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?

GH Review: Victoria's Secret Deep-Softening Body Butter in "Ravishing Love"

I literally just polished this off today, so I figured I should do a review before I forget. I believe I bought this all the way back last year during a Boxing Day/Week promotion for $5.00 or so from the Victoria's Secret at Bellis Fair Mall in Washington -- since the west coast of Canada didn't have any Victoria's Secret at that point. Now I think we have a "Pink" at Metrotown.

To be honest, I've never been a huge fan of body butters. Firstly because you have to grab a small fistful of it right out of the container, and while I'm not a big germaphobe, I do hate how hard it is to control a glob of product. They do seem to melt on my skin faster, which is nice, but the initial application is always a bit of a pain. Too much goes on one area, not enough on another...

As a result, this lay forgotten for months, but I started using it when I came out of the shower on my legs particularly as they get really dry during the winter. It went pretty quickly once I did start using it and I can't say that I noticed an enormous difference in my skin. I have it on right now and my legs and arms feel really soft, but after weeks of using it, I still have a bit of a nagging dry area around my ankles.

It does sink into the skin quickly and the smell -- which is strong in the container -- fades fast once it's on your skin. Depending on how you like your scented body butters to work, this could be a negative or a positive, but since my job requires that we maintain a "scent-free" environment, it's nice to get a shot of that really pleasant blackberry/lilac smell in the morning without disturbing the nostrils of my co-workers.

Speaking of the smell -- though it says blackberry and lilac, and I believe them, to me this always smelled like a really fruity soda. There was just something fizzy in the smell itself, and that's the best way I can think of to describe it. Definitely pleasant and not overly bubble-gum sweet.

All in all, I liked this body butter fine. I think it worked just as well as pretty much every other body butter on the market (I've tried Clinique's and the Body Shop ones in the past) and it's definitely cheaper than the more famous ones out there.

If you are looking for a body butter that doesn't have a really cloying scent, and you don't have any areas that you need to be seriously softened, then I'd give it a try.

For me, I think I'll give this an A-, only knocking it down a peg for the slight lack of efficacy.

GH Review: Lush Emotional Brilliance Feeling Younger Skin Tint

 I bought this cream highlighter when Lush debuted its Emotional Brilliance collection last year.

Normally I prefer a powder highlighter, but I got a little carried away at my excitement at the prospect of Lush makeup (I'm still mourning the short-lived B Never spin-off) and picked it up to try.

The Lush website reports:

GH Review: Physician's Formula Mineral Wear Liquid Foundation

 This is literally the first and only disappointing product that I've ever bought from Physician's Formula, which is in part why I disliked it so much. 

This is meant to be a liquid mineral foundation from their Mineral Wear line. I'd loved the powder foundation and the blush and the mineral veil, so I figured that this would be another great addition to the collection.

It was not.