RED

It’s quite clear that this season is going to be a season of COLOURS. Loud and clear colours. Despite the fact that pastel sweet colours will always look nice in spring (there are quite a number of collection and pieces which are in pastel and nudes), this spring should be royally splashed with rich luxurious colors. Whether if it’s dark blue or velvety purple or bright yellow or emerald green. But most of all, one colour evidently stands out from the others – red.

Not surprisingly, this colour is the colour that catches the human eye fastest (otherwise, you have problem with your eye sight). Red is being applied everywhere but most prominently on the lips and fingernails. Taking after all the headiness of looking 40’s and 50’s, the crimson red lips are making their appearance on every famous pair of lips. Take the cover of vogue for example – now girl Scarlett Johansson sizzles the cover with her famous pouty lips in – you guess it, flaming red. Yes, you still notice that her body is ever so heavenly in that tight Dolce & Gabbana dark green bodice, but those lips; ah the lips, they stole the show.

The lesson here is that if you’re a woman, then you should make use of this season and bring out that red lips fetish of yours in full gear. Almost every woman had at one point of time wished to grab that screaming red lipstick and fill our lips up with it. The kind of red that screams: look at me, I’m totally confident of myself! Note: that I didn’t say it screams sexy, because that should come naturally if you’re comfortable and confident enough to carry off a flaming red pout. Plus, you shouldn’t wear red if the only thing on your mind is “must be sexy!” because then you’ll just end up look like that whore hanging out at the diner at 5am in the morning after a pathetic night. Worst, you might look like Courtney Love on a bad day.

Wear red because you feel confident and elegant. Then feel the power slowly surge from somewhere within and ooze out your every pore. You’re in control.

I would have liked to end it there – beautifully. But there’s still the nails issue. Will make it short because it isn’t something I’m going to endorse too much. The truth is, red nails are great. For a SHORT while.

If you’re like me, the low-maintenance-do-it-yourself type where you sit in front of the TV or try and do something else while you paint your nails (so that you don’t feel like you’re wasting your time on something considered relatively bimbotic), then you will be facing a problem. You’ll notice that your nail polish tend to crack or chip within a day or two (hey, I’ve more meaningful things to do and I can’t bother getting base/top coat). The moment they start doing that, you’ll have to fix it right away because your image chips along with every chip that chips away. You’ll end up looking like the aforementioned whore or your teenage sister/cousin/whoever that’s still trying to grow up. You don’t have an excuse.

Michelle Trachtenberg at the Samsonite launch of its Black Label Fashionaire collection

However, if you must, then do invest some time and money on that red fingernail look. But I promise you, that it’s not the best investment – like cars. This red nail fling will pass by quickly to give way to black nails (which happens to be quite hot as well at the moment but too young/grunge for my palate) or something else.

My advice? Stick with the timeless elegance of nude or non-screaming colours. And don’t even thing about French manicure. That is so passé and un-classy.