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?

YSL Arty Stone Collection Heralds the Return of Color

The Makeup Talk forums are abuzz with the new collection from Yves Saint Laurent, named for -- and inspired by -- their line of very popular statement rings.

What excited me about the line, however, is the promise that we might finally escape the doldrums of the endless neutral trend. Much as I love neutrals -- they do look beautiful and natural and "your face but better" -- I really miss bright purples and and greens and more daring, fun colors.

While pretty colors are to spring makeup what florals are to spring fashion (ie. everywhere on the runway, nowhere on the street), I do think that this last holdout of '80s/'90s revival might finally start penetrating the public consciousness and we can take a quick step back from our Urban Decay Naked 9 (or whatever number we're on) palettes and add a touch of lime green for a change.

What do you think? Are you ready for a change, or would you still rather stick to browns and taupes?

The Lord is Testing Me -- Urban Decay "Oz the Great and Powerful" Pallettes

I saw this today on Musings of a Muse and felt instantly in lust.

I love when movies do tie-in makeup campaigns (as evinced by my Briar Rose blush purchase), but often it feels like colors in the brand's existing line are either re-labelled or just put together to "create" a look, rather than products being made specifically for the limited edition palette.

On first glance, it looks like Urban Decay's Oz palettes may be the ever-elusive latter.

According to Muse:

The palettes are centered around the two main characters of the movie, Glinda the Good Witch and Theodora. People’s Style Watch says that each palette will be $49 and comes with eight new, exclusive eye shadow shades (two of which are duos), a travel-size 24/7 Glide-On Pencil, an exclusive full-size Super-Saturated High Gloss Lip Color and a detailed get-the-look card.

 I like this a lot better than the NYX Dark Shadows Crimson Amulet palette from last year, which seemed like it would be a pain to lug around and looked like you'd be at risk for a lot of accidental mixing between the cream and powder products.

Either way, I'll try to stay strong.

Both palettes will come on the market this spring for $49.00 apiece.