My friends who work in the cosmetics and beauty industry usually introduce me to new products and colors. I loosely follow beauty trends and occasionally experiment with new products and colors; one trend that I recently and belatedly embraced is the nude lip. Amongst my friends and colleagues I’m known for wearing bold lip colors; especially my year-round favorite matte red lip stain, except in the office. So it kind of caught me off guard when I fell in love with several neutral lip colors on a recent browse at Kiko. I’ve tried nude lip colors in the past but struggled to find the perfect shade; they were either too pink, or too beige and never the right mix of brown to suit my complexion.

I occasionally browse the beauty department of a large drug or a cosmetics store like Sephora to experiment with a new nail or lip color. I tend to shy away from the beauty departments of large department stores because I find the selection overwhelming and not easy to compare since the products are segregated by brand, each with its own sales team adding biased pressure. Plus the price points of drug store and cosmetic store brands like Sephora and Kiko are perfect to experiment.

I have a pretty simple make up routine with a handful l of products that I use daily when going to work or going out that I apply in 10 minutes or less and each of these is already in heavy rotation.

What?  You didn’t think this post was going to be about being naked did you?