RANDOM THOUGHTS : BEAUTY (PART DEUX)

[jemly]

welcome back to the junk drawer of random beauty thoughts and musings. it has been nearly a year, so i think it is time for a rew RT thread ! 

when i'm doing my makeup in the morning, my dog sometimes throws a fit until i move his food bowl over to where i'm sitting. i'm certainly not the diva in our relationship.

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THE QUESTIONS THREAD:  http://community.sephora.com/t5/Products/The-Question-Thread-Because-not-all-questions-need-their-ow...

VINTAGE BEAUTY VIDEOS THREAD ! :  http://community.sephora.com/t5/Beauty-Confessions/VINTAGE-BEAUTY-VIDEOS/m-p/1826210#M69382

SWATCH REQUEST THREAD : http://community.sephora.com/t5/The-Swatch-Board/THE-SWATCH-REQUEST-THREAD/td-p/2223212

[SheWhoSkis]

@BaseballMommy, it totally depends on if you are looking for a neutral every day look, if you like a bit of color, or if you are looking for a special event.

They are all gorgeous, so if it appeals to you, go for it. Here are some favorites, that may work well for you:

• Emerveile:  A light pink that has a bit of shimmer. Perfect for a subtle make up look that is fast & easy.
• New Moon:  Somewhere between brown and copper with warmer tones. Apply lightly for a subtle look, but is buildable for more drama.
• Illusiore:  Mid-intensity silver with a hint of plum. Apply lightly for a subtle look, but is buildable for more drama.

Have you tried any of the Burberry Cream Shadows yet? I bet Damson would be stunning on you. It looks dark in the pan, but it applies quite sheer and subtle. I think the faint purple would really make hazel eyes pop!

[BaseballMommy]

@SheWhoSkisThank you so much for the recs! Sorry it's taken me a couple days to respond. I will add all of these to my list! I especially like the sound of new moon and emerveile:)

[TKLJ]

Yay! A lovely random act of kindness, @SheWhoSkis. 🙂

[jemly]

yesterday i had a magical day with an old friend who, after a decade of being relatively tom boyish, has decided she wants to be super feminine for a holiday party she's going to. we found her a gorgeous black velvet dress, heels, the whole deal, and then we went to sephora......

obviously i wanted to control the situation BECAUSE I KNOW EVERYTHING !!!! (joke) but a sales rep took over and i stepped away to do my own thing, not wanting to step on any feet. 

when i get back to my friend she has a basket full of stuff. the guy had caked on benefit porefessional, a smashbox color corrector, and NARS all day luminous weightless foundation (in the wrong color). 

the NARS all day lumi foundation is one of my favorite foundations. but it's NOT a beginner foundation, as it requires a learning curve in my opinion, and if you use more than a pump it can look really really heavy. particularly when used with a primer like porefessional. and if your skin is dehydrated, forget about it ! i ended up pulling my friend away saying we were going to the skincare section, and quietly explained to her that it is one of my very favorite foundations but it wasn't for her (and that the color match was way off, wtf). it was oddly difficult to have to put my NARS cheerleader pom poms aside !! i ended up getting her matched perfectly to the MUFE HD foundation, getting her a more hydrating primer (and then NARS olivia lipstick to boot, which looked GLORIOUS on her !!!!). 

my long winded point:

all the products this SA got her were just not right for her. no wonder so many women find buying makeup so frustrating...when a sales person fills your cart full of 5 different base products (JUST base products)--most of which is your wrong color, and most of which don't necessarily work well together--and ya get home and ya look like crap, you're gonna feel conned. it's then quite easy to get cynical about makeup shopping, and then very suspicious of the very people working there that are supposed to make shopping easier. 

anyway. i don't think the SA had bad intentions. it just felt like what he *did* have to offer was sheer chaos fueled by, frankly, ignorance about his job.

[Annalily11]

I hate when someone blatantly tries to sell a wrong color/formula product, I've been shopping with friends a few times where the SA tried to push a blatantly wrong color/formula/price range onto a friend/me insisting that it's "perfect" for them/me. I'm extremely pale, to the point that most brands don't sell anything near my color, and the two that do I still need to adjust with correctors, and I think the most grateful I've ever been was when I walked into a Sephora and asked if they had anything that might match me and the SA told me in honesty "I'm sorry, I don't think we do." 

