Karen Robinovitz, the founder of Purple Lab and creator of Huge Lips, Skinny Hips lip gloss, dishes on the trials and tribulations of creating your own makeup line. Today, she ponders what she should wear on her next HSN appearance, and you, dear readers, get to help!

What I'll wear on HSN is always the most stressful part of going on air for me.

I can deal with the pressure of being on TV in front of what could be 10 million people. But the outfit, that's another story. TV clothes are tricky. I can't be as over the top as I am in real life (i.e. no million layers of accessories... no major hats... no feathers). I have to think colors, what will pop. And remember, the camera really does add 10 lbs.

Panic! Help!

This time, I'm not leaving my outfits to whim. I'm asking for your assistance in choosing my final outfit for my broadcast.

Vote on your favorite outfit in the poll below, leave a comment to enter to win a Purple Lab Huge Lips Skinny Hips Lip Gloss, and watch me on HSN at 8pm on August 19th to see the winning outfit!


Look 1: Green Lanvin dress and purple and gold YSL wedgies.
What I love: the color. Emerald is amazing on the little screen - and what better way to wear it than with purple shoes! My fear... are the ruffles too much for HSN?

Look 2: Thakoon graphic print dress, vintage Gucci gold belt, Lanvin shoes.
What I love: It's fun and flirty. The colors are beautiful and while the graphic is busy, it won't overwhelm on television. The little puckered sleeve is heaven.

Look 3: Marc Jacobs satin pants, red Celine blouse, Nicholas Kirkwood lace booties.
What I love: Black and red is killing me right now. Love the contrast and slightly 80s feeling of it. It's so chic! I think this look is kind of perfection, do you?


Look 4: Black Zac Posen tuxedo pants, Lanvin silver brocade top, Alexander McQueen belt.
What I love: I'd normally stay away from dark colors for TV but the silver is so happy and shiny that I thought it would work well. Agreed?

Look 5: Orange Marni dress, Lanvin lemon necklace, Givenchy wedgies.
What I love: Okay, this is one of my favorite dresses on the planet but it could be too sack-like for TV. The color is rad, but the shape? Thoughts?

Look 6: Black Givenchy walking shorts. Balenciaga turquoise drapey top and crystal necklace. YSL pumps.
What I love: the aqua is made for TV and it's high fashion without being unrelatable. Plus, a crystal necklace. I can't resist some sparkle.

Vote in the poll to your left to choose your favorite outfit, and then enter to win a tube of Purple Lab's Huge Lips, Skinny Hips Lip Gloss by leaving a comment below!

• To enter, leave a confirmed comment below telling us which outfit you like best.
• The comment must be left before 5pm ET on August 16, 2010.
• You may enter only once. Five winners will be selected in a random drawing.
• Five winners will receive one bottle of Purple Lab's Huge Lips, Skinny Hips Lip Gloss, valued at $25.
• Open to legal residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia and Canada (excluding Quebec) who are 18 and older.
• Click here for complete official rules.

Read all of Karen Robinovitz's Beauty bLab columns here!

If you've never been to a major designer sample sale, it's like something straight out of the Discovery Channel wild kingdom shows -- a stampede of starving lions chasing its prey -- where lines of hungry girls typically wrap the corner.

I sent the Purple Lab girls on a mission last week: crash Diane von Furstenberg's New York City sample sale for some street team marketing. Dressed in our Purple Lab tees, dark denim and ballet flats, we were armed with 100 samples of Huge Lips Skinny Hips in No Panty Lines (clear lipgloss) and VIP cards to shop on our site.

As a brand with little out of pocket budget, guerilla marketing and Purple Lab go hand-in-hand. I'm forced to get creative, which is truly a blessing in disguise! Besides, these untraditional methods are what will set us apart!

When we arrived on the scene at 28th and 5th Ave., there was a line weaving around the block. Where other people are groaning at the situation, we were ecstatic! It was our target audience...fashionable women who are in the know!

Plan of attack: divide and conquer! We broke into groups so we could cover more ground. We talked to people, got emails, shared our lip-plumping gloss with Hoodia and everyone was très responsive! (You would be too if our sweet, cute girls approached you!)

Two hours later, we were out of glosses and had to sent Ashley to the headquareters to pick up more. They were going like hot cakes! We asked everyone to become fans on Facebook and offered one random winner two other colors as incentive (Marketing, baby! Marketing!).

A few hours and 60 glosses later, we were ready to head home. Then we spotted her -- Alex McCord from the "Real Housewives of New York City." Ashley made a mad dash for her!

We literally had one gloss left (poetic, isn't it) and Ashley was chatting her up while fishing through her hand-me-down Prada handbag to find it, all the while hoping Alex wouldn't roll her eyes and storm off. We must have looked like crazy fans because the rest of us were staring from the street corner, pointing like gawking stalkers!

"I have something for you!" Ashley said as she found the gloss.

"Oh yeah?" Alex replied in a sweet, welcoming manner.

As Ashley caught her breath, she said, "I am from Purple Lab NYC a fashion-inspired beauty brand started by Karen Robinovitz..." All the while, she was still digging for the product.

