Make-up Is Almost Pointless

As a lot of you are aware, I work as a Retail Designer in the Make-up and Fragrance industry. As a girl, I am thrilled to be working in this industry – I love make-up and I love perfume. I own a tonne of the stuff, from little cheap sticks of emergency Lipstick - bought on the go after I’ve realised that I have, yet again, left my own Mac lippy at home – to expensive foundations and concealers bought after spending three hours in John Lewis umming and ahhing about whether this foundation will really make me glow like a radioactive lab rat . Thankfully, it didn’t. I am especially proud of my collection of Barry M eyeshadow – I have around 20-25 of those little tubs of joy, and I aim to collect ALL the colours.

It seems that no matter how much make-up I possess there is always more to collect – new sciences, textures, effects and smells – and there are always new ones being released. Mascara is my pet hate in the make-up world. Every time I think I’ve finally found The One I’m Going To Stick With For Life, as my Mother has and her mother before her did, a new one is released and my old favourite is discontinued, and my hunt has to start again.

I know I am not alone in my make-up collecting. Almost every woman is looking for that miracle product. The one that really does hide wrinkles and blemishes and makes us look 14 again. The one that makes us loose that half a stone and changes the colour of our eyes. And so, when we’re watching the telly on a Friday night and an ad comes on by Lancome or Oil of Olay or Ulay or whatever they’re calling themselves these days, we’re instantly grabbed by their “laser lift and renew without lasers” tag line. We BELIEVE that their product is going to be THE ONE. We believe that they are finally being honest. That maybe, just maybe, if we go out and buy this product it REALLY WILL stay on our faces for three weeks and not smudge. Consequently our cupboards are full of products that don’t work, were expensive enough to warrant re-mortgaging our homes and selling the cat to the tramp that lives on the corner in exchange for a cup-a-soup, and smell like a strange mixture of seaweed, poo and vanilla.

What I would like to know is WHEN WILL WE LEARN? These products DO NOT WORK. The cosmetics industry will never make a product that DOES work. If they did, then we’d all stop buying any subsequent products meaning that they’d have to wait for us to ACTUALLY FINISH the tub of whatever it is we have before we go and buy a new one, rather than giving up half way through the current tub and leaving it at the back of our cupboards for the next 20 years.

We need to take a leaf out of the men’s book. Buy a product. ONE product, unless it is on buy one get one free in which case buy several of the same product. Do NOT diversify from this product. If it works, it works. We do not need to buy into all the gimmicky stuff with “highlighting crystals” in it. For one thing I’m pretty sure they’re just granules of salt.

Having said that the majority of expensive make-up brands are gimmicks and aren’t exactly Ronseal (they don’t do what it says on the tin!) It is far preferable to make the mistake of buying pointless expensive cosmetics than going to other way and buying cheap – tangerine coloured foundation.

Cheap make-up is patchy, never blends to your actual skin tone and makes you resemble a sick oompah-loompah. The eye shadows are so hard that you have to gouge it out of the pot with a spoon and the lipstick sticks to nothing but teeth, making it look like you got so hungry you tried to chew your own arm off.

The stuff available on your town’s market brings you up in a rash and if you get it in your eye you’ll go blind.

The mascara, my pet hate, glues all your eyelashes together to form one giant eyelash. In short, you end up looking like Frankenstein’s Monster gone wrong.

The final problem with the cosmetics industry is that the middle of the road stuff is just that – the middle of the road. It’s not good enough to make you feel special or light your face up like a Christmas tree, but on the plus side it doesn’t make you look like you’ve contracted the Black Death.

It’s almost bad enough to make me consider going bare-skinned, but we don’t want to emotionally traumatise small children. So for now, the cosmetics industry can keep stealing my money and giving me useless products in return – until I develop a cure for aging, that is.