Annoyed

I made my usual Lancome purchase on their website. I bought my staples: Their gentle exfoliator and Bi-Facil eye makeup remover, and a couple of other makeup items: Artliner in Smoke and a blue eyeshadow. As a My Lancome member, I got my free shipping and a sample of mascara and was happy as a clam.

Two days later I got their promotion email, telling me that for every order over $75 I can get a lovely GWP that includes quite a few goodies. Now, a simiar thing has happened to me in the past with Clinique. A quick email to their customer service and whatever promotion promised was applied to my order, and all was well.

So, I emailed them at the relevant address. And nothing. Not even an automated response. Two days later I got my giftless package. I'm disappointed. Other e-commerce sites are much more sensitive to requests from loyal customers, and I really didn't expect that Lancome would be so different in this manner than their competitors.

I picked a tin of Burt's Bees strawberry lip balm on a whim. I needed some colorless goop to use under lipstick, and this one was there. I can't say that I get the hype surrounding this brand. I've tried several of the foot and hand products and was never blown away. They were not exactly competition to Bliss' lotions.

But I gave it a chance, and I guess it's okay. The balm feels nice on the lips, once you manage to scoop it out of the tin- the texture is like shea butter, and not very finger-friendly. It keeps the lips soft and allows me to put on the dark, dry lip colors of the season. But I'd be much happier if it didn't have this strong synthetic strawberry scent. The smell is almost unpleasant.

Nailed

The goth guy who bagged my groceries at Whole Foods the other day had something in common with many beauty obsessed ladies these days: He was wearing black nail polish. I doubt that he shelled a hefty sum to bid on a bottle of Chanel Black Satin on eBay, but nevertheless, that was shiny black polish.

Nails haven't been this dark since Chanel made everyone crazy with Vamp (also sold out everywhere, albeit temporarily). The first hint of this was back in July, when Bobbi Brown's limited edition Chocolate Cherry polish was sold out even before the chocolate eye palette. A look at drugstores in my area confirmed that those deep browns were gone even from the less hyped brands. I couldn't find even one bottle of anything dark enough for this trend.


Thankfully, we'll always have online shopping. Earlier this week, beauty.com still had a nice selection of very dark colors. I bought Double Dip and Wicked (very similar to the infamous Vamp). By now they're already out of many of these colors (including their black, Licorice).