Subject Eye

Clyde’s House of Beauty

I love beauty products. I do, I do. I love sizing up each product by looking at the packaging and smelling their unnecessary scents. I love testing them with my fingertips and rubbing them into my forearm while pretending I feel and see the miraculous change in my skin. I usually just feel wetter. But who cares? I adore slathering them on my skin with big sweeping gestures.

I’m sure some of these products must be snake oil and fairy dust. But they can be very expensive snake oil and fairy dust, and sometimes they can even be real snake oil. Dianne Brill’s skin cream has actual snake venom as an ingredient, and it works marvelously well. I love it. I also love the great Dianne Brill herself, but that’s for another Subject Eye.

My favorite place to purchase all things beautifying is Clyde’s Chemist (926 Madison Avenue). I think I became a member of the Whitney Museum just so I would have an excuse to travel to the Upper East Side*, cross the street and visit this skin care Mecca. You don’t need a reason to go to Clyde’s. The reason will present itself as soon as you walk inside.

Clyde’s does function as an old fashion type of drug store as well. There is a pharmacy where you can purchase, I don’t know, cotton balls and the like. I didn’t notice the pharmacy until very recently. It took me 20 years to notice the pharmacy in the back. I’ve been too preoccupied with the international cornucopia of emollients and makeup in the front. If you had the luck to be introduced to the Decleor and Carita lines in Paris, you will become bosom buddies at Clyde’s in NYC.

The women that work at Clyde’s are seasoned professionals. Be nice to them and they will respond in kind. You can really talk to them about any of your skin care trials, tribulations and kerfuffles. They listen and offer expert solutions in a price range you can afford.

*Note: I have to give myself a reason to travel to UES. I wish this wasn’t true. I’m absolutely anonymous uptown and not in a good way. For me to get attention in a store like Gucci, I’d have to drag a small stage along and perform a Balinese plate dance. It’s true that I can actually do some of the moves from a Tari Piring (Balinese plate dance), but they ignore me anyway. Are they intimidated by my dramatic personal style? Or do they make assumptions because of my melanin-enhanced skin? Sadly, I know it’s the latter.