, all black. And, surprisingly, nothing is smaller than what’s available at retail. One of the little pots is even the tiniest bit bigger. So, 3 different black eyeliners for $34? Not a bad deal. Not a steal, if you’re not brand particular – but definitely a reasonable price.

We bought it, took it home, and started trying it on. We have to say: we are in love. The pencil eyeliner – something we never use – is quite lovely. It flows nicely, it doesn’t tug, and it has a delightful, albeit menacing, looking sharpener in the cap. The cream eyeliner is a different consistency than we’re used to – but we were so happy that when we got it all over our eyelid and our cheek, it cleaned up easily and quickly. The star for us is really the waterproof gel eyeliner; we put it on last night, and rubbed our eyes like a sleepy toddler for quite some time. It. Didn’t. Budge. When we woke up after forgetting to wash it off? It still looks good. This has replaced Clinique as our favorite. We’re converts.

We will say – the “how to guide” is worthless. Unless our package was missing some kind of guide or book, it’s like 2 sentences on the inside of the box. You’d do better to watch YouTube, or just play around in the mirror. Our only real gripe about this kit? It doesn’t come with a brush, and 2 of the products require it. It’s annoying, but honestly – the kit-sized brushes that come with cream/gel eyeliners are usually crappy anyway. Spend the extra $15 and get yourself a decent brush (this is ours).

In short: If you love black eyeliner, or want to try a few different kinds, we’d 100% recommend it. It’s a great deal, and each product is top notch on its own. Bummer it doesn’t come with a brush, and the “how to guide” is a bit worthless.

Our grade: A-

-LB

So! Our Six-Item Experiment is over. Well, maybe it officially ended like 10 days ago, when we purchased items seven and eight, and then, terribly, wore them to what we believe may popularly be referred to as an Industry Function. We were bad Sixers, but we tried.

Here’s what we found. First, we recommend this to any/everyone, as it really does make you think about what you buy, why you buy it, and what you wear—always, always worthy things to consider. When we first heard about this project, we thought it seemed pretty in line with our existing thoughts on the subject of wardrobe overload, and we were right. We’ve gone away for eight weeks with a suitcase that can fit in an overhead compartment, so we’re definitely, for sure, used to wearing the same five or six things day in and day out for weeks.

What we wouldn’t have known from doing this on the road was this: It was crazy for us to, actually, not be doing this on the road, to be doing it at home, and to see up close the contrast between our filled-to-overflowing closet with the small clump of clothes we were wearing every day. You know what we mean? We have these six items. They fit on our one chair. Even if we’re sitting in it. Our closet, on the other hand, is so stuffed with clothes (and Scrabbles, and books, and scrapbooks, but we digress) that we can hardly close the door. When we’re traveling with a suitcase, we’re not reminded of how much we own that we never wear: that Anthropologie top that makes us look like a bird, the Marc by Marc Jacobs top we got at a thrift shop but never mended. This time we were, and it was shocking, or at least as shocking your closet can be.

The same is true for our product area, pictured above. We didn’t have the heart/energy to fully invest ourselves in organizing our closet, but we did tackle our equally overflowing beauty/product/medicine cabinet area, and the results, pictured above, were ridiculous. Four tubs of that Body Shop coconut Body Butter. Four different face primers. Three containers of the exact same foundation, also, weirdly, from the Body Shop. Things we’d forgotten we’d even bought, and about a half-million hotel toiletries we collected and promptly forgot about.

For us, the Six Item experiment hasn’t been about thrift: We have no choice around thriftiness, if we plan to remain a freelance writer. For us, it’s been about waste, and use. You know, we’re not going to say we wasted our money on the 90 million as-yet unused products we found in our bathroom tonight. But we will waste them if we never use them, and this goes for clothing as well: Hopefully, there is something to celebrate, and appreciate, in each item we buy. Too often, that is not the case: We are buying yet another pair of jeans, almost exactly like the previous ones, because we’re bored, or they’re on sale, or we’ve forgotten that buying things isn’t actually as fun as going to the gym. We remain pro buying, when we use, cherish, and love what we bought. That’s harder to accomplish, we think, than that looks, because it looks easy, and it’s not. But we are happy to have somewhere to start, and we’re going to use, cherish, and enjoy each one of those products if it’s the last thing we do. Which means we are going to be saturated with coconut body butter for the next 450 years. Delicious!

