It wasn’t until I once bought myself a sheet of beetle stickers that I realized: 1. I’m a grown woman still buying herself stickers, and, 2. beetles are amazing looking! The colors of chartreuse and eggplant with provocative shapes and iridescence -it made me feel bad about plucking them out of the pool every summer and flinging them from the net to what hopefully was not their demise. It seems of late that two of my favorite designers have made a similar discovery. At the last Rue du Mail by Martine Sitbon show the beauty of the beetle, which inspired the collection, was expressed in the subtle iridescent hues, rounded structures and even scale-like patterns. And a couple of weeks ago the make-up for Christian Lacroix’s Haute Couture show was inspired by “powerful beetles and the praying mantis” according to the makeup artist Stephane Marais. Again, the beauty of the insects’ colors were the focus using metallic greens, specifically a turquoise green eyeliner liquid in the inner corner of the eye. It’s not a look I’d recommend for off the runway but anything by Martine Sitbon is another story.