When people ask me what I do these days, I'm apt to joke "I just write about lipstick." As a long-time journalist, this mid-life career change may sound - as it is - a bit of a lifestyle choice, not the serious stuff that got me started and kept me in newsrooms nights and weekends.
Switching focus isn't just a chance to lie down on a day job. Although I admit to the odd facial, the serious side of things is more about tracking consumer trends. As with fashion, our individual investment in the beauty industry is an expression of how we see ourselves and how we want others to see us. That makes the underlying sociological impulses way more interesting to me than, say, which colours are in or out. It's a challenge to try to cover both. Viva's discerning readers - and you, our exciting new online audience - share this need to know not only what is happening, but to find out why and to discuss it.
Just last week, I was party to one of those fascinating discussions when I talked fair trade with two dynamic women. Adimaimalaga Tafuna'i is co-founder and executive director of the Samoan Women in Business Development organisation which supplies more than 20,000 kilograms of coconut oil to The Body Shop each year.
The partnership, she told me during a visit to Auckland with Christina Archer, senior buyer in The Body Shop's community fair trade team, meant many villagers now had a steady income. The Body Shop team sources ingredients from across the developing world and the resultant products, including big-selling coconut body butters, find a receptive market in 60 countries.
