When I visited Glam Lounge for the weekly What’s in Store feature last month, owner Diane Aiello let me browse the inventory of everything from spray tans to candles. As I finished up and was getting ready to step out of the store, she thrust a tub into my hands and said, “Here, you’ve got to smell this.” My reward: The rush of freshly ground coffee beans — and a hint of chocolate, maybe? — that springs from every jar of Invigorating Coffee Scrub ($37) by Juara, an Indonesian-inspired skin care line. A handful in the shower helps exfoliate body skin with ground coffee and walnut shells, and the scent invigorates as only coffee can. (Warning: Since coffee grounds and walnut shells, unlike salt and sugar, don’t disintegrate with water contact, this requires vigilance in the rinse cycle, lest stubborn little brown flecks remain attached to your bits and pieces. Especially your bits.) Thus began this week’s obsession with scrubs.

Scent-sational: In the True Blue Spa line at Bath & Body Works I found There’s the Rub Salt Glow ($24), a frosting-light cream with a eucalyptus scent that uses sea salt as an exfoliant. If you’re envisioning jagged shards of kosher salt, relax: The grains are small and gentle to skin. Find it at any of the dozen-plus Bath & Body Works stores in the East Valley. And remember: Whenever you use a salt scrub on your legs and plan to shave them, always scrub first, then shave. Otherwise you’re literally rubbing salt into wounds: razors work by cutting hairs (and some rough skin) off the surface. (Plus, it helps with a smoother shave — the exfoliant scrubs away dead skin first.)

It’s all new, honey: How about a sweet scent instead? L’Occitane sells a spate of products in a new Honey & Lemon scent: everything from Foaming Jelly to Delightful Cream and — ta-da! — Sweet Sugar Scrub ($34). The scent is more miel than citron, as the French would say. … There are L’Occitane stores at Chandler Fashion Center, Scottsdale Fashion Square and Biltmore Fashion Park. Another hint: To prolong the use of a limited-edition scrub I got him last Christmas, my friend, Greg, used it only as a hand scrub in the kitchen. Pretty smart, if you just like the scent and don’t really need to exfoliate.

Velvet Boutique
Shops on Warner, 235 E. Warner Road, Suite 12, Gilbert
Hours: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday
Information: (480) 632-7467 or velvetboutiqueaz.com
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Most of Philosophy’s three-in-one products (shampoo/shower gel/bubble bath) smell like sweet stuff — baked goods (cinnamon buns, pumpkin pie), desserts (raspberry sorbet, key lime pie) or beverages (cafe au lait, mimosa). So consider the holiday Memory Sage kit a novelty. The scent of the three-in-one and companion body lotion ($25) is missing the velvet-dusty undertones of the plants growing in my garden, but it does have a refreshing quality — and there is a sweet kick, so as not to alienate the core customer. Find it at the Philosophy store at Casa Paloma in Chandler or at Sephora stores.

The latest fragrance by Dolce & Gabbana is called simply The One — a reference to the woman who wears it. The designers might be known for flamboyant combinations of menswear and siren femininity, but this scent stays on the Oriental floral side, with a sweet, powdery first note. Other strong accords include plum, vanilla and sweet musk. Eau de parfum costs $62-$82 at finer department stores like Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom.

The news about the girl who committed suicide after being taunted on MySpace reminded me of what turned out to be a prescient report I received earlier this month from, of all companies, Ban antiperspirant/deodorant. After the company hosted an online poll of teenage girls with Seventeen magazine, Ban asked a child and adolescent psychologist with expertise in stress and coping to identify factors that lead to adolescent stress. At the top of her list: social Web sites like MySpace and Facebook, which “can lead to more opportunities for gossip and rumors to spread, which can be a major source of stress,” the report said.

I subscribe to the UK weekly e-mail server Popbitch, which pointed me toward this awesome site, which puts the context of many rap songs in graphic form — graphic as in “charts and graphs,” not necessarily “explicit.” (Although, this being rap music, there is of course the occasional F-bomb and such. And if the radio-unfriendly version of “Play” makes your jaw drop, stay far, far away from “Statistical Analysis of What David Banner Will Do to You on the Dance Floor.” )

Need a more few examples?

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Look how awesome!

Now if you’d like to add a Flash-y little link from your site to mine — please? — look for the blurb on the right that contains the HTML coding to embed. It’ll update automatically for, say, when “Top Model” is done and I start doing something else fun instead.

Did you ever think you’d ever be able to post a photo of me being slathered in pumpkin goo, or surrounded by $9.99 bras?  Well, today’s your lucky day. Have at it!

Yay, man candy!

No, I’m not referring to the constant shots of Jack in his skivvies: This week’s challenge involves menswear … and I’m kind of surprised by how hard the designers find it. A few have eyes bigger than their skills and end up being chastised on the runway. The judges decide that no matter how often Carmen repeats the phrase “this does not represent me as a designer,” when you send bad unfinished clothing that you created down a runway, it really does represent you, and then send her home.
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Finally, some other girl has a chance to win Cover Girl of the Week! For the moment I had feared might never happen … finally did.

It’s one thing to get a little mixed up trying to find your way in China. It’s another to get really mixed up even with a translator and a cab driver nearby … and another thing completely to manage to lose them, too. So even though this leaves me with none of my original picks remaining in the competition, I can’t argue when they finally realized Heather might not be cut out for this business.
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This article discusses how Paulina Porizkova will replace Twiggy as a judge on the next cycle of “America’s Next Top Model.” Sadly, no mention of Benny Ninja bumping off “Miss” J. Alexander. ..

I’ve been thinking about Penny Long lately, and a confrontation that happened as a Tribune photographer and I were leaving her store, Electric Couture, a few weeks ago after an interview for What’s in Store.

A random guy stopped us in our tracks and said, “Please tell me you did not just photograph that woman in front of her car,” and gestured toward the black Bentley parked at the curb.

“We didn’t even photograph her at all,” I said. “We took store shots.”

“Good,” he replied. “Because that represents everything that’s wrong with this town” (Meaning Scottsdale, of course).

It was especially odd timing because I had just texted one of my co-workers: “I just got done with Penny Long @ Electric Couture. I think I love her.”

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Tim Gunn, the majordomo of “Project Runway” and — can I call it a spinoff? — “Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style” — will host a Nov. 28 holiday fashion show and event in Scottsdale to help promote the revamped Liz Claiborne line, which he’s now chief creative officer for.

I asked staff writer Marija Potkonjak — who’s leaving us to move to Wisconsin (Wisconsin?!) — if she’d be interested in interviewing him, and within a couple hours of her interview on Black Friday, she turned in 101 inches’ worth of transcript. They talked about everything from how to stay stylish even in hot weather, why we shop the way we do … and how she’d like to watch judge Michael Kors truck his fat can across Bryant Park, like they made the designers do on the first episode this season. Click on this link to bring up a copy of the article, as it appeared in today’s paper.

Did I mention that he is one of my favorite people on earth? In this video he discusses budget shopping (”expensive clothes aren’t in my vocabulary”), where he gets his clothing and what he considers the must-have garments for men and women.

The event details: 6 p.m. Thursday at Dillard’s store at Scottsdale Fashion Square, 7014 E. Camelback Road, Scottsdale. It’s free, but you need to make reservations. (480) 736-2170.