Women’s Wear Daily attended the Total Beauty blogging conference in Manhattan Beach last month and writer Rachel Brown’s piece on beauty bloggers’ evolving influence appears today.  Special thanks to Anne Fritz from Jet Set Girls for alerting me to the article!  (I should really get a WWD subscription, huh?  But, but…$99 per year?  In this day and age??  Eh.)

From left: Kirsten Lamberton from Beauty Riot, Jolie, Anne Fritz of Jet Set Girls, Tia Williams of Shake Your Beauty and Annie Tomlin of Bella Sugar.  I have girl crushes on all of them

MANHATTAN BEACH, Calif. — Beauty bloggers, once snubbed and now coveted by many of the beauty companies they adore, are on a bumpy evolutionary trek from detached commentators to industry insiders.

“They are like the QVC of this time,” said Don Ressler, co-chief executive officer of Intelligent Beauty, owner of Redpoint Cosmetics and iQ Derma. “They have been really involved in the [beauty] space. They have really shown they have a voice.”

At the Total Beauty Blogging Summit held partially at Intelligent Beauty’s headquarters here from May 16 to 18, the advantages and disadvantages of bloggers’ rising power were etched out. On the plus side for bloggers, much of the beauty apparatus is taking them seriously as formidable links to consumers, and a support system of bloggers and online networks has blossomed to foster their success.

On the downside, increasing competition has made it difficult for individual beauty bloggers to stand out. Bloggers complain about pesky publicists expecting coverage, and burgeoning media awareness has led to a perception that they’re swag addicts with trigger fingers for positive reviews.

Dangling on the precipice between fringe and mainstream is certainly a tricky place to be. Many beauty bloggers are making an effort to keep beauty companies at a distance since traditional media, they said, often gets too chummy with beauty firms. (more…)

Your homework for today: check out Beauty Blitz, which is positioning itself as the first online beauty magazine.  Editor-in-chief and founder Polly Blitzer has worked in beauty for years, and her list of experts on hand (Ted Gibson!  Kaz Amor!  Rita Hazan!  Sally Hershberger!) is a who’s who of top celebrity stylists.  The site is still getting its sealegs, but with upcoming resources like a national salon finder, celebrity tips, day-in-the-life diaries, free product sample listings, an ingredient glossary, and a soon-to-launch blog, it looks very promising indeed.

Cosmetic Executive Women held their annual CEW Awards Luncheon today at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York; I’ve been lucky enough to attend myself twice, and it’s a huge to-do.  The ballroom is packed with tables full of beauty editors, high-profile executives and a smattering of B-list celebs, and everybody twitters and clucks and shrieks as the winners are announced.  (Yes, just like in high school when they announced Homecoming Court over the loudspeakers, only this time the role of Head Cheerleader will be played by Allure’s Linda Wells.)  Some of the the winners which also happen to be Jolie obsessions:

Scented Bath and Body - Prestige: Tom Ford Beauty Black Orchid Finishing Spray
I cannot express my love for this product enough.  I want to eat it.  I want to bathe in it.  I want to marry it and have all its babies.  It is so, so sexy—even more amazing than the already-fabulous Black Orchid EDT and EDP.  Tom Ford famously said when creating Black Orchid that he wanted it to smell like the inside of a man’s crotch, which is the very height of weirdness.  Apparently, the inside of a man’s crotch is also all in the world that Jolie desires to spritz on herself.  So, you know, that’s bizarre.

Facial Skincare - Acne Treatment: Bare Escentuals Rare Minerals Blemish Therapy
From my favorite beauty company comes a preservative-free, all-natural, mineral zit treatment that uses sulfur.  Dab it on at night and pimples will quietly flee.

Makeup: Eye Product - Mass: Cover Girl Lash Blast Mascara
Somehow, I didn’t get around to using this mascara until this morning for the very first time.  Predictably, I fell in love; the raves are all true, and it volumizes, lengthens and thickens like a dream.  This just might upstage Max Factor Lash Perfection as my favorite drugstore mascara. 

