Everyday Eva: 5 Simple Rules to Look Your Best

Eva Scrivo on Beauty

Wow, what a week! And it’s not over yet but we did want to stop and review what we’ve learned from Eva so far with her five Golden Rules on a 2:30 minute video. Some sound fairly basic but more essential when coming from her. Others I know Caryl and I just hadn’t thought of. Of course they are all in her book and much more and in practice everyday at her salons.  Which takes us to Second Lives Club's first online giveaway.  See below.

GIVEAWAY EXTENDED to Monday, October 8.  Keep the great Beauty Tips and comments coming!

Everyday Eva: 9 Professional Makeup Tips To Look Younger

There’s a reason actors and models and Martha Stewart look so good. They know how—or have someone else who does—to put on their makeup. For many years, Eva Scrivo did the hair and make up for Martha’s TV show and public appearances. “I made a 70 year old woman look 45,” Eva says. 

Everyday Eva: How to find your "prime" color

Eva Scrivo’s back today to talk about coloring your hair. (Remember, second lifers, we don’t say “dye” anymore. Isn’t the word “color” more refined after all?) In the beginning of her career, Eva worked out of a fourth floor walk-up apartment in New York’s East Village.  Today she oversees a sleek glass and steel salon (with mesh Herman Miller floor-length curtains to separate sink area--how chic!) on Nolita’s trendy Bond Street. Just this spring, she opened an intimate, four-chair boutique studio in a third-floor walk-up (kind of a railroad flat) in a Madison Avenue brownstone on Manhattan’s very refined Upper East Side. But why am I telling you about this? Because it reminded me of one of the three important points about color Eva told me when I interviewed her at the new studio recently. 

# 1. Eva says: "Stay close to your roots. Never go more than two shades away from your natural color."

Everyday Eva: Don't go gray until you read this!

 “Hair is one thing you have control over as you get older,” says Eva Scrivo, highly-acclaimed hair and makeup artist--and wise woman. “Unlike skin and your figure, hair is the easiest thing to control.” As we age, as we well know, physical changes occur. “Just like our face loses collagen and fluid so does your hair,” explains Eva. "The result is a lack of shine and dullness." And, perhaps more significantly, she continues, "Women lose color as they get older."  You're telling me . . .

Eva knows a thing or two about hair color. At age 11 in Detroit, Michigan where she grew up, she was already coloring the roots of her model mother’s red hair. Today she has built “a beauty empire” including two New York City salons (think uptown/downtown), a radio show, TV appearances, and an award-winning beauty book.  She is also the “color ambassador” for L’Oreal Professional, and she travels the globe training  colorists in the company’s elite academies. (She has even trained hairdressers in India who as their country modernizes are moving beyond henna.) She has a talent and affection for connecting with women-- and iconoclastic views about beauty and aging.  Here's what she has to say:

Katie Couric Goes Gray. Should you?

This week Katie Couric put on a gray wig and walked the mean streets of Manhattan to see how people reacted to her. The reviews were mixed: Our favorite from a man in his late 20s or early 30s (think beefy construction worker) who told her she looked sexy and . . .old!!

The reason the former (first female solo) nightly network newscaster donned a wig was to promote her new syndicated talk show “Katie”, which airs weekdays at 3pm EST on ABC and this past week’s series on hair: the good, the bad, and the polarizing gray. It didn’t help that when Katie rolled the tape of her walk on the not-so-wild side the accompanying music was “The Little Old Lady from Pasadena”. We ask you: Is this how the media—even female-led media—reinforces stereotypes? Come on, Katie, you are running the show.

Maryl adores: Malandrino, a French Designer For All America

I first noticed Catherine Malandrino’s designs at Henri Bendel’s in New York City about ten years ago.  They were so original, edgy yet feminine…and youthful I thought at the time.  I didn’t actually try on one of her dresses until years later….a colorful print silk one with a leather and metal ring strap caught my eye.  

Fall Movie Preview: What We Saw at TIFF

Ceiling of Elgin Theater, Toronto

We have just returned from the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). We also visited with two women who are living their second lives and then safely escorted (not that she needed us) one of our daughters to her second year of grad school and as she put it her “last first day of school.” The six films we saw moved us as did the city, its people, its history and its hyper-growth and vitality.(There are more construction cranes there than in Dubai!)  We attended screenings in ordinary multiplexes, the recently built Bell Lightbox and the renovated Elgin Theater (it opened in 1913 for vaudeville productions)…even theaters need a second life. Here's some of what we saw and thought. 

Maryl reveals: Three weddings and a house

Thirty years ago this month I was married at my Victorian home on the Jersey shore. Another wedding took place there this past weekend, that of my stepson and his stunning bride. Note the little boy in the family wedding photo above and when you get to the bottom of this post, you will see him again as a grown up and a groom.

Caryl lists: 3 Reasons Hillary Clinton Is Not Speaking at the Democratic Convention

Around this time four years ago, we were in Denver for the Democratic convention. But we’re not there this year. Some of the old gang is back, speaking again this year just like in 2008. The half-sister of the candidate will be speaking—Maya Soetero-Ng. So will the daughter of a former president—Caroline Kennedy—and the wife of a current one—Michele Obama. They will be joined on stage by new speakers—Tammy Duckworth and Tammy Baldwin who are running for office--and newer names like Sandra Fluke who symbolizes the so-called Republican War on Women. In addition, there will be record number of female delegates on the convention floor but the energy and the enthusiasm feels different this time. There’s no history in the making at this convention. The woman who represents the highest hope for the highest office in the land, the woman who broke the glass ceiling in 18 million ways in 2008—and still it was not enough—will be absent from this convention. She will be missing her party’s party for the first time in over a quarter of a century. You may rightly ask then where in the world is Hillary Clinton, and why is she not speaking at the convention?