One woman’s nude is another woman’s peach

I’ve had some pretty good luck recently with online make-up purchases. It’s always a tricky proposition picking out appropriate colours online, based on dubious photos and iffy descriptions, but there is one remedy.

Zuneta, the online beauty boutique, has a skin profile system that allows you to enter details about your eye, hair and skin colour into the site so that every time you shop, they make personal colour recommendations. They also have the service for skincare, so if you are looking for the right face wash for combination skin, or the right eye cream for sensitive complexions, you’ll find it on the site.

I’ve tested the system out myself, and have had good experiences overall. I bought the Becca Eye Tint in Baroque, described as ‘a rich fleshy beige’, which is now one of my favourite eye shadows. I also bought the Becca Sheer Lip Tint in Laelia – the only time I’ve managed to buy lip colour online that I won’t be returning. The only less than stellar purchase was the Belmacz Gold Leaf Lip Gloss, which was far stickier than I like in a lip-gloss.

www.zuneta.com

Outlet shopping comes to the web

Fingers on keyboards, girls. Get ready, Net-a-Porter’s discount website, The Outnet, launches 2 April. I’ve heard the discounts will go up to 75%. I’m so there.

Literary Glasgow: the Aye Write! festival

If I wasn’t wrapped up in assignment writing and kitten-sitting, I’d be after highbrow (or middlebrow, anyway) pursuits this week with the Aye Write! festival in full swing.

Tonight, I would go see Piers Dudgeon discuss his research into the fascinating Daphne du Maurier. I finally read Rebecca last year, and have been dying to go to Cornwall ever since. I would also see James Frey, as I have very strong opinions about the whole ‘truth’ in memoir controversy. He's the guy that Oprah Winfrey endorsed and then later ambushed on her show, outing him as a liar. He stretched the truth in his memoir, but in my mind, the genre is about perception and impressions, not absolute truth. As if there was such a thing, anyway. Why do people feel they are ‘owed’ the truth?

But I digress. Okay, back to Aye Write! - Kate Summerscale will be discussing crime writing with Ian Rankin on Thursday, which should prove a very interesting talk. Summerscale wrote The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, which is on my reading to-do list.

And finally, though it’s not part of the Aye Write! festival, I would also go see Dave Gibbons at Borders on Saturday, and have him sign my copy of Watchmen.

Full details of the festival can be found at www.ayewrite.com. Warning: this website is slow, klunky, and a bit difficult to use, but it does offer online booking. Details of the Dave Gibbons signing can be found on the Borders website.