London Haul: The Preview

 

 I said nothing about it on this blog, sadly, but I was in London for two weeks last month and, needless to say, I may have raided an entire Boots.

Reviews to follow.

In Defense of the Department Store Makeup Placebo Effect

My birthday is a week before Valentine’s Day, and then my boyfriend’s birthday is a week after that. So February is a bit of an insane time, hence the lack of new posts. I didn’t photograph my birthday weekend in Seattle because I’ve found over time that when I’m glued to my camera I get a lot of great photographs of a place I didn’t really experience myself, goofy and sentimental as that might sound.

In any event, it’s been three weeks of cheaper US alcohol, sub-par Seattle coffee (seriously, Seattle, Vancouver is kicking your ass) and makeup. Sorry, no-buy promise.

My boyfriend (possibly at my behest) bought me the Urban Decay Glinda pallet, I bought myself a L'Occitane hand cream (I did use up my Soap and Glory), and finally (here's the big one) I bought an eyeshadow quad and a cream eyeshadow from Chanel.

I regret next to nothing.

But finally owning some great high-end makeup again reminded me of something, something that this no-buy (or low-buy) promise has reinforced: Department store makeup isn’t universally better than drug store makeup. There are still plenty of products that you can buy at the drug store that rival anything you can find in a department store -- particularly when it comes to mascaras or glosses. But the placebo effect that high-end cosmetics create can't be ignored. I find that I treat my more expensive products better, which in turn means that I get more out of a Chanel compact than a L’Oreal one.

If you spend $60 on an eye shadow quad, you are going to use that thing to the bone – because otherwise, it’s an enormous waste of money. And you’re going to be incredibly careful in picking it out. On top of that, the lighting is better when you're testing it (so you get a better idea of how it actually looks) and everything in a department store has a tester.

But if you spent $7 on an eyeshadow quad, you might pick it up a little less carefully, and ultimately who cares if the colors don’t quite go? Then you buy another, because you really meant to get the brown one, as the purple one wasn’t really that practical. Oh, well, the highlight shade doesn’t go, but that’s okay. On and on. So before you know it, you’ve spent $70 on a pile of drug store eyeshadows, none of which are quite right, and none of which you ever end up using all that often.

This, as I’ve hinted before, is the genius of drug store makeup. You spend more money on more products that you like less. And then you treat those products more harshly, causing them to break or get dirty faster, meaning you throw them out more frequently.

I would say 75-90% of the time, I wind up not liking the color/texture of a drug store product as much as I thought I would. Compared to 5% of the time with high-end. So I wind up buying an armload of eyeshadows because I'm still looking for *the* taupe or *the* green. Whereas my one Chanel eyeshadow quad is perfect. Everything about the way it looks is perfect. And maybe that's psychosomatic, but ultimately aren't cosmetics supposed to make me feel better?

Where to Find Bourjois in Vancouver

Not that this is helpful to me now, but I have finally found the best location in Canada for any and all Bourjois Cosmetics needs. While the Shoppers Drug Mart at Metrotown has an okay selection, the 1202 West Pender Street location (on the same side as the Waves coffee house and across from the 7-11) has the best set-up I've seen yet. They have nearly all of the little round pot eyeshadows, blushes, a huge number of the mascaras, the foundations, bronzers, etc. 

If you're looking desperately for a good place to buy all of the Bourjois products you've seen on British guru channels, this is the location I'd go with to avoid disappointment.

They also have the best Soap and Glory selection I've seen yet as well -- including Flake Away, Hand Food, Clean on Me and nearly all of the moisturizers and lip plumpers.

Happy Shopping!

Disclaimer: Not that this isn't obvious from the picture quality of my reviews, but this blog is not sponsored, nor do I receive free items or money for plugging particular stores or brands. The "goo hoarding" reviews essentially imply that this is all stuff I've bought, but I wanted to be absolutely clear about this, given the nature of this particular article.

GH Review: Soap and Glory's Great Shakes Hydrating Hand Cream

I bought Soap and Glory’s Great Shakes right before my year of No Buy started, and I’ve been using it pretty regularly at work since.

The package, as with all Soap and Glory products, is a nice bright pink color. It’s a standard flip-top, squeeze-tube bottle that sits lid-down, leading to a bit of unfortunate gunk-spillage into the cap. Otherwise, the packaging is serviceable and not unattractive.