Rando Report: Nuxe Cartel, Big Closet Sale Alert, Not Reading for Nine Years, and More
Anklets...maybe I hate them? Maybe I love them.
Welcome to the NEVERWORNS Rando Report…snippets of things I love and happenings to watch out for.
Call me “El Nuxe-o”
Two weeks ago, I was in Paris and returned with a cartel’s worth of the French cream Nuxe. My former co-worker Janelle Okwodu, a beauty know-it-all, once recommended it.
While dawdling around the French CityPharma, which is loaded with three floors of discounted products, I was that know-nothing American jabbering away in English, asking where the hair conditioner was while hauling an anvil’s worth of creams in those red canvas carryalls. I was a kid in a candy store! A piggy Yankee lapping up all the Nuxe creams like I was hoarding toilet paper in a fucking Costco! Sue me! Or just shame me, which I did all by myself….pro tip: Don’t pay with Amex there…they don’t take it. I once learned the hard way having to PayPal my cheekbone-forward Ukrainian friend while sweating in line…
Anyway, I love Nuxe. Succulent, buttery cream that you want to lather all over your body and roast in. The day cream, aka Créme Fraiche, is like Nivea but lighter and more whipped…like a little angel tickling your cheeks! The night creams are thicker, like a chilly spackle for the skin—and there’s more variation: Merveillience Lift Concentrated Night Cream, Nuxuriance Ultra The Global Anti-Aging Night Cream, and Nuxe Nuxuriance Gold Nutri-Fortifying Night Balm. The tubs come in green, gold, and red….like a damn Christmas tree lighting up your carry-on.
Note: If you choose the night creams, you will smell like an ancient great-grandmother basting in old. Despite wafting like a chic nursing home or as if a saccharine death would emanate from my pillow the morning after, I bought one of each Nuxe night cream. It's like Pokemon for the skin, but when you drop roughly $300. If you know me, I get squeamish when I spend more than $150 on something—also, I am a bonafide CVS babe—but I had the urge to dive into that lubricated promise of maintenance. But I don’t know when I will be in France again, and ultimately, the emollient purchase was worth it: I can feel the cream penetrate the pores, rejuvenate the epidermis, and voila, the goal to live forever as a woman dipped in a layer Vitamin E-jacked sheath of velvet feels doable.
Big Closet Sale Alert
NEVERWORNS strikes again…a big kahuna closet sale is happening on Sunday. A freaky one. A massive one. A wait outside and pray one. An “I went to the NEVERWORNS closet purge, and all I got was a black eye because I body-slammed that girl while battling for the Stella-era Chloé mini skirt” type of sale. And there are not only pieces that are of my skanky-liking, hailing the early rich bitch ‘00s…there’s something for everyone! Simone Rocha on ecstasy, hulking bags from the ‘90s, Rodarte gems, and vintage that has been sweat-in by icons. Also, please don’t freak out about flying in…I will be listing some of these treasures in a very special way right here on Substack. More details—and an interview to come.
Big Pants
I went to Colbo this weekend and saw all the beautiful, lithe people of Orchard Street showing off their stomachs while simultaneously wearing the large and loaded pieces by Hed Mayner. (The store had an archival sale of the designer). I love this Lego man look—like a phat, boxy cocoon of fabric. The pants are big. The shirts are big. Then again, the Lower East Side is full of tattooed guys swimming in massive trousers with those elegant Giorgio Armani pleats. It’s like ding-dong-dude-meets-gentleman. Endearing!
Anklets…maybe?
James Veloria had killer vintage Dolce shoes with thick, beaded fringe anklets. They were a size 36…so it's a no-go for my hooves. But speaking of anklet shoes…Chemena Kamali at Chloé is churning out great thong sandals: a footbed molded with a thoughtful big toe curve that dips into a slope to house the other four darling toes. The indent reminds me of the waist just as the ass descends into that earth-shattering teardrop shape. A gorgeous silhouette, but I’m burying the lede: the Chloé sandal has an ankle strap!
Now, I’ve traditionally been anti-anklet because I believed the appendage jewels cut a limb off and give the wearer a peg-leg effect, especially in shoe form. But I’m warming up to the idea of crowning my ankles with something sparkly. My segue into anklets occurred a few weeks ago after I bought a fake gold string thing laden with blazing evil eyes from Etsy. I was inspired by a cool nurse at my doctor’s office. Now, maybe I’ll go full throttle, ankles blazing, with the Chloé or JV Dolce type of anklet-heel!
Freakin’ on the Subway
Thank you, everyone, for sending me the toe shoes featured on the Instagram account SubwayCreatures. Mazel tov to everyone is getting five-fingered, even on public transit. Lots of men, too! Especially in the leather iterations. It’s a phalangeal miracle.
The Louis Vuitton NEVERFULL Is Back But In a Reach-for-the-Stars Way
The House is pushing the bag that can schlep 200 lbs, and yes, I have one. Yes, I like it. Plus, you can turn it inside out now! It also appeared in fire engine red on the spring 2025 runway. Remember, the Neverfull is one of those bags that can be interpreted however you want. This reminds me of when I once saw my brainiac, beautiful former boss who has a taste for Martine Rose, JPG mesh, and obscure vintage wear a pink Chanel Classic Double Flap bag. My mind was blown. This bag didn’t seem to fit her sphere of style, and yet, she turned that tweedy French stereotype on its head and made that bag her own, as if she came out of a funky womb with it. The same POV goes for the Neverfull. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, or in this case, the hauler. You can read my piece on the Neverfull I wrote eons ago before the revamp. More on this later…
Does anyone care what I read?
Maybe not but aso, let me know what you are reading. Anyway, I’ve been on a Pale of Settlement author binge recently. I just read Isaac Bashevis Singer’s The Slave, a tale about falling in love during pogrom-era Poland. A Yiddish tug-of-war with religion, rejection, and acceptance. And lots of mentions of subsisting on stale bread.
I also just finished Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint. Indulgent perversions at their finest but heartbreaking in a pathetic male way, like when you look at expired, rabidly horny, meandering men who smell like vinegar chips and desperate poon, and you think, “That’s really sad!”.
The whole reading conversation…leads me to….now, how do I say this? How do I admit this big gaping hole in my brain filled with shame? Well, here I go: I did not read books while working for almost nine years at a magazine, which is frightening now that I look back. Sure, I read news and academic articles about whatever subject I was writing about. Sure, I was poring over ‘90s Vogues and pretending I had a town car and an expense account and lived in the West Village. I’m not a total moron! Or…never mind!
Regardless of what I read, there were little to no books. I was too obsessed with enriching myself only through work texts, which left me stagnant and one-dimensional. Now, I feel like I’m playing catch-up, as if I’ve transferred from a school with a broken abacus to one with advanced computers, only to realize I am behind three grade levels. It’s heartbreaking, yet also…refreshing, and never too late. I feel like a delighted dummy basking in a whole new world fat with books!
Question: Am I the only one who was essentially “book illiterate” while working full-time in media? Please tell me I’m not the only one…
The nuxe face oil is THE BEST sexiest smell ever and you can buy it at the Eurostar duty free!!!
The Nuxe Reve de Miel lip balm in the pot, not the tube, is THE BEST bedtime lip balm. I can still feel it when I wake up and it heals even the worst chapped lips. I am very slutty with lip products, but the Nuxe and I have been faithfully going to bed together for at least the last 15 years.