All Of My Opinions Are Your Own

Someone who read my letter last month about Big Blepharoplasty commented, “it’s so rare to reach the end of a makeup article without being nudged to buy anything.” This made me realize I haven’t been shoving enough products down your throats, and prompted me to revisit my Holy Grails: MAKEUP spreadsheet. You all love being told what to buy.

I was away from New York recently, convalescing at the sea while undergoing self-prescribed age regression therapy—my host drove me to Aventura Mall to spend the afternoon rifling through drawers, selecting the choicest 10 for $40 panties at Miami’s premiere Victoria’s Secret establishment. Sometimes one must put their scruples aside to heal her inner preteen.

My dear reader, Coming soon is a particularly interesting piece about a beautiful Asian cult—no, NOT Shen Yun—which I’ve been researching with the help of one of your fellow Vanity Project readers for the past month. While I put the finishing touches on this spectacular deep dive, this week’s letter is a classic Q&A, with questions submitted from my Instagram clientele. Constantly. I have two pairs of Air Pods so what when one loses charge, I have another on deck.

God I could write 20,000 words on this…….where to begin? Remember when I said (two newsletters ago) that my friend and I became obsessed with “smoker’s nails” for some new Kraum photos? Google “William Silano” hand photographs and see what I mean. I can’t stop thinking about them. Photo by Lauren Coleman for Kraum. The internet is full of culture critiques right now on the comeback of cigarettes, which, at 36, is the first thing that’s ever made me feel old.

It’s the question I’m asked most: “How do I do that makeup, but for hooded eyes?” The sheer volume of these requests made me suspicious of a hooded eye pandemic, so I started to ask inquirers for selfies. In my great opinion, most women who self-identify as having hooded eyes don’t actually have hooded eyes. The topic is fraught because “hooded” has no official definition. Scholars even complain about the lack of classifications of eyelid anatomy (Silva et al., 2021).

Something very strange is happening which has me questioning how well we know each other. Let’s retrace our steps: Kraum launched November of last year with a set of five Micro Brushes. It needed to go live before holiday, considering the undeniable giftability of a well-packaged set of handmade makeup brushes, the likes of which the recipient is guaranteed to have never seen before. She’ll love them, and she did! With time, I expected a growing volume of requests for individual brushes.

We’re making this today. I’ll get to the instructions, eventually. I’ve been thinking about you, a lot. My “perfectionist” tendencies are getting in the way of my prolificity as a writer. The quotations are to indicate that anyone who has used the term towards me in a derogatory fashion is a moron. If less people feared perfection, we wouldn’t be trudging through the vast wasteland of digital and physical slop.

Hi everyone, I opened a last-minute pop-up here in NYC. An incredibly generous and glamorous friend (if you don’t have one already I highly suggest getting at least one), offered her magical apartment in Soho to me to pop-up what I’m calling the Kraum “Micro Shop.” In what isn’t the first and may not be the last attempt to reconcile with you for disappearing for lengths of time, I hope if you are reading this in NYC you’ll come by today.

Kraum.co launched a week ago today. Allow me to write a few paragraphs about what happened before and since to catch you up. I hope this helps explain where I’ve been for the past month. I won’t play coy and bury the lede: the only thing I want from you right now is to buy Kraum. I’ll link you to other things below, but wait to check those out until after you’ve completed purchase of your Micro Brush Set.

Here it is, the latest Ask Me Anniething, where I take questions from Instagram and answer them on Substack in hopes of converting my audience and saving a few lives along the way. Of course, I cannot be held liable if the opposite happens, as this is for entertainment purposes only. The best thing a 25 yr old who has lost a sense of purpose can do/read? I have to assume that this purposeless person feels that age is indicative of a “should” in terms of life milestones. Existence isn’t a choice.