The prestige beauty market was up 2 percent last year — $8.9 billion worth of high-end makeup, fragrance and skin care products were rung up at the registers. (And that doesn’t even include the lower-level mass-market brands.)

Antiaging skin care alone accounted for $1.2 billion of the sales; fragrance was $2.94 billion (an actual 1% drop from the year before) and makeup was $3.4 billion.

The top 5 prestige scents lat year: men’s Acqua di Gio (and I thought it was just me who thought every freaking guy on earth was wearing it); Beautiful; Coco Mademoiselle; Chanel No. 5; and Cashmere Mist.

ammit

WHAT SAM WORE: 6/16/08
The shirt: Polo shirt by Le Tigre (Buffalo Exchange)
The pants: Dark-wash jeans by 1969 (gap.com)
The shoes: Leather sneakers by Puma (Nordstrom)
The scent: Aveda Men

sammit

A good shave cream really can turn the never-ending task into a more enjoyable experience – fewer nicks, less irritation, better skin care to boot. You forget how nice you have it until you forget – say, on a trip to Denver – and have to make do with a cheap, last-minute drugstore brand. It was awful!

A few years ago I asked barbers at V’s Barbershops to rate a half-dozen shaving gels, creams and foams on their own faces. Their universal favorite was one by Lab Series – and I carry a travel-size version of their Maximum Comfort shave cream ($12.50) in my dopp kit when I go on vacation. Lab Series is sold at Ulta, Macy’s and Dillards stores.

I happen to prefer mentholated creams and gels – the subsequent topical numbness helps prevent shaving irritation and redness. Kiehl’s Ultimate Brushless Shave Cream ($15.50-$18.50), below left, was the first such one I ever tried. It’s spiked with camphor, too, so it really knocks your skin out during the shave. (It’s relatively hard to rinse out of the razor, though. You do a lot of fast swishing in the sink.) It’s sold at Nordstrom at Chandler Fashion Center, Neiman Marcus at Scottsdale Fashion Square, and Scottsdale Jean Co.

The good thing about hoarding: If they decide to discontinue, say, your favorite shave gel – as Sharps Barber Brigade ($5.99), below right, did when they pulled their line from Target last year – I was lucky enough to already have five tubes stashed away in a bureau drawer to tide me over. (As it turns out, they recently began selling the products online, so I just ordered four more tubes today.)

I’m also a fan (although not quite as obsessive) of ZIRH Shave Cream ($14-$20), below left – the big tub o’ shaving cream does last a really long time. When my friend Jess’s house burned down in 2004, I greeted him the next morning with a whole emergency kit of grooming supplies, including this shave cream. He still uses the same brand today, although he likes to switch it up with ZIRH’s aloe vera-based shave gel sometimes. It’s available at Dillard’s and Sephora.

By the way, the barbers at V’s use products by The Art of Shaving, below right. (And a straight razor.) TAoS shaving creams ($14-$22) come in four formulations: hypoallergenic unscented; lavender for sensitive skin; sandalwood for dry skin; lemon for oily skin. The line is sold at V’s shops, Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus at Chandler Fashion Center and Scottsdale Fashion Square, and specialty stores like Cos Bar at Kierland Commons and Romeo at The Shops at DC Ranch.

There are several other great brands of shaving cream out there — and Men’s Ultimate Grooming, a shop at Superstition Springs Center in Mesa, stocks most of them, from êShave to Woody’s, aMENity to Baxter of California and Jack Black.

ammit

WHAT SAM WORE: 6/12/08
The shirt: V-neck T-shirt (Old Navy)
The pants: Jeans by Seven for All Mankind (Last Chance)
The shoes: Flip-flops by Sanuk
The scent: Mat; by Masaki Matsushima

sammit

Wives and girlfriends, it’s time to take a hint from the newly minted Mrs. Jay-Z. In “Upgrade U,” Beyonce offers to introduce her boyfriend to the finer things in life – Audemars Piguet watches, Purple Label ties, Hermes briefcase. …

But we’re going to start on the inside: Underwear.

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Green may be the trend in homes, but in men’s fragrance it’s all about blue. Especially during summer months, scents that evoke cool water (including, but not limited to, Cool Water) do particularly well.

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Today’s shoe reminds me of “California Dreamin’,” the Indian reservations near our house in Montana, and my neighbors who let us come over and listen to Fleetwood Mac albums when my parents wouldn’t think of letting us buy the records. (Which, now that I think about it 30 years later, is kind of odd: I was in love with that album and I wasn’t even in third grade yet.)

