RSSWomen and Cosmetic Advertising
February 14, 2010
Nevermind if you use the Paula’s Choice products. I ask women why they don’t subscribe to Beautypedia. They see the reviews as just another marketing voice, just Paula’s opinion. Maybe it takes training in science to understand the incomparable value of independent examination based on sound research. All science asks for is SOUND proof.
Read moreThe Lies They Tell Us
January 25, 2010
A reporter called. She was on deadline, doing a piece on aging. She thought there might be a colour angle. We talked awhile.
Read moreProduct Review : Merle Norman Luxiva Timeless Age-Defying Makeup
December 21, 2009
My search for good quality AND colour in cosmetics, laid out intelligently so women could understand how to use them, led me to MN. I don’t use the skin products because they’re not at Beautypedia, but I relax that rule for makeup. It’s hard enough to get colour right. Timeless foundation has been a happy find.
Read moreTrue Summer’s Cool Rose Blush
December 13, 2009
True Summer skin is usually not colourful. By December, Fresh Plum’s dusty softness doesn’t perk it up enough. Bronzer looks crazy on True Summer skin in the hands of real-world women because it adds heat to skin that inherently has none. Months of Product Search may be over.
Read moreProduct Review : Paula’s Choice Resist Barrier Repair Moisturizer
October 19, 2009
This article may be better titled “The Language That Sells To Women”. It is not a review in the traditional sense. I apologize if I offend, that is not my intention.
Read moreEllen as Cover Girl Spokesperson
January 11, 2009
I bet CG will sell a ton of whatever makeup Ellen is promoting because they picked a real person and didn’t Photoshop away all her wrinkles. The brand will be noticed for celebrating diversity in women, just as they were with Queen Latifah. The consumer appeal will be that these are real women, not plastic girls, and they’ve teamed up with Olay to put an anti-aging spin on it.
She’s 50 years old. She’s worth $65million.
This is the link to the CG ad, not reproduced here to protect copyright. There, you’ll find the videos for the photo shoot. I wonder if I could afford those pants and shoes.
Why is she always in black or black&white? Is it her choice, do you think? Neither one do anything to light up her natural beauty. Her incredible eyes don’t shine through and her skin looks tired. Why frosted pink lips? Surely, the makeup artists could have come up with something more interesting.
Real women needed
The fashion and cosmetics industries desperately need to find women of the Over 40 group to inspire real clothes and makeup. Look at how Michelle Obama dresses. She doesn’t spend a ridiculous (a disgraceful) fortune on what she wears.
You can’t tell me that a woman whose ensembles cost $50,000 and up has the slightest idea about the life of the everyday family. Maybe Mrs. Obama doesn’t either but at least she looks great, she has a unique style, her shoes make sense, and she doesn’t buy into what any designer tries to put us all in. She could look at pictures of herself in 10 or 20 years and not cringe. These women really do represent how we look and how we want to look.
Why do women decide that designers somehow have flawless vision? What makes their taste so sacrosanct?
Look around and suddenly you see women in this,
Stiletto at Amazon, linked to source if you wish to buy.
or this,
Pants from Amazon. Click image to find source.
In need of real muses
We look dumb dumb dumb. Weak. Suckers. The marketing department cranks up its imagination and they rake in cash. The media machine doesn’t address the needs of regular women over 40 because it doesn’t know how. It still thinks we all have the body and budget of Diane Keaton. It is dawning on them that we have interests beyond those of Goldie Hawn but they’re not sure what they are.
Ellen’s style of dress may be masculine but at least it’s real. There’s nothing she wears that I wouldn’t like to own (in the right colors, in case I haven’t said it often enough). She doesn’t wobble when she walks. She could even dance to faster music, like You Can’t Stop The Beat from Hairspray, or Avril Lavigne’s I Don’t Like Your Girlfriend, which I think would be a good departure from the present tempo, and she wouldn’t risk falling over and needing help to get up.
