GOOD FOUNDATIONS

I'm a self-confessed foundation addict - it's partly because I like quite a groomed beauty look, but it's also because I'm long past the age where I dabbed a spot of concealer under my eyes and left my skin bare. Somewhere in my late thirties I found my skin became less even - and if I believe what I hear at the press launches for new anti-ageing products, I'm not alone, which is why there's suddenly a vast array of products which promise to fade brown spots and tackle redness and so on.

This Dior Forever foundation is my current favourite: it provides enough coverage to give an even complexion and reflects light away from fine lines - it also has skincare benefits built into the formula which keep the skin moisturised so that you don't get that ghastly five thirty thing when you look at yourself in the office loo as you're about to go home and realise you look four hundred. Anyway, I like it - it creates an elegant finish without screaming 'I'm wearing a tonne of foundation'

Lauder's Double Wear Light is, apparently, one of the country's top selling foundations - until I discovered Dior Forever it was my favourite, and I'd still wear it if I were going for a hectic night out because it lasts and lasts and lasts. It also photographs well (I'm sure you're not nearly as vain as I am and don't ruthlessly manage all your photographs so that only the ones that present one's best side ever appear: Mr Trefusis only posted one picture of me without make up on Facebook - he soon saw his error)

However, I do think proper foundation only really works in mild to cold weather - the minute the sun comes out everything changes and one goes immediately from perfectly groomed to over-made-up - think Kate Middleton. OF course, this year, in the UK, we can get away with wearing the makeup equivalent of black opaques well into June unless something changes radically, but tomorrow I'm off to Marrakech for the weekend, where foundation will not only look wrong, it will melt off my face. Not only that, but Newby Hands, beauty guru and Bazaar's Beauty Editor At Large has been telling me for ages that going bare skinned looks much more modern, even with made up eyes or lips. I'm not at all ready for no make-up - in the same way as I couldn't bare my legs - so I'm experimenting with BB creams, which seem to be all the rage. They're popular because they're a multi-tasker, offering the combined benefits of a moisturiser, a sun-screen and a foundation, to care and perfect the skin in one easy step. The Lauder one is based on their ever-popular DayWear moisturiser and has a beautiful satiny finish and an SPF of 35. I liked it, but despite what Newby said about the no-makeup look, I didn't feel modern, I simply felt a little too nude.

I slightly prefer the Clinique BB cream  - it's less moisturising than the Lauder one and it's only SPF 30 (not sure my skin will know the difference) but it's a little thicker and has more staying power. Unlike Lauder's, you definitely couldn't use it as a primer under your usual foundation, but it has more staying power. It's better than a tinted moisturiser and it's the one I've packed for my Morocco trip tomorrow in the regulation clear polythene bag. Actually, my clear polythene bag is rather large - I can't travel without a beauty product for every eventuality - are they going to clobber me at the airport? I guess I'll find out.

On balance, I think BB creams are perfect for thirty somethings who want a little extra perfecting and are pushed for time enough to want a multi-tasker. For me, they're good for a weekend in the park with Trefusis Minor and The TT, but for work and for when I'm not loafing round West London in jeans trying to avoid looking like a Boden advert.  But Estee Lauder's new (ish) Invisible is absolutely the halfway house I think I've been looking for: it's almost completely weightless so you don't feel it on the skin and the special magic formula adapts the colour when it's on your skin in a fabulously chameleon-like way, making the match absolutely seamless. It's the only foundation I've ever worn that's elicited spontaneous compliments about how good my skin looks* - even Newby didn't think I was wearing foundation.

*someone at work asked if I'd had 'something done' the first time I wore Invisible - I'm not absolutely sure it's a compliment but I took it to mean that it did its job and glossed over all the wrinkles and crevasses that are otherwise visible on the Trefusis fizzog

Zou Bisou Bisou - MadMen Season Five

I missed MadMen, unfortunately, but I think this clip of the latest Mrs Don Draper shows why it's still so fabulous: it has a lot to do with the amazing hair and make-up, doesn't it?

MRS MINIVER

Greer Garson as the eponymous Mrs Miniver

There are a great many reasons to love Mrs Miniver - the film is wonderful, and the book, based on Jan Struther's newspaper columns for The Times, is even better. The film is, of course, a wonderfully uplifting piece of wartime propoganda - Churchill apparently said it did more for the allied cause than a flotilla of battleships -  but it's the character of Mrs Miniver herself which is the most interesting, at once subtle, wise and thoughtful. I'm particularly fond of this quotation;

“Mrs. Miniver suddenly understood why she was enjoying the forties so much better than she had enjoyed the thirties: it was the difference between August and October, between the heaviness of late summer and the sparkle of early autumn, between the ending of an old phase and the beginning of a fresh one.”


Jan Struther's book is still in print and has lost nothing of its charm. For a very entertaining, fictional account of wartime film making, do read Lissa Evans' marvellous book 'Their Finest Hour and a Half', long-listed for the 2009 Orange Prize.

THE TREFUSIS UP-DO

Esquire party Nov 2008, hair by Graham Tilley at Tilley & Montgomery

The Trefusis hair is, I guess, the apogee of up-do's - it took the lovely and very skilled Graham more than two hours to do (he's a virgoan perfectionist, what can I say) and it was so securely pinned I couldn't face taking it down after the party, so I slept with it like that, and went to work with extremely grand hair.

