Ad Categories: Style

Lovely and Amazing

Anyone who has walked away from a cosmetics counter wearing three layers of foundation and clown lips will appreciate the focus on natural beauty at Amazing Cosmetics (601 N. Milwaukee Ave., Libertyville; 847-680-3917, amazingcosmetics.com). “Our philosophy is less is more,” says co-founder Lisa Thurman. The line, which has been successfully selling through Ulta, Sephora, and its Web site, opens a small storefront boutique in Libertyville on Feb 1st. The company was started in 2000 when Thurman and Sue Katz, who were friends and, at the time, stay-at-home moms, launched the line from their kitchen tables. The business grew largely through guerilla word-of-mouth marketing. The pair put the product into the hands of celebrity makeup artists, which led to celebrity devotees such as Naomi Watts and Cindy Crawford. The line also won spots in the makeup rooms of Sex and the City and The Devil Wears Prada. Sandy Incardona, the company’s sales and marketing guru, says, “This little company in Libertyville is making Hollywood gorgeous.” The line focuses on…

Marc Time

A year after it was first announced and five months after it was originally scheduled to open, Marc by Marc Jacobs (1714 N. Damen Ave.; 773-276-2998) has arrived. Arguably the biggest shopping story of the past year, the opening of the boutique has inspired nervousness among local shop owners and residents who feared a chain invasion, curiosity about the company’s choice of Bucktown over the Gold Coast, and anticipation about when the store would finally open. The sleek, 4,000-square-foot space—which, together with the BCBG Max Azria next door, transformed a drab brick block into a bastion of polished newness—has exposed ductwork and light blue walls. The line has a younger, more affordable bent than its brother brand, Marc Jacobs, offering the designer’s sense of high style mixed with whimsical exuberance…

Très Chic
Is your kitchen lacking a certain je ne sais quoi? Newly opened Genevieve Lethu (900 N. Michigan Ave.; 312-423-9948) can help. The luxury housewares store is the first U.S. outpost for the French tabletop-and-textile company. Located in the 900 Shops mall, the store is full of bright, fun tabletop items such as tablecloths, napkins, and plates and flatware sold by the piece or by the set. The company releases four to six tabletop collections a year that coordinate with previous collections, “treating housewares like fashion,” says Michaelene Nichols, the company’s manager for U.S. operations. For instance, the dinner-plate pattern called L’Amour ($25 a plate) matches a set of dessert plates ($66 for six) whose…

Clean and Cozy

It’s rare for a bath and body store to so effectively blend the masculine and feminine, but the newly opened Wicker Park boutique Pour Vous (1750 W. Division St.; 773-698-6024), with its brown and blue décor, flat-screen television, and river rock fireplace, somehow manages it. Owner Tonja Legittino left a corporate job as an insurance broker to open her relaxation haven, stocked with soaps, lotions, bath bombs, robes, and pajamas. Soaps from Splash come in enormous slabs that she cuts down to individual bars. The brand’s light soufflé body lotion ($16.95), shower gels ($9.25), bath bombs ($2.95 to $6.95), bubble bath in grown-up scents such as lavender or “island fever,” and massage bars ($8.95) are reasonably priced because of the no-frills packaging. Or try the Oliba organic soaps ($6.25) and lotions ($6.95) in lovely scents such as papaya mango and ginger pear, or the powder soaks from Biggs and Featherbelle; Legittino discovered both lines at the Renegade Craft Fair last summer. Try the sugar and salt exfoliation scrubs in…