I hope they’ll paint Ellen as a real woman. They’re almost forced to because she’d look too goofy in sparkle and cartoon eyelashes. They couldn’t get away with it. I’m hoping to see what their makeup artists can do with neutral. Because her coloring is so incredibly soft, they can’t overpaint her. Even here, she looks interesting, if a little metallic.
Photo Michael Thompson. Ellen on W, February 2007.
She is funny. Like all people who have a certain exterior face, her private side is probably fairly serious, maybe even overly reflective. People who are always up and funny on the outside are often the opposite on the inside. Here, she is just plain funny, from YouTube.
One bone to pick
Now why is she selling for a company that animal tests? Why? It is so outdated. It also feels a little two-faced in light of her support of animal charities. Her tell-it-like-it-is honesty isn’t really her biggest selling point. Her funny sense of timing and dry, throwaway remarks are, like Bill Cosby. She’s incredibly likable but this feels deceitful.
Among the charities various celebs support, this page shows Ellen’s causes.
There are more Ellens in reality. There are no Julias. That’s the beauty of the woman. She’s all of us.
-->I bet CG will sell a ton of whatever makeup Ellen is promoting because they picked a real person and didn’t Photoshop away all her lines. The brand will be noticed for celebrating diversity in women, just as they were with Queen Latifah. The consumer appeal will be that these are real women, not plastic girls.
She’s 50 years old. She’s worth $65million.
Sites To Know : Pretty Your World
January 9, 2009
I’ve been waiting a year and a half to find Pretty Your World. I read the entire thing in 3 hours. There are other color sites out there but few hold a candle to this one because it is so much more a teaching site than a marketing site. In most cases, the marketing is only thinly veiled by an attempt to teach, but PYW is about teaching and it does so outstandingly well.
The most important image tool
You may know how much importance I place on getting your colors right to look good. The terribly overdone choice of black for evening. The ubiquitous blonde highlights. The supposedly safe charcoal gray or navy suit. They just don’t work on everyone. Ellen DeGeneres in black, Nicole Kidman in washed out blonde hair, even celebs get it wrong.
We all notice it, not just people who like color. The dress you complimented someone on but really thought didn’t look special at all. The friend who spent a fortune on a new coat and she really looks pale and washed out, but you felt you had to say something nice. The warm brown hair on women with no warmth in their skin, so the hair takes over the face.
I really like Color Me Beautiful‘s first book because it was my introduction the 4 color season way to analyze people’s colors. It made the whole thing simple enough to understand. It is unbeatable as a place to begin but there were still people I couldn’t fit into the scheme. I get most confused by celebs with hair dyed the color of corn or Springs with brown hair (like Julie Andrews in The Sound Of Music, who seems most often thought of as Spring). Or why some women that I’m certain are Autumns look so good in black. I’m hopeless with women of color. Ask and it shall be answered. Along came Pretty Your World.
Lora Alexander
Lora Alexander is an esthetician, a makeup artist, and a Certified Image Consultant. Color and Art are her primary interests, with close second loves of makeup, color analysis, and beauty psychology.
The 12 Season System
The system is based on a more complete 12 Season color analysis, which Lora believes to be the ONLY accurate system there is, and I absolutely agree. The 4 seasons we know are broken down to each have 3 sub-categories. You don’t begin by finding your season. Rather, you find yourself in the 6 descriptions of Deep, Clear, Light, Soft, Cool, and Warm. Secondly, you identify yourself among the 2 choices of Warm or Cool. Combining the first 6 and the last 2 gives you the 12 combinations. So you could be Deep Winter, Cool Winter, or Clear Winter. The breakdown is found on the Analyze Yourself page.
There are plenty of examples, using celebrities. There are excellent but not overly detailed explanations. The system is broken down in various ways, in a stepwise process, to help you find your place. There are links using Eye Color and Hair Color to help guide your choice. It is unbelievable to me that Lora began this site only 2 months ago. She’s already created THE best teaching site about personal color analysis on the internet.