Is everyone on vacation? We totally hope everyone’s on vacation. And not staycations, either. We, of course, are going to our parents’ house, which is somewhere in between. You know what sucks? Registration for Fashion Week is $100. We were going to skip it, and then saw that Rachel Zoe show, and were like, fuck it, we want to go.

Anyhoo. We’re losing it. We await September, but only if we can move to Syria (or somewhere else warm) in October.

- Man oh man we love our new poll more than anything in the entire world. Will anyone stand up for Vera Bradley? No? We didn’t think so.

- We met Demi Lovato! For reals. This was the color of her lipstick.

- Why won’t Petit Bateau give us a straight answer? Why must robots man their customer service staff?

- We went entirely bananas for striped shirts this week: from Chance and from all over.

- Here’s our picture of the shirtless Hollister dudes, which we took from across the street because we are scaredy-cats

- As usual, we did a round up of all the best Mad Men fashion. It was kind of a meh week, to be honest.

- And we broke our Six Item experiment at J. Crew. Sigh.

We have quite mixed feelings about the Vera Bradley empire here at Bunnyshop, ranging from “OMG” to “Ugh debacle.” We are not at all sure, however, that we are with the people on this one—because we keep seeing these bags touted as the ideal carry-all for summer. (Really? Surely they mean summer of 1983?) Anyhoo, this girl above got us thinking: first about another poll (YAY) and then about if we should actually like these. (Like this large duffel, $80, which is what we’d guess is above.) Here’s what we want to know: Tell us and if more than half the voters (even if there are only four! which is entirely possible, since everyone we know is at a beach somewhere) approve of VB, we’ll delete this post, find the five pieces we like best and publish them tomorrow, and then see if they’ll give us a blog-style discount. (Not guaranteed, but always worth asking. Without further ado….

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We recently received such great service from SwimwearBoutique.com that we decided that we were going to newly invest ourselves, emotionally and otherwise, with online customer service. We have, to be sure, never considered this before: It’s hard enough getting great customer service in person—forget by email, we thought. But we had such a great experience with SwimwearBoutique.com that we wanted to test out some other places—like Petit Bateau. Above: the polka-dot chemise, $24

Here is the situation: We have these boys’ Petit Bateau tank tops that are perfect, just the right length. They’re size 16a. They are no 16as on the Petit Bateau American site. So we wrote asking: Did the American site stock something similar? This is what we heard back:

Dear Petit Bateau Online Customer,

Thank you very much for contacting Petit Bateau Online. All Petit Bateau products are true to size. I advise you to check out our size chart, which is available on our help section. The size chart should give you all the information you need to make your size choice. If you should have any further questions, please give us a call at the number below.

Kind Regards,

Customer Service
Petit Bateau Online

Now see. This is very annoying. This we imagine as having been written by a robot, in an adorable Breton top. We love Petit Bateau, but we grade this form letter a D. A D! That looks weird.

Anyhoo: We also love this bra. That is all.

Petit Bateau bra, $39

As recommended to us by our co-editor. We know this looks like a repeat of our Breton top post from earlier this week—but no! Chance has a lot of striped shirts. In fact, much like this morning’s post talked about how Hollister divides its stock into Dudes and Bettys, Chance divides itself into “stripes” and “other clothing.” We respect this. So first, this one: Boatneck, $60.

And in another color, same price:

Moving on: This is our pick from the other clothing side of things:

Beach shorts ($42)! Relevant for at least a few more weeks, depending on location.

Which is to say, very far away. Shirtless dudes! Honestly: What is there not to love about a store that separates its menswear and womenswear into “dudes” and “bettys”? Tragically, however:

We love this. Brooks Street romper, $13.23