Day four in Paris. Had coffee at the Ritz Hotel this morning with a Lancome legend, Monsieur Jean Louis Gueret. JLG, a very dapper Frenchman with his red pocket square, cuffed gray flannel trousers and striped shirt, guided us through his mini-Lancome museum of mascaras from the 70s to now. JLG helped create all of them. His most recent baby is Oscillation, which is my current fave. (I put it on this morning, then reapplied to the tips before I went out for dinner. It's incredible stuff.) We learned some interesting things, such as the number of bristles on a Definicils mascara brush. Answer: 210. That's JLG above, from 2008. If anyone wants to translate the video, please do!
We were at the Ritz to talk about our top secret new mascara coming to Europe soon and to the U.S. later this year. It's completely different than Oscillation, but very, very exciting. I promise I'll give you the details as soon as I can.
From there we headed to the Centre Pompidou museum, which the Lancome Paris team refers to simply as Beaubourg. There was a mesmerizing exhibit by Pierre Soulages, France's most famous living painter. His early paintings were mainly black and white and morphed to all black in later years. The texture he achieved with a single color in a single painting was beautiful. (See what I mean in the video above.) It was an interesting exhibit to see after visiting with Jean Louis because several of the all-black paintings looked like giant cakes of mascara formula. When JLG visited almost two years ago for the launch of Oscillation, the labs sent over a big plexiglass box of gooey black mascara formula. (I honestly don't remember why. Maybe we wanted something cool to decorate the room with for the editor appointments?) It had dried out a bit and resembled soft black candle wax.
I'm not sure what Mr. Soulages would think of this.
Kae asked what I'm eating every day. All bad stuff, Kae! Macarons, crepes, pasta, hot chocolate, wine, lots of coffee. And a salad here and there. I'll detox a bit next week. But at least I've been walking a lot. Makes me feel less guilty.
Let's do a quick giveaway. In honor of the effervescent JLG, let's do a fab lash trio giveaway--Oscillation mascara, Oscillation Powerbooster primer/lash booster, and Bi-Facil eyemakeup remover, which everyone in Paris loves. They pronounce it bee-fah-seal.
Please post by Thursday night. We'll pick one winner at random. Off to check out a fragrance commercial shoot tomorrow starring one of our lovely spokesmodels. We'll do another giveaway and name some past winners. Talk to you soon!
