City Chic: An Urban Girl’s Guide to Livin’ Large on Less

“How to creatively cheat at looking chic for cheap.” City Chic is a different kind of budgeting book - for those who aspire to live the Vogue lifestyle but can only afford “Take 5″, and that’s if they borrow it from the library.

“Money may be an object, but you refuse to let it be an obstacle.”

Unfortunately the book spends the first few chapters covering how to dumpster dive for furniture! But skip past that and pretty soon we get to the good stuff.

For instance, did you know that L’oreal is owned by Lancome so they have access to the expensive laboratories, making them a good pick for cheaper makeup?

City Chic touts the old favorite facial cleanser Cetaphil: while I love this for normal cleansing, it’s not quite tough enough for heavy duty makeup removal, especially Revlon’s Colorstay makeup line.

Sadly, much of the fashion advice in this book was of the “heard it all before” variety. Buy one $100 garment rather than five $20 ones, etc. Good advice but hardly ground-breaking news.

This is a book to borrow from your local library, rather than a must-have on your bookshelf.