Coco & Creme

What’s Your Biggest Fashion Splurge Ever?

Coco and Creme — Thu, 17 May 2012 14:39:40 +0000

A couple of days ago, MTV Twitter J and Fatshion blogger Gabi Fresh had a post on Glamour about making her very first high-end shoe purchase—a pair of red bottom heels.

Though the plus style icon isn’t one to follow celebrity trends, she said she fell in love with Christian Louboutin’s Unbout Illusion pumps after seeing them on a few different gossip blogs, and at 25 she figured:

“It’s about time for a classic grown up pair of heels.”

So, to Barney’s she went and became the proud owner of the $795 pair of pumps which are now completely out of stock. Win!

Gabi’s experience made me think about my own first big fashion splurge. Like her, I spent my ends on footwear, although the pair was nowhere near as expensive as the ones she bought. I walked into Nordstrom and decided I’d try to just find a trendy, fun pair of pumps I really liked without paying attention to the price tag and I walked out with a pair of snake print Steve Madden stilettos for about $125. For someone who doesn’t like to spend on shoes because I don’t take care of them, that was big.

Most of us try to get the most bang for our buck when we need a little retail therapy but there are times when we see something we just have to have and inhibitions go out the door and ramen noodles come in as we justify as purchase. As long as you don’t break the bank, there’s nothing wrong with a little splurge in the name of style every now and then. At least that’s what we tell ourselves when we hand our hard-earned money over to the cashier.

What’s the biggest fashion purchase you’ve ever made?

Forget Red, Find Your Perfect Shade of Orange

Coco and Creme — Thu, 17 May 2012 12:38:09 +0000

Black women put a lot of effort into finding the perfect shade of red lipstick but in 2012, we’re off that. Tangerine is officially the shade of the year and if you haven’t found a way to perfect this color on your pout, now is the time.

The great thing is that tangerine comes in all shades from frosty peaches to bright neon oranges and that means it’s no biggie to find the right shade—or two—to complement your skin. With a little trial and error, you’ll have your go-to sherbet shade in no time. Here are a few tips to help you before you hit up the makeup counter.

Fresh Fabulous Fruits For Your Face

Coco and Creme — Wed, 16 May 2012 19:16:13 +0000

The best place for fruit is obviously inside your body but fruits can do your skin a world of good as topical treatments as well.

Have you ever noticed how many facial cleansers and masks have fruity ingredients like citrus or strawberry? It’s not just for the smell, this food group provides great benefits for your skin and there’s no need to run out to the drugstore and grab products with these ingredients, when you can put the real thing right on your face and get the same benefit. Here are a few fruits to grab from your fridge to freshen up your face.

Bananas

This yellow fruit is rich in vitamin A, B and E which means it’s great to prevent aging and wrinkles and help maintain a healthy skin tone. Add 1 tsp of honey and 1/4 tsp of jojoba oil to create a nice firming and moisturizing mask.

Citrus fruits

Lemons, limes, oranges, and tangerines have great astringent properties that help restore skin to it’s natural state. If there are dark spots or acne scars you want to lighten, simply take the inside of the whole fruit or just the rind and rub it across your face. Leave the juice on your skin for about 10-15 minutes and rinse. You should notice a nice toning effect and oil reduction when you’re done.

Would You Rock? Caviar Nails

Coco and Creme — Wed, 16 May 2012 17:32:30 +0000

Caviar nails are insanely popular right now and are the hottest manicure trend to take over ladies’ hands since ombre nails made their debut. But as hot as these nails look, we can’t help but wonder just how practical they are.

It’s hard enough trying to make a manicure last a week without polish getting nicked from regular everyday activities. This textured style ups the chipped ante quite a bit because your nail bed is essentially covered with a ton of colorful microbeads that are held in place by a simple base coat of polish.