As the light turned red and Alex was ready to leave, Ashley got the gloss in her hand as well as a VIP card and we all watched her walk away, reading the copy on the hourglass shaped packaging with a smile.

Life was sweet!

And we had 30 new fans on Facebook the next day!

Mwah!

Karen
Purple Lab Creatrix

Karen Rovinovitz, the founder of Purple Lab and creator of Huge Lips, Skinny Hips lip gloss, dishes on the trials and tribulations of creating your own makeup line. Read her all her Beauty bLab columns here.

Every season, fashion designers have a look book, curated to perfection, to showcase their collection to prospective buyers and clients. It's not something beauty brands would typically do, but being that I'm such a fashion girl at heart, I was a little jealous! I wanted one!

So we decided to launch our very own.

I asked some of our favorite bloggers and F.O.P.L. (friends of Purple Lab) to strike a pose, and we turned my apartment into a photo studio.


The kitchen was the Dolce Gusto coffee and muffin "craft station" as they say on movie sets.

The living room is was saved for hair and makeup. Turns out that Britt, our multi-tasking maven (a.k.a. intern) who also wound up in one of the pics, is genius with hair! To give you a sense of the mayhem - 11 models, 3 makeup artists, Sharon and a team of 4 interns, 2 Dolce Gusto girls manning the cappuccino, 1 photographer, and me.

Our makeup artists rocked! Thank you to Stacie Ford, Ani Hovhannisyan and Donna Beretsky-Neidecker, who are so talented and able smoke out an eye like nobody's business! And then there's Ana Schecter, photographer (or as I like to call her, photographess). She is sooooo talented, it hurts.

We carefully plotted which look would be right for each model. Extreme and edgy red liner (Huge Lips Skinny Hips in Red Sole doubled as shadow for the day) for Karen Blanchard of "Where did U Get That" - she has such a downtown vibe that we knew she could pull it off (not everyone in the world can, but we also gave her a natural look).


Meanwhile, my husband Todd was on the roof deck, morphing it into a photo ready studio. We hung a white blanket on the fence between our deck and our neighbor's (for a stark white background), removed the table, chairs and grill and set the stage.

The lovely Audrey of "Homerun Ballerina" has such a natural glow about her so it was fun to get enhance it with the highlighter of Luxury Squared.

Now, Virginia Nam of "Lovely 20s" and "The Examiner." She looks like such a perfect little porcelain doll so we had to go with it for a very Asian-inspired look, using Huge Lips Skinny Hips in Lychee Martini on the eyes (it really works well as a shadow but you do have to let it dry!)

P.S. We're working on eye shadows, BTW! Coming somewhat soon-ish!

Christine from "My Style Pill" pulled off a really out-there, runway-ready eye - words won't do it justice. The rest of the face was super natural so that the eyes were the main attraction. Drool worthy.

It took a while to perfect the heavy rock star eyes for Anne of "The Jet Set Girls." I love the contrast of the dark, dark eye on her fair skin. And that red hair! She was so fierce, I couldn't stop kvelling all over her! And a very pregger Mildred from "Beauty Logic Blog" turned into a Nubian princess with super exaggerated rose-colored cat eyes.

Noelle and Joelle of "The Owls Are Not What They Seem," brought the glamour - each with two looks. And F.O.P.L. included a cute contest winner, who, along with her mom, became a friend, thanks to Twitter; the brand's resident pole dancing teacher, Barbara, and Britt, one of our interns who rocked a side braid and a hippie chic look that was simply divine.

Behind the scenes pics are on our Facebook page. And there's a great video as well, so do check it out!




Mwah!

Karen
Purple Lab Creatrix

Karen Rovinovitz, the founder of Purple Lab and creator of Huge Lips, Skinny Hips lip gloss, dishes on the trials and tribulations of creating your own makeup line. Read her all her Beauty bLab columns here.

Confession: I went to the Sex & the City Premiere two years ago.

I cliche'd out in a Lanvin cocktail dress, the tallest heels I own (almost seven inches, thanks to Fendi), and headed to Radio City Music Hall. Armed with two tickets and the "I don't wait in lines" Carrie-tude, my friend Christina and I couldn't contain our excitement... until we got there.

The line was four city blocks long. It was complete mayhem. There would be no pushing my way to the front. So we gave two Japanese tourists my tickets and went for sushi instead. Wasted glamour!

Monday's premiere of the sequel, perhaps the most anticipated film of the year, however, was a different story.

This time, I took another approach. I stormed the scene with my girls from Purple Lab (the beauty brand I founded in the span between the two SATC movies), all wearing skinny jeans, cute Purple Lab purple tees, slashed to reveal a little shoulder, and one key accessory: retro style cigarette trays, wrapped in purple velvet and harnessed to their bodies. A moving beauty counter of products!

I thought, if Purple Lab can't afford to be there as an official sponsor, we could certainly street-team-it. It's the best audience I could imagine -- pop culture loving, style obsessed girls who love all things fab and glam!

