Best of Rhode Island 2009 Editors' Picks

Makeup artists don't usually make house calls. When Mary Dee Housley visits, the vanity table purge begins. That face powder? The talc is clogging your pores. Shimmery shadow? Not for eyelids over forty. During a field trip to Sephora, department stores or drugstores, Housley offers commission-free advice: right color, wrong shade; this is how to smoke up an eye; avoid this ingredient; splurge on this (makeup brushes); go cheap here (mascara). It's recession Rx: Invest in cosmetics you'll actually wear.