For a complete list of winners, click here, or check out Jessica Anderson from Sephora’s beauty blog’s live twitter updates from earlier.

As a “beauty expert”, you might think I know absolutely everything in the world relating to beauty.  You would, in fact, be wrong.  I am all-too-frequently surprised, enlightened, guided and chastised by readers who take their beauty very seriously.  There are simply too many products in this world for one gal to be familiar with every…single…one, and even beauty editors (or former beauty editors, or whatever the hell you want to call me) play favorites, which leads to occasional laziness on my part.  (”Hmm…should I try this shiny, brand-spanking-new product?  Or should I use the same damn thing I do every other day of my life?  Not because I am a sloth–oh, no!  Because it is the best!  And I am too busy to use anything but the best!  Yeah, that’s it.  Er….anyhow, I’ll try the new thing tomorrow…I swear.”)  There’s a debate raging on the Jolie Facebook page about the best mascara, and several readers have piped up in favorite of Maybelline Full ‘n Soft…which I’ve never tried.  (Egads!  And, seeing as how often I’ve ragged on poor Great Lash, something makes me think the Maybelline publicists will not be sending me a free tube.  To CVS I shall go!)  With magazines dominated by advertiser concerns, I find that the best way to discover a great new (or old) product is by word-of-mouth, which is why I love hearing from you all, and why it tickles me pink when you email in or comment about your own favorite discoveries.  So, what are you waiting for?  Hit me up!

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A Day in the Life, or Jolie Gets Wordy and Earnest

Tuesday, July 5th, 2005

The day-to-day life of a beauty editor is always changing: sometimes I’ll be at my desk for eight hours straight, interviewing experts and writing stories, and other times I’ll be dashing around the city, running from appointment to appointment. The days filled with appointments are the interesting ones, since you never quite know what to expect.Appointments held in the office, where public relations people visit you to present their latest beauty products, are usually rather run-of-the-mill, and only take about 15 or 20 minutes, if you’re lucky. Of course, depending on who the PR person is, even the most mundane appointment can take a wrong turn, such as the time I sat down with a publicist I wasn’t particularly fond of. Apparently, the feeling was mutual, since I commented on her exotic bracelet, and she replied, “Oh, it’s a bracelet to ward off the evil eye. I wear it when I’ll be around negative people.” Hey, thanks!Completely different from in-office appointments are out-of-office events, thrown by public relations people at clubs, hotels, museums or restaurants, and designed to make a big enough splash that you’ll have fun and think, “You know, I think I will write about this completely ordinary and not-at-all innovative beauty product.” That’s the only possible explanation, since events are getting more and more lavish (think jungle motifs, hot male models acting as waiters, private museum viewings, day trips out-of-state and even cross-country or overseas press trips), when most of the time, an in-office appointment would serve the same purpose, let you ask more questions without worrying about getting the evil eye from other, busier editors, and would probably save the company a lot of money.In between the appointments and the events are the lunches, which can range from decadent and delightful to painful and pointless. Some of the best food I’ve ever eaten has been in the company of PR people at chic eateries like Nobu and Per Se, although the average lunch tends to run more toward places like Sushi Samba, Bryant Park Grill and Koi. Sitting down to lunch with a PR person is a crap shoot: sometimes you’ll hit it off and chat excitedly about college, “the industry” and various crazy celebrities (Tom Cruise, anybody?), whereas other times you’ll be desperately grasping at straws for things to talk about, until you’re finally forced to discuss what types of stories you’re currently writing. (That’s usually the point at which they’ll try to convince you that their new anti-wrinkle cream is just perfect! for the oil-free foundation story you’re writing.) Luckily, those uncomfortable meetings are few and far between, since PR girls seem to be getting younger and younger (it can’t be that I’m getting older!) and are endlessly cheerful and talkative.It’s a very unique industry, but it’s thankfully never boring. And at least twice a week I’ll think of my banker and lawyer friends chained to their desks and I realize, in a nutshell, that my job rocks.