A walk through PYW
I was completely amazed to see how much Lora and I have in common – like our love of Kevyn Aucoin, our belief in Paula Begoun’s work, our over-40 vintage, our season (Autumn), the fact that we colorcast people within a few minutes of meeting them (though I’m not nearly as good at it as she is), our thriftyness (but we are not cheap!) and our passion for finding beauty advice that works in the REAL world.
She doesn’t pull any punches. We are in perfect agreement when she states, in The Truth About Beauty , that the cosmetics industry lies to us day in and day out and we still can’t give them money fast enough.
Though it may be not be fair, she is also right that we are judged immediately by others and most of it is on appearance. We are not judged on whether or not we’re Gwyneth Paltrow look-alikes. We are judged on the use we’ve made of what we have. Following the “Even someone naturally beautiful…” link on that page will take you to the famous Dove billboard ad and how much artifice the beauty industry is based on. Empower yourself. Learn which products work. Learn your colors.
I love Celebrity Style because it shows celebs in their various hair color tryouts.
Just for fun, but fun it is, there are 4 pages of celebs without makeup. Would we look twice at any of those faces in the mall or pushing a grocery cart? We would not. Their 5’10”, 110 lb bodies, maybe.
How to most improve your looks
I totally get that not everyone wants the bother of makeup. Most women probably don’t. But, listen. Makeup is EASY once you know your season. Your makeup colors ARE your clothing colors. It’s all right there. Even your hair colors are in your palettes!
What I don’t understand is why a woman would not take the time to know her colors just to make good clothing choices. It totally transforms how you look. Why spend $200 or $100 or $10 on something that not only doesn’t flatter your looks, but actually detracts?
You might prefer a certain style of dress or cut of jacket and nobody could argue with your taste. But only 1 of the 3 Springs will ever look gorgeous in black. A Summer never will. You might as well paint a drab grayish foundation color on your face, darken the shadows under your eyes, and get it over with.
I know Autumn women reading this will be saying “I like ballet pink and I’m g.d. well going to wear it.” Do what you gotta do. Hopefully the pink thing doesn’t cost a lot. You will never look rich, vibrant, and powerful in pink. Wear it but not to a meeting. Or an argument. Or a 10 year reunion.
Experiment with success
Many women have some sense of what colors suit them but there’s still a lot of confusion out there. The whole topic seems intimidating. They might have a sense of their general category or some good safe basics. To find a collection of 50!! colors that would be great on YOU – now that’s a gift. You could be more adventuresome, get away from safe, and look amazing.
Where do you start? How do you find your colors when you go shopping? Well, you start here. Like everything else, you get help when you need it, even if it costs money. You send in your picture. You buy the swatch book. You take it shopping. The swatch kit on Lora’s site, and all the extras that come with it, looks fantastic.
Remember the articles on Gift Ideas 1 – 5, back in December? Well, no gift, and I mean NO gift, NONE, could come close to buying a woman her color swatches. Gift certificates are available but the surprise and gratitude of giving a woman her own colors would be worth it.
The palettes themselves aren’t at PYW – or anywhere on the internet. Lora recommends looking at the book Color Me Beautiful’s Looking Your Best for good explanations and 28-color layouts of each of the 12 Seasons, with verbal descriptions of the full 48colors for each season at the end. (The Click to LOOK doesn’t work, it’s just coming from Amazon.)
I bought this book and it’s pretty good. The best thing about it is that it explains the 12 Season system quite well, particularly how a season can crossover and borrow colors from another season. This expands your palette but in a controlled way that is understandable. There is still the hair/clothing/style advice but it’s outdated (the first version was published in 1991). Most disappointing to me was that the 28 colors are hard to see. They look like they’re painted on concrete, grainy and rough. The swatches in the original book were better. Still worth it for the explanation of the 12 Seasons if you’re into it, though.