On another note, I recently also got to help a more tom boyish friend dress shop, and it was tons of fun. I love playing dress up with other people lol.

[SheWhoSkis]

Luckily, your friend had you along for a second opinion. How exciting! I bet it will be wonderful to see her embrace her feminine side for the party.

[JoannaMarieC]

This sounds like such a fun day to spend with a dear friend! And she is very lucky you were there to help her with makeup!

[TKLJ]

My mom has asked me to schedule a makeover appointment for her for her birthday next week and I am DREADING it. She's just not makeup obsessed or knowledgable, and I'm a bit worried she'll think getting matched to the right foundation will be some life-changer that takes 10 years off. I'm also worried about the SAs; I'm afraid they'll try to push things she doesn't need or that don't work. I've certainly felt bullied into things by SAs before, and I'm confident about my makeup skills.

I haven't decided where to book her appointment yet. I thought about Sephora (slipping her a free makeover on my Rouge card, since I never use that perk), but it's such a youth-centric store. I might just book one at a "counter for mature ladies," aka your Lancomes, Estees, Cliniques, etc. And those places always have GWPs, so it will be like Christmas morning whenever she has to rebuy a foundation.

@jemly, you're really sweet to your friend. I'm glad you got her on the right track!

[jemly]

@TKLJ wherever you end up getting it, i think a way to do a bit of damage control for overzealous or undertrained SAs is to go in knowing what foundation you already want to try (or, you know, maybe 3 possibilities). if you know what your mom's foundation 'goals' are, and more importantly, what her skin type is (so important !) you / we can do a bit of research before hand to make sure she gets a foundation suited to her desires and skin type. same with lipstick formulas, etc. 

i'm happy to help you out with this, too, if you'd like. i'm in a geeky / researchy mood today 🙂

[DiVWA]

@TKLJ, I suggest you book an appointment for your mom with a Beauty Stylist at Nordstrom's. He or she isn't beholden to any particular brand and are supposed to be knowledgeable about all the brands carried there. I did this when I first started getting into makeup again, and although later on I ended up returning some of the items (after learning what worked better for me), it was a great way to get my feet wet again. 

When I went to a brand specialist (Bobbi Brown), I was very unhappy with the end result even though I was naive enough to buy most of what was put on me. It's like going to a brand specialist, he or she will try to force one of their products in all categories to "work" for you, even if the product(s) are all wrong.

ETA: I very much doubt that your mom will be able to see the Beauty Stylist by next week. It will likely be sometime after the holidays.

[TKLJ]

Very good suggestion, @DiVWA. I'm going to need to pull aside this stylist and say the first thing they need to tell her is to stop washing her face with a bar of Irish Spring soap. Thank you for the help!

[heartsmyface]

😭😭😭 that sounds so drying!   

[jemly]

@TKLJ oh good lord. give me her number and i'll CALL HER AND TELL HER TO STOP. 

🙂

i think this is a great thing to do for your mom's bday. we just gotta...plan so she can have a magical experience 🙂

[TKLJ]

JEM I KNOW. :'(

I'm getting her a facial for her birthday to try and prep her skin for the makeover (and hopefully instill some good skincare habits in her). 

She's in her early 60s, and I'd say her skin is pretty dry with some oiliness at the T-zone. (The bar soap is doing her no favors here.) There're some fine lines and general skin "tiredness," but no deep wrinkles. She wants natural/work-appropriate makeup, and she's a nurse, so it has to hold up well to long, sweaty hours. I have some extra UD setting sprays laying around, but I don't know if she'd go for that sort of thing.

