Slowfashionhouse.com builds a new bathroom

Fashion like food, is now fast. The two main seasons are punctuated by micro-trends and mini-seasons (anyone up for the cruise collection? Me neither). Throwaway design is the name of the game. Don't have something to wear out after work? Never fear. Get it on the high street and chuck it away within weeks. It was only a tenner after all, right? It's the fashion equivalent of fast food.

But there's a slow fashion movement being championed by Dane Rigetta in her virtual department store appropriately named Slowfashionhouse.com. And she's just added a bathroom to her house, making it one of the first of the so-called slow beauty stops online. Sure, there are shops in 3-D where you can browse in a leisurely fashion, but this is the internet is still only such place where you can browse without being accosted by a commission-hungry sales woman and her layout (while foreign and possibly hard to navigate for some) is refreshing.

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How to: Find the best beauty sample sales

Sample sale websites have been multiplying over the past five years (worse than a pair of randy rabbits). Back when I was compiling sample sale listing for DailyCandy in 2005, these sales were strictly bricks-and-mortar affairs. Not so anymore. Nor are they just for the fashion obsessed. Beauty is quickly becoming a sample sale staple. Here's our quick and dirty guide to what's out there and where to find the best cut-rate, top-shelf beauty booty.

Why would you do the online beauty sample sale thing? Convenience and price, mostly. It's delivered right to your door and you can, if you're patient enough, get all your beauty for a deep discount. Plus, it's a great way to trial new brands without the initial capital layout as the discount is usually 50% off (but can range from 20% to 75%). So who hosts these sales? Read on to find out...

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Blush Beauty is Milwaukee's coolest beauty boutique

Going around the world is tough (queue world's smallest violin). Every time you happen upon a new city, it's completely foreign to you. No idea where to find services, products or even your hotel for that matter. But there's something absolutely electric about that novelty as well. It's such an experience seeing a place with new eyes. Even the most desolate towns (Dubuque, Iowa... Entrocamento, Portugal) are charming on that first visit.

Milwaukee is a small Wisconsin city. As far as I can tell, not too much happens in the union's 23rd largest state. It has cheese (by American standards, good. By any real cheese-producing nation's standards, tastes like salted wax), the Green Bay Packers, cross-country skiing, some strange laws (it was once banned to serve apple pie without cheese in public) and breweries. As kids, my sisters and I would be dragged kicking and screaming to Wisconsin on most weekends.

Hell for us then, but something I look back on fondly now, trying to recreate those halycon summer evenings roasting marshmallows and eating Goober around a campfire whenever given the chance (and lighter fluid). Until now, that was the extent of my Wisconsin state general knowledge. But a recent visit revealed that there seems to be a revival of sorts in Milwaukee's historic 3rd district, including its beauty offerings. It's chocka with great vintage (mid-century vintage heaven, for those collectors out there), beer, more beer and Santiago Calatrava's amazing art museum. Blush is among all these new and shiny offerings at the corner of Water and Buffalo Streets, next to the Milwaukee Ale House and down the street from fabulous Broadway Paper (the first place I happened upon Snow & Graham).

Blush is somewhat of an agent of beauty change in the Midwest. It is the only place where Laura Mercier is sold in Wisconsin, a state about 4.5 times the size of the country of Switzerland. Shocking to the makeup junkies among us, I know. My heart goes out to the beauty-philes among us who don't happen to be within stomping distance of Barneys or Harvey Nichols (or who don't 'do' the internet).

Find cool brands that even some department stores haven't cottoned on to yet: Duchess Marden, B. Kamins, Tocca, Fast Lash, Lucy B, Japonesque, MOR, Osea... and they have a full-service spa and salon, so you can get lash extensions, brow tidying, facials (and the whole gamut of treatments), makeup artistry. It's an airy space with floor-to-ceiling windows. It's inviting and makes me want to hop on a train to Milwaukee when I'm having an uninspiring beauty day in Chicago.

BEST BEAUTY SECRET AT BLUSH

Alcone Fast Lash: I haven't seen this product anywhere else yet... that's not going to last for long. Why? It makes you look like you're wearing false lashes, but you're not! All you do is touch the wand to the tips of your lashes right after you've applied mascara. The wet mascara grabs the dry, white polyester fibers. Come through the lashes and then re-apply mascara. Voila... really really long eyelashes (eyelashes you could usually only get with falsies) using just your regular mascara.

Blush Beauty, 249 N Water St.,  Milwaukee, WI 53202 (+1 (414) 272-1718)