Bobbi Brown: What I Read
The founder of Bobbi Brown Cosmetics walks us through her media consumption on her proliferating Apple devices. "I wish they all had the same plug."
.I wake up in the morning around 6 — usually a dog is wagging his tail and that wakes me up. I grab myself an espresso and I check my email first. I usually don't read them but I just check and maybe I'll do one of them. I let the dog out and then I take my coffee, which I've been putting coconut milk in instead of regular milk, and I open up the New York Post on my iPad. I read the Post for probably about 7 minutes and then I go to Twitter and Instagram before I am ready to exercise or get ready to start my day.
On Instagram, first I check mine to see how many people have read it. It's interesting to me that I post a lot of food things on Instagram — because I'm a health food fanatic — but the makeup definitely gets more likes than the food. Soul Cycle has some really cool things. I don't know who is doing it for them, but it is very very cool and hip. It's all very empowering, physically empowering, which I really love. I love Soul Cycle, I do. I'm a health and exercise fanatic, I do yoga three times a week and I have a trainer for weights a couple days a week. I like to do something every day because it makes me feel great and I am pretty health food obsessive.
On Twitter, I follow a whole bunch of people. I follow Stephen Colbert, who is a friend. I follow and talk to L'Wren Scott, and ABC News — I get a lot of information there. I also talk to my kids on Twitter and I get to kind of see what they're doing. Some of the other people that I follow also have sites. I don't know if you know The Bag Snob? It's all about really cool handbags. I also follow Eva Chen, who is also the editor in chief of Lucky and Ariel Foxman who is the editor of InStyle.
That's my morning. After I get ready to go, I hop in the car service to work and that's when I will check The New York Times on my iPad. I do a lot of work in the car. I have a blog EverythingBobbi.Com, those are usually based on pictures from my iPhoto library. So I'm looking at pictures and sending them to people in my office who are working on the blog. I am constantly looking at pictures on my iPad. I cannot believe: I have an iPad, I have a mini iPad, I have a laptop, I just got the Macbook Air, and I have an iPhone. It's kind of a lot to handle. I wish they all had the same plug.
Any spare time I have, besides talking to my girlfriends on the phone, I am obsessed with Fancy. It's unbelievable. It's every amazing thing and image that you can find and actually buy or just look at. You Fancy them and press this button that's kind of like a "like" and it can take you to a website. I've bought some random things off of there. You should be nervous because it's really addicting.
I have other favorite sites, but I kind of get distracted very easily, especially on Twitter. I follow a bunch of health coaches. I follow Dr. Lipman who has these amazing recipes and all of a sudden I'm on someone else's site and I have to bring myself back to what I'm doing. Being on social media and being able to go from site to site you get a lot of information, a lot of recipes. I'm self-diagnosed ADD, which leads me into many different places that are fun. But every once in awhile I have to turn everything off and say enough, I need a break.
I do a lot of my shopping on Amazon, it's amazing to be able to open up your iPad and not have to put your credit card in. I just bought the new Gucci book, I bought the Tom Ford book. Unfortunately, it's just a couple little fingers you have to press on this big giant beautiful thing. But I also buy dog food that comes once a month. I just discovered Soap.com and I just bought giant boxes of organic cleaning supplies for my house. So that's really great. I love not having to put my credit card in every single time.
Want to hear the best gift my son ever gave me? It's an amazing thing: my son who is a Stanford graduate took all of my things for me and made all of my passwords the same. This took him a week. You can imagine: from every website to every credit card, he made them all exactly the same. Now when I need to log into every account I have the same password. It's so difficult and random, that no one is going to guess it.
At the end of the day, I get in the car and for a couple of minutes I breathe. Then I look at my emails. I also use the phone a lot, I'll call my mother, I'll call my best girlfriends. I'll try to get those out of the way, so when I get home I don't have to be distracted because we eat dinner as a family every night together. After dinner, I usually will go to Instagram and Twitter — a couple times a day that's where I always start. I get Google Alerts, so every time there's something written about me, I have one more thing I get to go to.
During the week I read The Times in the evening. I read the front section, I read any of the homes sections, business, and I definitely read the fashion part of it. Usually while I'm watching television I kind of do two things at once, which is very normal for me.
My favorite TV show is Modern Family. I also really like The Big Bang Theory. I love How I Met Your Mother. I also saw every episode of Orange Is the New Black and I can't wait for that to come back. We watch both Jon Stewart and Colbert, they're both hysterical and I know them both and they're both amazing. Stephen Colbert even comes to our house for Yom Kippur. We host a really big Yom Kippur every year. We've had anyone from Yogi Berra to Cory Booker — not a whole lot of Jewish people. Ir's a really nice break fast for people and it's really fun.
Weekends, I have my espresso and I have to read the Post on my iPad. Even though we still have the paper delivered and I'm the only one who reads it, I'm reading it on my iPad. Sundays I read the Times cover to cover without the sports.
On weekends, there's always exercise. I make big pots of soup and vegetables, so I'm using my iPad a lot — I save all the recipes I love in folders. Since I'm an organization fanatic, if you look at the screen in my iPad, it's all folders. As I said, I am self-diagnosed ADD, but I'm also self-diagnosed OCD. The two things together kind of don't work: I'm always organizing everything and then messing them up and having to organize them again. I think it's great for creative people.
I hate to admit that I do check Twitter and Instagram before bed and then I turn it off. You know what I love most about Twitter? I've talked to such random people. I once talked to Mindy Kaling on Twitter! She said something like "I love your makeup" and I said "oh my God, I love you!"