I guess I sort of blame Tarte for the mascot trend. About a year or two ago Tarte started featuring a mascot of Shape Tape on their various channels. The mascot would do day in the life type posts or just be hanging out at Tarte HQ creating some sort of chaos. It was actually pretty funny to watch the reels and Tiktok’s Tarte created with someone dressed up like a big old barrel of Shape Tape. Fast forward and everyone has some sort of mascot running around their social media platforms lately. Bath & Body Works has now joined the ranks of mascot merry making with a giant duck that’s featured in some of their content. Ya know, the legendary rubber duckie from their shopping bags and marketing.

Back in 2022 that duck quietly disappeared from Bath and Body Works and trust me, fans noticed and it started an entire movement on social media to bring him back. I’m just sitting here wishing someone would create a group to bring back the Stila Girls. I’m manifesting that for us Stila fans. But yeah, that duck is popular.

And guess what? I was today year’s old when I realized he has a name.

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Who the hell created Summerween? STRAIGHT TO JAIL! And why is Bath and Body Works trying to serve up a Christmas in July Collection? Listen, first off, I can’t even get Summer in New York. It’s rain all day, everyday. At this point I’m going tot tell people I live in London. While I’m busy worrying about when Summer is coming Bath and Body Works is plotting an entire Christmas in July Collection.

That’s right! They’re dropping the Signature Holiday Collection Scents in Christmasy Summer packaging this coming July. We’re getting Winter Candy Apple, Merry Cookie, Winterberry Wonder, and Frosted Coconut Snowball as an early Summer launch. Each scent will be available with limited-edition Summer prints. I’m gonna call it and say this reeks poor sales. Just like many beauty brands at the moment I’m pretty sure Bath and Body Works has a slump in sales. A lot of repetitive releases, price raises, and more contribute to the lack of sales.

During desperate times we need to take desperate measures so of course, Bath and Body Works decided that a Christmas launch in July was needed. Why is this a bad thing? Because it’s rushing the Holidays even more than ever before. We all hate being force fed Holiday Makeup releases as soon as September right? At least I do! It’s just a little too early for me. I come from a time when the first Holiday release would drop end of October and even the first week of November. The last ten plus years we see Holiday Collection as soon as late August and into September. Sadly, Fall Collections are a thing of the past as Holiday Sets and releases completely overtook any and all Fall Collections.

This ruins the Holidays for me on so many levels. I’m just not ready for Christmas Collections this soon. And Summerween? Another equally bad Holiday in my opinion. I love Halloween as you know but the fact that we now have people celebrating Summerween with places like Home Goods creating Halloween/Summer releases is absurd to me.

Everyone needs to go straight to jail for this. The marketing teams are working too hard lately. What are your thoughts on Halloween and Christmas releases this early?

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Hello, people of the Internet. Wake up! It’s Tuesday! It’s raining again in New York! And my makeup life is boring lately. For a month and a half I’ve gone out of the house without a stitch of foundation on! Say word! It’s true! I’ve been hanging out in the wild without makeup on and it’s been a crazy ride.

Where have I been? What have I been doing? Why haven’t I been posting? I needed a break to be honest. For the past several years, even while on vacation, I always had new content live on Musings of a Muse but the last few weeks I just haven’t been inspired enough to post. I needed to recharge my batteries. I travelled a lot in April and the last few weeks I’ve had a lot more free time to enjoy stuff that has been put on the back burner. I’ve rediscovered some of my fandoms, embraced new hobbies, and even had some interesting adventures meeting friends from the Internet.

Musings of a Muse has always been a safe space for me and I hope it’s one for you as well. The world is in a state of unrest and the one thing that’s always felt safe and free of chaos was the world of beauty. Sure, we have our drama here and there but for the most part it always feels like coming home when a new blush comes out or someone emails or dms me to tell me, “Have you tried this product? It’s amazing!” I still find the joy in beauty and that’s why this blog is still around after 2007.