Rules for PR people to live by

Tuesday, July 5th, 2005

If you are a public relations person, might I be so kind as to offer one or two words of advice? It’ll make everybody happier.1) Please don’t ask permission to send press kits. Just send them. 2) Please don’t call and ask to speak with “Shirley” when my name is “Jolie” and I have been the only person at this extention for three years. Shirley hasn’t worked here since 2002. Pick up a masthead. They’re fairly current.3) Please don’t leave a message asking me to call back to let you know that, yes, I did receive the press release that you randomly sent. If it’s really that important to you to verify that I received an unrequested piece of paper, call me back until you reach me.4) Please tell your bosses to make you stop calling “just to check in”. I know you’ve gotta do it (and I know you’d rather not—I feel your pain!)…but it’s still kind of annoying. 5) Please don’t call and read something verbatim off a piece of paper. Maybe you’re an intern, maybe you’re very nervous over the phone, maybe you really are a robot, but at least try to make it sound unrehearsed.Phew! That wasn’t so hard, was it?

Everything For a Dollar

Wednesday, July 6th, 2005

For a beauty editor, there are no two more horrific words in the English language than “beauty sale.”* If you think a beauty sale means “a fun day where you bring $15 to the office and get $100 worth of beauty loot while chatting with your colleagues and avoiding work,” you are dead wrong. In actuality, a beauty sale is a monstrous day of carnage, where otherwise civilized women suddenly morph into growling packs of wolves, greedily dumping entire drawers of products indiscriminately into bags as fast as their little hands can act.Beauty sales turn normally charitable women into snarling penny pinchers. After an hour or two, if a surplus of products is left, it’s common for items to go on sale—maybe 10 items for a dollar. Despite the knowledge that all products are insanely discounted, with profits going to charity, it’s embarrassingly common for women to try and bargain you down, arguing, for example, that they should only have to pay 80 cents, since they have only eight makeup items. At our beauty sales, it’s gotten so bad that we don’t have “last call” anymore—if you don’t buy it at “full price” (for a freakin’ dollar, people!), we’ll either save it for the next sale, or send it straight to a charity.I, thankfully, have not had to run a beauty sale in many years. I do not think my poor heart—or my somehow still enduring love for humanity—could survive it.*A quick primer: for those of you not in the know, a beauty sale happens once or twice a year at magazines, when the beauty department rounds up all sorts of products, organizes them in a conference room, and sells everything at a major discount (usually at a dollar) for charity. Mayhem ensues.

The beauty editor conundrum

Sunday, July 10th, 2005

The beauty editor conundrumAs a beauty editor, in addition to the aforementioned blowouts and manicures and pedicures (for research, of course), you also get boatloads of products thrown at you. To the uninitiated, magic little bags arriving at your office everyday stuffed with conditioner and moisturizer and lip gloss might seem like the coolest thing in the world. But after only a few months, it gets really, really old. (I promise.) I still love getting to try the newest beauty products before anybody else, but once you’ve sampled literally everything on the market, you can’t help but play favorites. And slowly but surely, you resent having to put aside your beloved-and-oh-so-efficacious creams to test the new blah, or the new whatever, or the new I don’t really care.Okay, sure, I’ll forgo the Phytodefrisant for a morning to see if this new anti-frizz gel works as well. Nope? Not as good? Tomorrow, back to my Phyto. (Or—let’s be real—in four days. You don’t think I actually wash my hair everyday, do you?) But when it comes to moisturizers and serums and cleansers, that’s when I dig my heels in. The whole idea of a skincare regimen is to get your skin into a therapeutic routine, and give the products enough time to really start working. But how can you give a routine a fighting chance when you have fifteen other serums and tonics and potions lined up on your bathroom sink, begging, “Pick me! Try me! Write about me!”?You could just stick to the same old routine, of course, forgoing research in the name of a pretty complexion. You could spend every day of every year using a different product, until your skin is raw and confused—but you’re, like, a total expert. Or you could perform the insane science project (a little of the old favorite, a little of the new, a little more of the new) that is my daily skincare experience, applying layer after layer of various product in a mad desire to try them all until your poor skin is beaten into submission—yet still glowing!It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it.