Anyway, much as I wish I had Trefusis hair everyday, possibly all as a clip-on-able hair-piece, like Joan Collins, I don't. If my hair is up, it's most likely because I've skewered it with a pencil, which is effective if inelegant. With a pencil, I seem to be able to achieve a MadMen kind of pleat, in a way I never can if left to my own devices with a can of Elnett and half a dozen kirby grips. But, you know, like shaking cocktails in an old Dolmio jar, the pencil-skewered up-do always felt a bit like I was letting the side down. Quite by chance, however, when in Boots buying a hairbrush, I stumbled upon a kind of thatching hook device (two colours, gold for blondes, dark brown for brunettes, redheads you're on your own) by a company called Goody. It costs about a fiver and does everything a pencil can do with infinitely greater elegance- it's also invisible once you've stuck it in your hair. If you have hair that's long enough to twist into a French pleat, all you need is this single pin - truly it is a product of pure genius.

Goody Simple Styles Modern Up-do pin

Goody Simple Styles Spin Pin

Up-do confidence spurred by the effortlessness of the hook thingy, I made another foray into Boots and discovered the hair screws above - all you do is twist your hair into a chignon (very on-trend this S/S '12), and screw the screws into it - two pins are all you need for a completely secure chignon. I've also used these do do a French pleat and one of those bouffy backcombed top knots that everyone seems to be wearing - they work best when you're creating quite a tight bun, but again, pure genius and not a pencil nor a trillion bendy hair pins in sight.


It's not Graham's Trefusis hair, but for an everyday up-do, it's pretty blooming brilliant.


Goody Simple Styles available in Boots stores or online at Amazon
Graham the hair God, available at Tilley and Carmichael, 5 Silver Place, London W1 Tel, 0207 287 7677

THE KISSING BOOTH

This little film won a short film competition Divine chocolate ran with Birds Eye View last year. What do you think? Is a bar of chocolate better than a snog?

MORE RED LIPSTICK

I know I'm obsessed by red lipstick, but I think this new Tom Ford one is a game-changer. The colour is a rich ruby red, neither too pink nor too orange.  It's very densely pigmented so it stays and stays yet it doesn't dry your lips but remains glossy (unlike the otherwise wonderful Bobby Brown red). It looks expensive, to boot, which is just as well since it's Tom Ford and thus costs eleventy three billion pounds.

It's not an everyday red like the Dior Addict 'New Look' one I mentioned a few posts ago, it is quite an emphatic shade. But by God, I love it.

I think it could be the red lipstick against which all other red lipsticks should be judged.

Tom Ford, Scarlet Rouge, £36

CHILDREN'S PARTIES

When I was a child, birthday parties took place at home: my mother kicked off with children's party games - pass the parcel, of course, pin the tail on the donkey, musical statues - you know the drill - and then we'd have tea - cheese and pineapple hedgehogs, cocktail sausages,  jelly and icecream and a home-made birthday cake. Then, at home-time, off everyone would go with a balloon and a slice of cake wrapped in a paper napkin.

Fast forward nearly forty years and this kind of party seems a rarity - clever mums play it as a retro-riff and get away with it, but once the infants are primary school age, it seems one is expected to make the kind of effort appropriate to offspring of Oligarchs, or to the launch of a new beauty product. A venue must be hired, with an entertainer - possibly two - or alternatively, one might do what a friend of Trefusis Minor does every year, which is to hire an entire cinema for a preview screening of a hot-ticket children's movie. It seems that these days the food must be kiddie-lavish too - I remember a splendid party where the children were presented with the tiniest possible smoked salmon sandwiches, vast amounts of quails eggs, and a croquembouche of Ladurée macarons, but I suppose that's West London for you. Don't get me started on the awesome contents of party bags - I swear the infamously high-grade GQ Men of the Year goody bag has nothing on some of those Trefusis Minor has come home with.

Of course, these kinds parties are very lovely and the children have a marvellous time: I'm sure that if we were very well-off we'd pull out the stops too but we really can't run to that kind of opulence chez Trefusis: I do wish that someone brave would come out with a Party Non-Proliferation Treaty, and we could go back to the low-fi approach of the 1970's.


I'm old enough to know that I don't need to compete with the hiring of a cinema, or having a flower-fairy themed party with 'real fairies' in a West London garden square and until now, we've had parties at home similar to the ones i had as a child. However, if one has to invite the whole class even something very modest gets shockingly expensive - now that The TT is about to turn five and every single person she meets seems to be her 'bestest friend in the whole world', I've had trouble capping the guest list at school friends only. I can't see how I can get away without hiring the church hall and the thought of trying to keep thirty children happy for a couple of hours with me as the 'mum-tertainment' fills me with clammy-handed dread, so there will have to be someone hired in for a side-show too. I can manage the food on my own, and bugger the party bags - they can have cake and a novelty pencil - but still, it's working out at about £100 per hour. Yikes.

Does anyone have any suggestions about giving a fun children's party without busting the budget or a blood-vessel?