I’ll be updating new posts shortly. I hope you’re all doing well. Many of you I talk to on IG or Reddit and some of you via email but if we haven’t talked in a while know that I miss you. I hope you’re out there being the amazing humans I know you are.

Let’s chat some beauty soon 🙂

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I went to meet some of my fellow Reddit Whovians this weekend and I happen to be a chatty kind of girl but I strongly suspect they choose the location of our meet at an extra noisy place (so, they didn’t have to talk!). Everyone was a tad bit awkward and I felt like I was the only one trying to chat it up. It was odd because online everyone won’t shut up but in real life everyone was sort of quiet. I mean, they choose a great place to have this meet because the music was extra loud and it was impossible to really have a deep conversation about Time Lords. Lucky them! Not so lucky me as I walked out with a bit of a headache and feeling like I didn’t know the people that I met outside of our online lives (this actually made me really nervous as I’m meeting a very special online friend for the first time very soon and I hope it doesn’t go as badly as this did). P.S. You know you’re getting old when loud music gives you a migraine. I seriously, felt overwhelmed by how loud everything was.

How many people remember going to the MAC store or counter and it was like a party that just got into gear at 1AM on Saturday morning? I remember it well and I was so there for it. If you walked into any department store and had no idea where MAC was located you only had to follow the music to locate them. They’d be surrounded by quiet elegant counters like Laura Mercier and Dior and MAC would be there like that one person playing their music in the car extra loud and singing along to it at the red light. When you’re younger you appreciate the experience but loud, pounding music when you get older just isn’t it anymore. I literally just avoid anywhere with loud, pulsating music lately as I want to enjoy my meal with friends or my boyfriend peacefully. Or I want to choose my lipstick shade without the entire display rattling do to the base of the song playing.

For those who simply can’t take that kind of sensory overload we now have Sephora Quiet Hours. From now through July 26th in select Sephora stores we’ll have pilot program that provides a quiet shopping experience. If it works out I imagine Sephora will continue the project.

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Listen, if we can watch Barry Keoghan sipping Jacob Elordi’s bathwater (and other un-mentiomable bodily fluids) we can totally buy Sydney Sweeney’s new Bathwater Bliss Soap. I don’t see the problem here. No but seriously, I am kind of sort of grossed out by that. Like, why? But dude, there’s a fetish for everything and I’m not going to yuck anyone’s yum. So, if washing yourself with a bar of soap infused with Sydney’s potential DNA (hey, her bathwater might have some flaky skin in there ya never know!) is your thing I’m not judging.

Apparently to create Bathwater Bliss Soap, Sydney took a dip in a bubble bath and Dr. Squatch packaged some the same suds from the ad they shot into a brand new product called Bathwater Bliss which is available for a limited time. It’s formulated with exfoliating sand, pink bark extract, Sydney’s bath water, and potentially her sweat, tears, pieces of skin, and other unmentionables (I dramatized the last part for effect).

I am curious how MUCH of her bathwater is in each bar. I assume it’s mere drop but question, is this hygienic? I mean, if I use it could I catch an STD or something? I’m kidding, I’m kidding. But it just seems a wild idea and trust me, over the years, we’ve all heard some really great Beauty Most Unusual stories haven’t we? We’re all old enough to remember when Lady Gaga told her perfume was going to smell like blood and semen and of course, we had Sarah Jessica Parker saying hers smelled like a sweaty man.

We’ve lived through all! Snail mucin, salmon semen, Marmite flavored Vaseline, it’s been a wild few years in beauty. I feel confident we can get through a bar of Sydney Sweeney’s bath water soap! But just saying, if I did have to choose, I would want a bar of soap infused with Max Kornthas bath water, that’s all of saying. Nothing more to see here. I mean, look at him, you’d totally buy a bar of soap with his bath water infused in it right?

Sydney Sweeney soap dropped yesterday but only 100 bars were made. Sorry, but she’s GONE gone. Maybe they’ll do another round or collaborate with someone else soon (Max, hint hint hint)! So, tell me, who’s bathwater do you want in your soap? LOL!

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