Have your colors done!
Still don’t believe your color analysis can be done on the internet? In a future post (once I know the date, I’ll post it in the Upcoming link on the front page of this site), Lora will do an in depth color analysis using pictures of me with makeup, without makeup, close-ups of my eyes, and pictures of my hair color when I was young. I’m off to her site to fill out the questionnaire.
Take a serious look at what you get for $89.95 on that same page.
-->I’ve been waiting a year and a half to find Pretty Your World. I read the entire thing in 3 hours. There are other color sites out there but few hold a candle to this one because it is so much more a teaching site than a marketing site. In most cases, the marketing is only thinly veiled by an attempt to teach, but PYW is about teaching and it does so outstandingly well.
Read more4 More Makeup Tricks For Mature Faces 2
October 27, 2008
Back in September, I posted an article about eye makeup for older women in The First 4 Ways To Modify Makeup For Age.
Aging faces develop sharper angles because the layer of fat under the skin becomes thinner with time. Applying makeup with sharp lines and edges, be it poorly blended blush or a sharp edge of eyeliner, only emphasizes this feature of aging. Soft blurred edges that dissolve into one another flatter a mature face. This look is more softly rounded which imparts a youthfulness.
I agree with Lauren Hutton that sheer colors are more attractive that a heavy color deposit. When I say “a soft look”, I don’t mean dusty or watery colors. In most cases, unless you’re a Summer, dilute colors add no liveliness to the face at all. “Soft” here means a light hand in putting on the product and using products that don’t put down a heavy layer of pigment. The colors are pure and vibrant but the consistency is diaphanous, or sheer.
Today’s four are about the mouth.
1. Easy on the lipstick. Steer clear of too much or too dark. This is a very difficult look to pull off unless you really know how to balance the rest of the face. Watch out for “old lady” cliché colors like frosty coral, flat pink, and the nondescript burgundy-dusty rose blend.
Since I don’t have time to reapply lip products ever few minutes, but I find a soft, natural color becoming, I look for long-lasting glosses that work (Clinique Glosswear, L’Oreal Color Juice, and L’Oreal Infallible being among of the best in the affordable category) and use lipliner on the whole lip first.
Gloss is often marketed to younger women, so the colors tend to be fresher. The tradeoff is that it’s very difficult to find gloss without frost or sparkle. The cosmetics industry is producing makeup for 25 year olds. Hey, anyone want to put together a makeup line for us? I’m in.
Stick with colors in your season. Once you know which color type you belong to, you can choose colors that are very true (but sheer! they’re not the same, right?) and look great.
A Summer might look at L’Oreal Color Juice in Watermelon Crush. Summer is the group where frost doesn’t add anything. Their coloring is so soft that anything harsh is jarring.
A Spring is looking for a peachy pink. A light gold shimmer is nice on a Spring. Look at MAC Lustreglass in Instant Gold.
An Autumn does better with some metallic than any other because the whole look is toasty, like this.
Metallic goes overboard all too easily in today’s shimmer swamp. Subtle shimmer is always better.
Look at Almay Ideal Gloss in Bronze Shimmer or Lise Watier Plumpissimo Gloss in Bronze. Warm orange-red looks good too, especially for darker Autumns who need more color in makeup to coordinate with the extra intensity in their natural coloring.
It could be this, but even more red.
A Winter wears icy pink, like the lightest shades here, in her clothing. It looks gorgeous. As lipstick, it’s too faded. For any season, mouth color that is lighter than skin color is hard to do well. A makeup artist could probably balance this look with a stronger eye, but that’s not you and me for every day.
A bright clear blue-pink is also good.
L’Oreal Colour Juice in Raspberry Smash and Tutti Frutti are worth looking at.
If your lip color bleeds easily, gloss won’t work well. The colors stay the same, but you need to look for more tenacious formulas. Revlon’s Color Stay and Color Stay Sheers will get you there. And of course, there’s every imaginable texture in between.
