When Queen Helene Won’t Do
I dated this Dutch guy last year. One evening, in the process of explaining the bleakness of Dutch cooking, including, unfortunately, the meal that he had just prepared and set before me, he told me something about shortages. In Holland, during World War II, he said, due to extreme food shortages, some people were forced to eat tulip bulbs.
After pulling them from the ground, the bulbs were boiled, mashed, or put in soups.
I mention this because I’ve just experienced firsthand the desperation that shortages can cause. For weeks, you see, Kiehl’s has been out of its Rare Earth Deep Pore Cleansing Masque.
“I can tell you that Rare Earth was a very successful introduction,” said Rachael Kelley, a Kiehl’s public relations manager. I had called her, desperate for news.
For the uninitiated, Kiehl’s is a cosmetics and skin care line founded in New York’s east village in 1851. I’ve tried each and every one of their lotions, lip balms, body washes, moisturizers, and masques (thanks to free samples). The Rare Earth Deep Pore Cleansing Masque is my favorite.
Rachael explained that the shortage is due to the popularity of a new formulation that they released this summer.
“The original products have been long-time favorites,” she said. “The new line has a built-in fanbase.”
When I announced to friends that I was temporarily going to leave the working world and return to school full-time, their reactions were much the same.
“Where will you wash your face?” one asked. Another, my friend Alex, congratulated me and then announced that I was welcome at his apartment anytime if I needed a decent moisturizer.
So Rachael’s explanation of the shortage, though helpful, didn’t allay my anxiety. The masque’s key ingredient, Amazonian white clay, even sounds rare.
Then finally, the words I had been waiting for.
“The product is shipping as we speak,” Rachael said. Crisis averted.
No you didn’t just compare post-War starvation to a shortage in a beauty product. Bad Carl, bad!
“… leaving the *appearance* of pores minimized …” (asterisk intensifiers mine). note the implication that it is, by their own admission (albeit legislated), an illusion. also, one cannot help but wonder if they are actually mining their clay from the amazon. the wording is ambiguous: they don’t say “with ingredients from the mouth of the amazon,” it’s “ingredients *sourced* from the [illegible] the mouth of the amazon,” as though we’re expected to know exactly what that means. if so do you think they doing it in an environmentally and socially conscientious manner?
that said, even i — no doubt one of the uninitiated to whom you refer — don’t think queen helene *ever* “does.”