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I found a great Father’s Day card this morning at the drugstore when I was picking up some bandages. And that one sentence explains the two! Two! TWO! recurring themes in some of this week’s posts:

(1) Father’s Day gift suggestions, and (2) I’ve declared June 9-13 “Sandals Week” because I ended up falling into a swimming pool yesterday (amazingly, no liquor was involved, just misjudging how much pavement was left when I was backing up moving pool furniture) and shredding the sides of my feet on the concrete. So shoes hurt.

And, in a serendipitous move, today’s Father’s Day suggestion is … sandals!

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Hey, just in time for last-minute Father’s Day shopping!

Nordstrom stores at Chandler Fashion Center and Scottsdale Fashion Square open at 9 a.m. June 13 to kick off the men’s Half-Yearly Sale, which offers 33%-and-up savings off original prices on the season’s shoes, apparel and “furnishings.”

I wonder if these Converse Chuck Taylor double-upper sneakers are included? A 1/3 discount would make them $32. …

Yesterday I was out sick, and I spent part of the day working on that “Beautiful Fall” book I mentioned Sunday, and part of the evening watching another fashion documentary I had on DVR, “Marc Jacobs and Louis Vuitton.” The film, which trails Jacobs as he creates both his own line in New York and LV in Paris, was originally made for French TV so it’s a little more whimsical than I’m used to: In an attempt to visually convey the deadline drama in the sewing room (which, admittedly, tough) the filmmaker uses a colored filter to turn the fluorescent lights red, then strobes them like a warning siren.

What I particularly liked: Near the end, we watch the Louis Vuitton fashion show (painstakingly re-created in Japan – set, models and all – for the Pacific Rim’s exploding luxury market) and as each appropriate garment arrives on the catwalk, we flash back to the moment in the film when we saw it being created. So, that footage when the seamstress is complaining because they decided to distress the fabric using bleach and it dissolved the embroidery, which required her to do it over again? Here’s the dress it happened on. The compilation handbag that broke needles and machines and ended up having to be stitched together by hand at the last minute? There it is!

The other thing I liked: He rarely dresses up at work: Most of the movie shows him in a vintage T. It makes me feel better about wearing jeans to work today.

So, naturally, this week’s shoe is by Christian Lacroix.

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So, I went to see Eartha Kitt perform with the Phoenix Symphony this weekend, and my friend Michael and I spent most of the time before the concert (and during intermission) taking a peek at what other people were wearing. We saw everything from full-length velvet gowns to folks in T-shirts, shorts and Tevas.

Tevas. At the Phoenix Symphony.

Now, I can understand the concept of, “I paid for the ticket, so I can wear whatever I want,” but still, that seems a little shameless (and not in the good way, but in the “lacking decorum” sort of way). You’re at a grown-up event, not a picnic in the park. It wasn’t even a matinee — it was a Saturday evening performance featuring a surprisingly limber 81-year-old Kitt purring her way through classics like “C’est Si Bon.”

(For the record: Kitt wore a black full-length evening gown cut up To There, with a vibrant red lining; the male symphony musicians, as usual, wore tuxes. The conductor wore a white dinner jacket that unfortunately was more Captain Stubing than David Niven. I had on a dark blue long-sleeved Burberry button-down dress shirt and tan slacks.)

Phoenix is a laid-back town, yes. But have we lost the ability to discern when it’s respectable enough of an occasion to dress up a little bit? And when you should have enough respect for the performers/guests/hosts to do so?

For Christmas my friend Sharyn bought me the book “The Beautiful Fall: Lagerfeld, Saint Laurent and Glorious Excess in 1970s Paris,” which chronicles the Karl vs. Yves era of fashion. I admit to having barely cracked it since then, although I look at it every day as I pass through the dining room.

However, in honor of Saint Laurent, who died Sunday, I did sit down and watch “Yves Saint Laurent: His Life And Times,” a documentary I happened to record on DVR late last month. (And, with “5, Avenue Marceau,” one of two films about the designer from the same director in the same year — the first a look at the individual, the second more about an artist at work for the last time.) It’s a great reminder of how revolutionary fashion can be: Today, can you imagine a woman in a pantsuit being turned away from a restaurant or hotel? Yet it happened in his menswear-inspired tuxedo suits.

Back when I was doing more fashion shoots, I sort of used to dread the fall fashion ones because after a few years, it seemed like I was being forced to muster up enthusiasm for the same damn trends year after year. Like it’s a revelation that suddenly tall boots start appearing in stores. And wine-colored lips. And … menswear-inspired suits. It’s easy to forget how relatively new a development that actually is. And how shocking and controversial it once was.