2. Place light concealer at the corners of the mouth and along the outer edges of the lower lip. There are entire articles in this site on the Light Concealer’s ability to create a face lift effect. You still have to work with your own face. For instance, if the nose is thin, don’t put a stripe of light concealer, or shimmer either, down the center or your nose will look even thinner.
Some application spots apply to all of us, some more than others of course, and are easy to forget. Remember to blend light concealer at the corner of the mouth and continue it under the outer edges of the lower lip. The corners of the mouth often turn down a little with time and it can look severe. This technique is anti-aging because it lifts the corners up a little, brings some light, and makes the lower lip look fuller and more supported.
3. Discover a very effective anti-bleed lip liner. Choose a shade in the same color as the lips or a colorless product, to offset lip color’s tendency to move into cracks. Don’t spend a lot of money on this product. The best ones are often the cheaper ones. Search MUA and Beautypedia to find the lipliners that really work to prevent lipstick from bleeding into lines around the mouth. With a clear product, you could even apply it a little outside your natural lip line. Who would know?
The easiest place to buy a great clear one is from Paula’s Choice – works great, feels great, no sharpening, really does last, good price point. This is one of those you can buy several of the first time out.
4. Using concealer instead of lip liner to keep lipstick in place. If you don’t care for lip liner, another way to keep lip color from wandering is to apply a thin layer of concealer all around the lips and blend it out really well.
If you look carefully at lipstick ads, you can almost see it, because it makes the lips come out more, as will any light color. This idea is best reserved for women with a small mouth or thin lips.
A thick concealer will look heavy on lined skin, definitely not helpful. MAC Select Cover-Up comes in great colors, is thin in consistency, and doesn’t move once it’s dry.
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Aging faces develop sharper angles because the layer of fat under the skin becomes thinner with time. Applying makeup with sharp lines and edges, be it poorly blended blush or a sharp edge of eyeliner, only emphasizes this feature of aging. Soft blurred edges that dissolve into one another flatter a mature face. This look is more softly rounded which imparts a youthfulness.
Today’s 4 are about the mouth.
This Month In Allure October 2008 : Yes, Yes, YES!
September 28, 2008
If you have any interest in makeup, any at all, you will want to know that each October, Allure publishes their Best of Beauty issue. This is the best one ever, with Ellen Pompeo (who looks like a cross between Lindsay Lohan and Kate Hudson) on the cover.
For awhile, it seemed the same products were being recycled year after year. This year’s seems fresher, like they started at the beginning again.
Letter From The Editor
The editor-in-chief is a woman named Linda Wells. I would like this woman (though after The Devil Wears Prada, who knows?). She writes the only Letter From The Editor that I consistently read in any magazine. She seems more indulgent of the stardust and glitz than mesmerized by it.
Linda Wells
It’s never a speech promising how great the issue is going to be. She lets you work that out for yourself. It’s just about a point of view, something she thought about or noticed. Though she travels in entirely different circles, the experience is always one you can relate to. There’s no gushing or raving or taking it all too seriously. She seems more genuine than primped to the teeth.
The issues I NEVER buy
Readers Choice Awards issue are futile. The products never seem to evolve. Why is anyone still buying Great Lash mascara (unless you want a no-mascara look), or Clinique DDML (you could be getting so much more!) ? I don’t even want to talk about NARS Orgasm blush (for 80% of women, there are better choices!). The scents are never interesting, the brands names less so, with MAC and CoverGirl being far too heavily weighted.
Chatelaine did a decent Favorite Products article in the September 08 issue. I almost bought it, but in the same magazine was an article about a woman who tortured her children – here if you need to see it.
What are their editors thinking? Am I going bring something so evil, that radiates such horrible energy into my house? And have my kids see it? I remember some years ago an issue with a feature on a woman who was in love with Paul Bernardo. I can’t even bring myself to type what he was all about it, but you can Google him. I warn you, it’s not pretty. Chatelaine must have a very solid readership to print this stuff. I won’t even pick up the magazine any more.