She definitely needs a moisturizer (I'd like her to get day and night ones, but she may balk at the number of products, so just one workhorse may have to do). An eye cream (a very sensitive one; she doesn't wear eye makeup because of irritation). A sunscreen—it drives me crazy she doesn't wear SPF unless she's going swimming or something, especially since my dad's had some melanoma spots removed and she's a freaking nurse, but she's very much of the generation who eschewed sunscreen. At least she never went tanning covered in oil. A gentle cleanser (I have a million samples, so I'll pick out some I think would work for her). I don't think I'll be able to talk her 'round to oils, serums, or primer. Maybe an oil or serum if I show her mine. Hell, I have those three Glossier serums; she can have one if she likes it. I have some mask samples I can try and get her into.

For makeup proper, I wonder if a BB/CC would be best. They're lighter and usually have skincare benefits that foundations don't (such as SPF in case she forgets to apply sunscreen—not ideal, but better than nothing). And they won't settle into fine lines like foundation does. She currently uses some sort of full-coverage L'Oreal. Maybe she can get color-matched at a beauty counter, and I can look up a drugstore dupe. She also seemed interested in an undereye concealer, but she has genetic dark circles (thanks for passing those on, Mom!), and I don't think she'd be into both a brightener and a concealer, like I use, so she may have to settle for some darkness peeking through.

I think a natural blush will top off the makeup needs. She doesn't wear eye makeup and already has a few lipsticks that look good (and god knows I can help her on that front). She's not looking to contour or highlight, and she wears her brows au naturel (I'm going to have to warn her facialist not to suggest brow shaping, as my mom will be very offended). Maybe a setting powder or powder foundation for touchups. 

You are a saint, @jemly. I'm going to have my mom sit in while I apply skincare and makeup and go through each step with her to see what she's into and to show her products. My mom is usually pretty practical, so I hope she'll understand a makeover can't take care of 50 years of skincare sins, and that some issues she may have with her skin may require bigger committments (regular facials, maybe some Rxs from a derm, more products than she may want to use, etc). Naturally she springs this request on me just after I finished all my moisturizer samples (a de-stash goal I had), and after the Black Friday sales. 😄

[jozkid]

@TKLJ

Ooooh, ooooh! May I suggest Murad Invisiblur for mama? It's a primer, anti-aging treatment and it's got an SPF of 30 all rolled into one. I had a full size and I liked it. Pricey, but it eliminates additional products.

http://www.sephora.com/invisiblur-perfecting-shield-broad-spectrum-spf-30-pa-P394397?skuId=1670181&i...

[TKLJ]

@jozkid Thank you!

[H216]

I wonder if they (the SA's) go through training or just get placed randomly. I've had great luck in Sephora'S skincare section but rarely in the makeup...especially foundation.  I typically try to guesstimate my color and request a sample and take it home to try out. 

Spoiler

However, last time I went to try the new MJ remarcable foundation, they just wouldn't give me a sample. Instead she requested to apply it...all over my face...and in the wrong color. When I told her the color was off, she ensured me it was their mirror and lighting making it look that way. Ugh, I just left the mall with my head down hoping no one would see my face. 

Needless to say, I never bought the foundation since I couldn't figure out my color (or if it was even available ina match for me). 

 I'm glad you were there to help 'modify' her products! You're absolutely right as it can create a frustrating experience for a newcomer to cosmetics.

[kelloua]

It's interesting because I've had the opposite experience.  Better luck in makeup than skincare.  I seem to find SA's who also do freelance makeup on the side and they've been pretty good.

[TKLJ]

1. That sample-refusing SA was a jerk. 😞

2. I wonder if a lot of the foundation-matching problems are caused by Sephora's completely awful lighting. I've started to go to one in an outdoor mall that has big picture windows to let in natural light because of this problem. @H216

[TKLJ]

Also, I think a lot of Sephora SAs are really beholden to the Color IQ machine. It's a great resource, but not if there's bad lighting or they aren't trained on it well. 

[txcatx]

I was curious if I would get the same Color IQ number every time, so I had my color matched several times. A couple of times, the SA didn't bother to remove the foundation I was already wearing, which I assume could change the color. 

I've taken advantage of free makeovers since reaching Rouge. I've found that the best makeup artists ignore the Color IQ machine and know pretty much exactly what shades I need, and then they get a couple bottles of foundation and mix a perfectly customized color.