Blog Posts by Refinery29

By Connie Wang, Refinery29

When you've scrimped and saved and finally come up with the necessary funds to make a Louis Vuitton bag your own, the last thing you want is to accidentally get catfished with a fake one. Especially if you're looking to get a deal or a special style via a third-party vendor, it's important to be able to tell the real deal from faux-real.

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Luckily, designer resale site The Real Real comes across tons of products with questionable pedigrees, and has produced a video that'll school you in the four signs of real LV bags to look out for and common myths that are as fake as the bags they purport to spot. The guide, below:

By Vanessa Golembewski, Refinery29

Ladies, it's time for some real talk. According to a new study published earlier this month in Psychoneuroendocrinology - which we clearly read daily - women using the birth control pill prefer men with less-masculine faces, compared to non-users. As in, your birth control is indirectly dictating the kinds of men you're interested in and subsequently date. Wild? We know.

In the study, researchers showed a group of women (aged 18-24) images of young, male faces. The women could manipulate the images to their liking, focusing on cheekbone prominence, jaw height, and face width. Scientists also told the participants to alter the male faces so they were most attractive for either a short- or long-term relationship. Women who had been on the pill for three months or more chose men who had less-masculine features, with narrower jawbones and more rounded faces.

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By Connie Wang, Refinery29

Beautiful jewelry is one of the easiest things you can wear to immediately elicit compliments - but with pieces ringing in at three digits and higher, it can be an expensive strategy. However, to look like you've got one-of-a-kind, super-special jewels, you don't have to plan on budgeting out lunches for the rest of the year.

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Statement jewelry is a huge trend this season, and many designers - both mass and indie - are making affordable versions - $100 or less - that look way more expensive. Click through to see the pieces that we've bookmarked from around the web (and within our own R29 Shops). Which is your favorite?

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By Annie Georgia Greenberg, Refinery29

Wake up, full-time snackers: Getting fit for summer starts now. Which means you'll need a long term slim down plan that actually works. So, we've turned to two of the city's top fitness and nutrition experts to give us a rundown on what to do (and not) to feel our best by beach time.

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Tracy Anderson gives us the secret to her celebrity client's rock-hard bods while top Equinox trainer Christian Swain tells us which "healthy foods" are secretly sugary. Consider this an all-access pass to the new you. You might not thank us while you're doing that cardio, but we're sure by July you'll feel differently. Click through for fitness and diet tips to know for spring!

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By Jen Hazen, Refinery29

Oh cardio, we love to hate you. You take forever; we run on a treadmill going nowhere. (Are we done yet?)

If this sounds familiar, consider Tabata training - a super high-intensity workout that not only improves aerobic capacity in about four minutes per session, but also has tons of other benefits. Developed by Dr. Izumi Tabata, lead coach of Japan's speed skating team, the Tabata method increases your anaerobic threshold with short bursts of hard, fast training via compound movements (which work several muscle groups at once). Call it the fast-and-furious workout.

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"This type of training doesn't rely on oxygen for fuel, unlike traditional cardio, which is aerobic," says Certified Personal Trainer Cindy Lai, owner of NYC-based Cindy Lai Fitness. "You will improve your VO2 max significantly," she adds. (That's the maximum volume of oxygen that can be used in one minute during peak exercise.) What's

By Laurie Espino, Refinery29

Much like the woodchuck who could chuck wood, the beauty world has its own collection of paradoxical questions. Today's mystery revolves around one of our all-time favorite products: lipstick. More specifically, how long can we expect our lipstick to last? Think about it: You've had that favorite color of lipstick since when? Last season? Or...the season before that? Last year, even? It's been so long for some of us that we began to think there's a bottomless pit of color inside the tube.

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Luckily, the age-old mystery was laid to rest, thanks to some dedicated scientists/beauty nerds at Birchbox. After a lot of research, it was concluded that the average length of the female lip is approximately 55mm. With this in mind, the science team swiped four different types of lipstick on white butcher paper. After hours of testing, and what appeared to be an endless number of swipes, the research team had their

By Connie Wang, Refinery29

These days, it's sometimes difficult to see beyond the veil - past the choreographed YouTube-able dance down the aisle, past the matching bridesmaid dresses handmade by an indie designer in Fort Greene, past all the random cousins you haven't seen since your 12th birthday. Sometimes, a wedding can easily feel more like gluten-free, off-white icing than actual cake. But, at the end of the day, a wedding is a celebration of you, your partner, and the bond you share. Everything else is just extra.

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Which is why we love a good City Hall wedding. It's the "I Do" in its purest form - and a million times more romantic than any episode of Bridezilla we've ever seen. Plus, when you're perched on the steps for a few days, like we were, you can see all this happiness take place about four dozen times - a good thing for any love-story addict. Now, click through to see our favorite couples who

By Leila Brillson, Refinery29

These days, fame almost always comes with a perfume endorsement (or, in Gaga's case, is the name of a perfume endorsement). Yet, not every famous face has gotten the fragrance fever - which is a shame, because there are a couple of celebs who we'd gladly buy what they are smelling selling.

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So, we conceived of a couple unexpected scents from stars who aren't quite in the beauty game, and have used our nose for prediction to sniff out what they might endorse. From completely the completely surreal and unbelievable to the not-so-inconceivable, here are 10 celebs whose scents we would kind of love to see.

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