Elegance has one master
Giorgio Armani
The source of the photo is an article in Wallpaper, for his Armani Casa furniture design store in London. The interview is interesting, but even better is the slideshow of Armani interiors. Click under the small kitchen photo to view the gallery.
Anyone who’s been to my house will fall over laughing for days to think I aspire to this. I have a long way to go. Actually, the house is too sterile, but visualize some stuff in it and it starts looking less robotic.
Allure has featured Armani’s belief in simplicity in makeup, just as in clothing, in a short article. His sense of elegance and understatement is, of course, renowned. In these, no one can take his place. I was most comforted by his statement that what he dislikes is “the exhibition of being sexy”. Thank heavens. If there’s one thought that does not cross my mind, it’s whether or not I appear sexy.
A good friend spoke with me recently about a piece on “Why Do You Want To Look Sexy?”, as a follow up to Why To You Want To Look Younger? . I sat, I thought, I read, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t find a place from which to understand the question because the sad fact is looking sexy, or feeling it, just never crosses my mind. Maybe it’s a sign of pre-menopause.
I do want to look attractive. I don’t go out without makeup. I think about my hair. I’m literally happier on my thin days. But sexy per se, why don’t I care? No idea. I’d like to know though. I need to speak with my friend and technical expert, Rick, about putting polls on this page. How many of us think about looking sexy? Always, never, sometimes?
An SJP aside
On page 186, SJP has the weirdest hair color I’ve ever seen on her. I’m pretty sure that girl is a summer, and when they make her hair the color of corn, or even worse, whatever this color is, the descriptive words escape me, pinkish-brown…, man, she just looks off. Does anyone recall when her hair was platinum (white) blond and shoulder length? I for one thought she looked amazing.
Best of the Best
But the Best-Of pages!! Stupendous. You can tell they worked at this. The choices are mostly beautiful and original. The colors are modern and elegant , though those of you who don’t wear sea-foam green eyelids may differ on that point. What can you say, they’re targeting 25 year olds. You’ll enjoy the outstanding gray eyeshadows more. The Winners lists are here, sans pictures.
Any colors from the past are only being re-hashed because they’re still the most beautiful ( and, yes, Orgasm is among them; that color will never go away, it will haunt the beauty galaxy for all time). Brands are spread over the board pretty well, with many expensive choices, but I find it forgivable and expected. That’s often where the best pigments and textures are in makeup (not so with Skin Care).
I appreciated the page devoted to Splurges, Economy, Natural, and Men’s selections.
Is it still the cosmetics industry soaking in you in hype and relieving you of your cash? Of course it is. But if you love the stuff and like to play, and are actually happy to go looking for independent opinions before you buy, throw this issue in the grocery cart. You will find the fabbiest products in lines you might never bothered getting to know. Your list of things to take a look at next time you’re out shopping is going to grow.
-->If you have any interest in makeup, any at all, you will want to know that each October, Allure publishes their Best of Beauty issue. This is the best one ever, with Ellen Pompeo (who looks like a cross between Lindsay Lohan and Kate Hudson) on the cover.For awhile, it seemed the same products were being recycled year after year. This year’s seems fresher, like they started at the beginning again.
Read moreMakeup Counter Navigation
September 25, 2008
Navigation means the process of finding your way around. Usability means making sure something works well.
Don’t Make Me Think!
I read a great book. It is Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think, A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. Steve is a guy who gets paid to figure out if websites are easy enough for anyone, or at least the intended client, to navigate and use. But the intended client is anyone.
Usability seems easy enough, and it’s mostly common sense. The problem is that common sense is not all that common. Add to that the conflicts between the designer, the CEO, and everyone in between, and it makes for tortuous websites.