We offered makeup touch-ups and SATC makeovers to gaggles of girls and gave out ring pops (what better snack for the movies?) and Foot Petals (a must-have for hours of heel-wearing).

The Purple Lab street team. Courtesy Photo

Don't worry - we brought hand sanitizer and a billion applicators to keep it totally sanitary. New Yorkers tend to be germaphobic.

While stationed outside of the Duane Reade on 51st Street, the women who worked there started to knock on the window to find out about our products. I was showing them by holding them up against the window!

Then one came out to try out some gloss and get my card (she wanted to show it to the buyer - you know how Duane Reade has that new chic beauty division with luxe brands? We'll see what happens.)

It was a success of "Big" standards.

Mwah!

Karen
Purple Lab Creatrix

Are you a fan of home shopping but feel like you always miss the best deals? Or maybe you're interested in getting your own brand on TV but don't know where to start?

Purple Lab founder Karen Robinovitz wondered the same things before launching her beauty brand on HSN this past February.

Sure, she almost declared bankruptcy getting there and spent two anxiety-filled years clawing her way to success, documenting the process in her StyleList column Beauty BLab, but Robinovitz has finally realized her dream. Now she wants others to learn from her experience.

"Being able to present your brand -- and your dream -- to so many women at once through HSN is the most amazing experience I have ever had," says Robinovitz, who returns for her second series this week (April 29 at 2 a.m., 2 p.m., and 8 p.m.; and April 30 at 10 a.m. and 3 p.m,), where she'll present four new shades of Huge Lips Skinny Hips and a new silicone-free primer called Pearlesque Show.

To prepare, Robinovitz sat down with Lynne Ronon, HSN's executive vice president of merchandising, for her insights on how to succeed on the show, along with expert advice on how all of us can best shop.

Karen Robinovitz: What time should we watch HSN for the best deals?
Lynne Ronon: Midnight rules! We launch the best value of the day, called the "Today's Special," at midnight. So set your alarm clock or DVR.

KR: What are five products people cannot afford to miss?
LR: Purple Lab's new Pearlesque Show Primer, airing April 29 and 30, and Rarities Fine Jewelry with Carol Brodie, airing April 29. Don't miss the two-day upcoming Summer Style Designer Event presented by Lucky Magazine on May 19 and 20. It features the hottest products from American Glamour Badgley Mischka, Hutton Wilkinson Jewelry, as well as Lucky Capsule Collection designers such as F + C by Foley and Corinna, Gerard Yosca, and Pade Vavra.

KR: What crazy things have happened on air?
LR: We have had circus animals, unplanned visitors such as birds in the studio, laughing fits, models falling, people walking in front of the camera, entertaining callers... It's live TV!

KR: What do you do if someone freezes on air? It has to be scary!
LR: Our hosts are the consummate professionals. If a guest stumbles, the host steps in and catches him/her immediately. It would be incredibly rare that the customer would know. Sometimes newer hosts aren't as polished at stretching or stepping in for a lost guest, and you may see a host lose track. But they are well trained to pick up the ball, and there is always B roll to run!

KR: HSN has really changed recently, with celebrities and lots of new brands. What's going on?
LR: We have transformed our network into a network focused on developing lifestyle programming and creating engaging experiences for our customers that entertain and inform.



KR: What do you look for in new brands coming to HSN?
LR: A great product is the first point of entry. But just as important is a great story and a great storyteller.

KR: It's my second time on HSN. Any tips you can give me, especially after seeing my first shows?
LR: You had a terrific debut, and we're looking forward to your return. You have great charisma as a storyteller and customers enjoy hearing the inspiration behind your products, the passion you have for innovation, and your ability to create communities through the use of social media.

KR: Thank you. I'm blushing. What do you think works and doesn't work?
LR: Authenticity and, of course, a great value [work]. Our customers are looking for a unique product, something slightly different than they are seeing in the marketplace. The ideal product/guest combination is an authentic guest who is involved with and passionate about his or her product. Respect for our customer is key. If a new partner doesn't embrace our world, it shows, and the product won't sell.

KR: Is there a Top 10 list for a brand spokesperson to have a better on-air presence?
LR: We wish! But the variety of what we do keeps the customer watching so we are careful to have each brand look and feel different on our air while continuing to fit in the overall look and feel of HSN that the customer is used to seeing.

It also varies from category to category: Jewelry is about romance, design, how will this product make you, or the recipient, feel when they wear it? Ready-to-wear is about informing the customer on trends, how to wear our fashion, what will look great on our customer. Electronics are about expertise, demonstrations, and showing what a product can do for you. Home is about giving our customers all of the information to efficiently improve their home and make it look exactly how they want it. We show product in many different styles of homes so customers can imagine owning a product and feel that it will enhance what they already have.

KR: What do you think makes HSN so addictive? I cannot turn it off!
LR: There is always something new and exciting!

KR: It's true!

Karen Robinovitz, the founder of Purple Lab and creator of Huge Lips Skinny Hips lip gloss, dishes on the trials and tribulations of creating your own makeup line. Read her all her Beauty bLab columns here.