The coolest thing about this manicure is that it’s totally a D-I-Y kind of project, if you have the patience, and you can remix the trend anyway you please with the color beads and pattern you choose. Sephora carries $25 Ciaté Caviar Manicure kits in three shades but since you’ll be doing good just to have the 3-D nail look last nearly a week, that could be a bit of an investment just to rock for one night. But who knows, it might just be worth it.

Would you rock ‘em?

4 Mascaras That Are Better Than False Lashes

Coco and Creme — Wed, 16 May 2012 14:46:35 +0000

There’s a reason mascara is the one makeup product most women say they can’t do without. We love long lashes and a coat or two of a good mascara will give our eyes just enough pop to feel presentable to the world.

If you weren’t so blessed in the lash department, you may have turned to falsies to achieve more length. And though false lashes are great for special occasions when you want to be glammed up, it’s not easy to master the technique of putting them on properly plus it takes a significant amount of time, and they can really be too much in some settings. But don’t worry, cosmetics companies have started to realize most women want a natural-looking length for their lashes and mascaras with fiber systems that promise more length on your lids are becoming the norm. If you haven’t had a chance to get in on this new trend, do it now and save yourself the trouble of falsies. Here are four mascaras we recommend.

Too Faced Better Than False Lashes Lash Extension System $35

Don’t let the price tag scare you, the name says it all. This three-step system from Too Faced claims to work like brush on false lashes by giving you length and volume. The kit comes with a base and top coat, which looks and works like regular mascara, and in between those steps, you apply a nylon lash fiber system that helps activate the mascara to stretch out your length where you want it.

Hmmm. Does Solange’s Hair Really Rep Natural Transitioning?

Coco and Creme — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:02:17 +0000

Solange is a hair chameleon. One day she’s rocking her teeny weeny afro, the next she has a head full of natural curls a la weave. Either way, we love how she reps for natural hair texture, whether the tresses are actually from her own head or not, but when it comes to her being the face of Carol’s Daughter’s transitioning movement, her obvious head of weave is making us go hmmm.

To be fair, Solange is hardly the first spokesmodel to promote a product without her real hair. Most models probably don’t even use the products they’re advertising. However, when the point of the campaign is natural hair, and more specifically transitioning natural hair, we don’t quite understand the hairstyle featured here. Since Solange already did the big chop at least a year ago, she couldn’t genuinely rep the movement anyway but we’re thinking the styles we see Bey’s little sister rocking on a casual day in Brooklyn or while on vacay in Paris, and even in some fashion spreads would be a better fit for this campaign than what Carol’s Daughter chose. Maybe as the movement kicks off and more promos hit the public, the hair care line will chose looks natural transitioners can really relate to because so far this isn’t one of them.

Do you think Solange represents natural transitioning in this campaign?

Azealia Banks “1991″ Album Cover – Fresh or Mess?

Coco and Creme — Tue, 15 May 2012 22:09:40 +0000

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Why Won’t Designers Just Use Women Who Look Like Consumers To Sell Clothes?

Coco and Creme — Tue, 15 May 2012 19:51:06 +0000

It’s such a logical idea to encourage a woman to buy clothes by displaying them on someone who actually looks like her, but as we know in the fashion industry this is as foreign a concept as actually using a woman of color for a magazine cover as though somehow white women couldn’t possibly be the only ones interested in high fashion.

As it turns out, the case for using “real women” to sell clothes to consumers isn’t just backed by popular opinion or a sentiment of wanting to see someone like yourself in an ad campaign, research shows that shoppers are more likely to buy clothing when they see it on someone who actually resembles them—be that in body shape, skin color, or age.

Modeling agency founder and academic Ben Barry recently tested this novel “real woman” idea using eight ads for the same Diane Von Furstenberg dress. The ads were identical in concept and art direction, but featured models of different ages, body size, and race. Barry randomly selected two of the ads, showed them to women, and simply asked which ad made them want to buy the dress, and here’s what he found:

When the model shown was the woman’s size, their intent to buy increased 200%. In the subgroup of respondents over size 6, that intent increased 300%.

Black women were 1.5 times more likely to purchase a product advertised by a black model.