Steve describes us to ourselves. People view the internet like roadside signs that go zooming past them. If we’re looking for something on a page, the line that has our attention is the only thing on the page we see. We are in a hurry. And we’re coldblooded. We’re looking for something specific, not reading a book. If the page we land on doesn’t have what we want, we click away, often back to the Google Search page.
The internet is like being in a huge mall blindfolded, getting walked around, and having the blindfold whipped off for 10 seconds every 10 minutes. The challenge is in trying to figure out where you are and where the good stuff is. You know it’s there but have no idea how to get to it. Make it convoluted and no one will use it.
Websites that don’t work
The example I keep running into is the Clarins site. Tiny fonts. Can’t tell what’s clickable. Sadly, not enough is clickable. It used to be impossible to find the colors an eyeliner was available in. Now I can get there sometimes, but the swatches are too small. Does the cosmetics industry try these out on real women?
L’Oreal is even more difficult. If you type www.loreal.com, you’ll get taken to a to entire L’Oreal arsenal. There’s this freakishly annoying flickering hand for a cursor (why? is it just my computer?) and the interface is forever loading something. If you’re really on the ball and type www.lorealparis.com, you’re redirected to www.lorealparisusa.com , and wait a long time for something to appear, if it ever does. The pages take a long time to load. Once you’re in, it’s ok, though there will be ads, but you really need a will to stay with it that long.
This is not easy for consumers. They’d even spray you with perfume if they could. It would be a multi-sensorial experience, like walking into a Hollister store, and just as hard to find what you want.
Universal principles
A makeup collection is no different. They sabotage themselves by making makeup counters so complicated that many women avoid them, just like so many websites. Could the marketing be intentional to confuse us and unload more product? Without knowing what they want and what suits them, many women would not venture near a makeup counter.
We walk past islands and islands of displays. They are all clamoring for our time and attention, just like so many neon signs on the highway. It’s intimidating and a little depressing.
In many cases, the easiest choice to make is none, even if there has been an attempt to organize the parade, like at Clinique and MAC. Nobody wants remote controls with 55 buttons. It is not an accident that Google’s main page is mostly white. They asked people what they wanted and they listened to what they were told. We love them all the more for it.
The collections in many Sephora stores might as well be in alphabetical order. If a company makes 5 kinds of lip gloss, the difference between each should be spelled out somewhere obvious (this would be you, MAC). Bobbi Brown, possibly the most real-life-friendly line out there from a color perspective (and if you ignore the prices), has 60 black lipstick cases all turned upside down and no corresponding color swatch anywhere. Now am I really going to turn over each one to find a color I like?
When the pink, orange, and neon lipsticks are all mixed together, the thought balloon over your head says “Who would wear this? Is this the one meant for me? Is it supposed to go with something else? Why didn’t they put the Out There stuff out there?”
What Women Want
Women don’t need 40 lipsticks. We hate that we have that many because 30 of them at least represent mistakes or impulsive purchases. We’d trade them all for 3 that we know look great. We don’t have time (nor confidence, quite often) for eye makeup designs involving 4 different colors, regardless of how well they go together.
What we want are 3 (give or take) colors in each of the blush, eyeshadow, and lip color categories that we know look great on us. These would be the shades made for our coloring that we would reach for every day.
You could walk up to a display, quickly find what’s appropriate for your coloring (or get assistance in doing so), and trust that you would never, ever look silly. The colors would suit you, look true and believable on your face, and would be coordinated to belong in the same color families. Shopping really would be a breeze.
Like well-designed website navigation, you should not have to break a sweat to see where you are and where you want to go. That thinking should be done for you. I maintain that it’s not that hard.
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The internet is like being in a huge mall blindfolded, getting walked around, and having the blindfold whipped off for 10 seconds every 10 minutes. The challenge is in trying to figure out where you are and where the good stuff is. You know it’s there but have no idea how to get to it. Make it convoluted and no one will use it.
A makeup collection is no different.
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A Greener Tea
Web Maintenence by Rick Beckman
