September 6, 2007
Heading into fall, your favorite lipsticks, and those banned Dove
Ads
It seems The Three Tomatoes were just enjoying Memorial
Day weekend, and here we are saying good bye to summer whites, everything pastel, drinks with umbrellas, long weekends, fruits and
vegetables that actually have a taste, barely there sandals, tans (fake or real), and hello to black clothes, real shoes, full schedules, football,
the world series, and the other serious stuff of life. Like, what do you do when your favorite lipstick is discontinued, and how
the heck did we miss the Dove TV commercial ban controversy?
Gone but Not Forgotten
If you’re like The Three Tomatoes you have lipstick baskets
filled with too red, reds, too pale pinks, frosted shades that didn’t look good when they were in, and other assorted mistakes that you never
wear, but just can’t bring yourself to throw out. So when you actually find a lipstick that’s just the right shade and texture
you’re in lipstick nirvana, so you’ll so relate to this little drama that happened to a tomato pal recently. She stopped
into Bloomingdale’s to pick up her very favorite MAC lipstick, and discovered to her horror that it had been discontinued. She
was about to leave and drown her sorrows in a martini when the sales woman told her about “Gone but Not Forgotten,” a program that
offers discontinued products from MAC and other Estée Lauder brands like Clinique, Prescriptives, Bobbie Brown, La Mer, and Origins.
Here’s how it works. You call 800-387-6707, hit option #7, and if they have your discontinued product you can
order up to six and pay with a credit card. Or for MAC products, you can also go online to their “Goodbyes” section
where you’ll find limited editions and discontinued MAC products. And Prescriptives has an online section called “Last
Chance” where you can order too.
Well this got us to wondering about other brands and
it turns out there’s a site called Cosmetics and
More which specializes in hard to find, discontinued and one time only cosmetics,
fragrances and beauty aids for brands such as Revlon, Almay, Ultima, Streetwear, and Charles of the Ritz. And
Physicians Formula also sells its discontinued products directly too. Call (800) 227-0333. Who
knew?
And then there’s Three Custom, which has a store right here in
Manhattan (54 West 22nd St. 3rd Floor, just off 5th) and a great web site where you can search their archives of discontinued products by brand, or (option #2) they’ll re-create your
favorite discontinued shade. You can send them a dime sized sample and they’ll re-create the formula and keep it on file
whenever you want to re-order. And the third option (we love threes you know), is to have them create a shade
just for you -- you can chose from one of their 250 ready made shades or a custom blend of any color for the eyes, lips, cheeks and
face. Appointments can be made at the store with a color specialist (for a fee) who will help you create your own customized
products.
Those banned Dove Commercials
We don’t know how we missed this story when it first was reported
a few months back, so this may be old news to some of you. But if you somehow missed this story too, here’s what happened.
By now, you’ve no doubt seen the Dove Pro Age
print ads which were beautifully photographed by Annie Leibovitz and feature six real “older” women, of all
shapes, sizes, and color, in the all together but posed discretely. (A continuation of Dove’s
celebration of real women, and of course real Dove products too.) Whenever we come across one of these ads in a magazine, we
silently salute Dove and give credit to these brave women who were willing to put it all out there, age spots, wrinkles, sags and all.
But what we didn’t know until recently, is that there is a companion TV campaign, that’s running globally, with the exception of
certain Islamic nations – and -- the good old U.S. of A. because they’ve been banned by the FCC! Day time TV is more
risqué, not to mention Victoria Secret ads, Desperate Housewives, and MTV videos simulating (we think) the real deal. Well
the spots are posted at the Dove web site (not controlled fortunately
by the FCC) so you can view them and judge their “risqué ness” for yourself. Well we’d
rather have them banned for being risqué than banned because they just don’t want to see women over fifty unclothed and are shouting "put
it on, put it on".
So here’s to flaunting what you’ve got, and gone but not
forgotten.
‘til next week,
The Three Tomatoes
Copyright©2007. The Three
Tomatoes. All rights reserved.