Women increased their purchase intentions by more 175% when they saw models who reflected their age.

When you look at these results from 2,500 women across the U.S. and Canada, you’d think the fashion industry would be having an aha moment, but instead we’ll likely be left with what we’ve always been given–special features. Plus-size issues, age issues, black issues—all those special editions we get excited over at the time but don’t really want because we’d prefer to just be incorporated as part of the norm. Responses from the women surveyed expressed that same feeling, while also pointing out that we no longer want to be sold fashion based on our insecurities, which is the tried ad true approach that currently stands.

If we were talking about cellulite or wrinkle cream, okay, show me how to get rid of it. But trying to push a dress with a woman 20 years younger and 20 pounds lighter than the average American doesn’t get retailers far. You can’t step back in time, although some women like to with the way they dress, and by the time you’d lose the 20 pounds to fit in the dress you want it would be out of season. So again we have to keep asking why is it designers are more inclined to sell fantasies than fashionable clothes consumers can and will actually buy?

Maybe they’re the ones with the hangups about age and size and skin color and they refuse to see, not the direction America is going in, but where we already are. In these thrifty times, I’d think clothing designers, retailers, and advertisers would be willing to give anything a try to get more sales, but all they keep doing is tweaking the fantasy rather than selling us the reality that we can still look good at 50, with 50 more pounds on our bodies than we need, and with a skin tone that isn’t always highly regarded in society. I’d think the backlash alone every time they refuse to recognize the full spectrum of women would be enough to spark a change in approach, but perhaps designers are content with dwindling profit margins. Those narrowly defined beauty boats may be floating now but eventually they will sink as consumers begin to step up more and more and demand proper representation for their retail dollars.

Why do you think designers won’t cater to consumers with the type of models they use?

Trend to Try: Side Ponytails

Coco and Creme — Tue, 15 May 2012 17:59:14 +0000

Want to make a hair statement in a simple, do-it-yourself, casual way? The side ponytail is the way to go. We know this look is a fav of Bravo’s Andy Cohen but it’s one of the looks we love too and this slick style is even easier to create than a messy up-do.

To create the simplest of side ponytails all you need is a hair-tie and something to smooth your edges down, but to give your pony just a little more ooomph, try these ideas:

Give your face some fringe

Take a couple inches from the front of one or both sides of your face and create soft curls, waves, or flips using rollers, a flat iron or curling iron. This just adds a little dimension to the look and might be a more comfy style for you if you don’t like having all of your hair off your face.

Cosmetologist Becomes Multiple Amputee When Butt Injections Go Bad

Coco and Creme — Tue, 15 May 2012 16:02:36 +0000

As a cosmetologist and fashion designer, April Brown’s life was all about making other women look beautiful, but when she underwent an unlicensed cosmetic procedure to enhance her own figure, she was actually left disfigured. Life-threatening infections from the backroom butt implants she received have left her a multiple amputee with no hands or legs below the knee cap. The mother of two told NBC 4 News:

“I got the butt implants five years ago. For five years, I lived in pain. Excruciating pain.”

Although many women whose health has been compromised from these procedures have filed charges against their accusers, Brown refuses to name the unlicensed practitioner who injected her with silicone. She did say the practice is common at pumping parties around her area of Manchester, California, and she said the facilitators often lie and say the product they are using is medical grade silicone when it’s really industrial silicone.

Brown admits that low self-esteem is what pushed her to take the risk and receive the butt injections, but the support she’s received from her family and friends since the incident has shown her how loved she was all along. Now she wants to spread that positivity as a motivational speaker and tell her story of survival.

“We don’t validate each other,” she says. “We really don’t know how our friends feel about us, unless we have very expressive friends.”

Unfortunately, there are too many women who feel the same as Brown—and too many others who are willing to take advantage of those insecurities by injecting these harmful materials and changing their lives more than they could have imagined. There have been enough negative reports on the dangers of these procedures for people to realize a bigger rump just isn’t worth the risk.