A new and rather exciting launch from Lancome; a mascara that promises to solve all of our mascara-applying woes! My particular mascara grievances are: wands that are too long and uncontrollable and bristles that are just ridiculously chunky. With too-long wands I inevitably poke the wrong part of my lid and trigger some kind of crazy eye-muscle reflex and then get mascara all over my face; with too-chunky bristles I end up coating the very edge of my eyelid and have to either remove the excess after my lashes have dried or go over with a big eyeliner pen to try and hide it. It’s probably why I’m a sucker for those little mini mascaras that you always get with free gifts – I find them so easy to use and I always end up with properly painted lashes, root to tip. I even get those fine, weedy little peskers that flounder about near to the inner corner of the eye; invisible to all but those with the most superhuman of vision, I hardly even know they’re there until I use one of my freebie miniatures!

Enter Lancome with their new Grandiose mascara. It has a relatively small and compact brush head with bristles that pick up the most evasive of fine lashes; but it’s the wand that’s really something different. It’s shaped like a swan’s neck. “Pah!” I hear you say. ‘What new gimmick has the beauty industry come up with now?” And I was totally in agreement with you, until I had a try and painted my lashes perfectly in about a third of the time it usually takes me. Aided, no doubt, by the fact that the Grandiose was brand new (therefore nice and liquidy and easy to glide on), but I am adamant that it is the weird bent wand that really made the difference.

The bend has the effect of making the wand feel a lot sturdier and more controllable; it seems to bring the bristles closer to your eyes without the handle of the wand getting in the way. Does that make sense? I will absolutely show you this on video when I next do a filming session – I think that it needs to be demonstrated to see what I’m on about. The wand has been designed with the swan-neck because it makes it easier to apply mascara to each “type” of lash – with a little turn of the stem, you can reach the inner lashes more easily, or you can change the angle slightly and reach the lower lashes. The wand is also supposed to make it simpler to do your “other eye” (the one that’s not on the same side as the hand you’re using) and to cross the wand over your nose, if you use this very precarious application technique, without getting massive splotches of tar all over your visage.

And may I just have a little beauty coo over the packaging? It reminds me of Sleeping Beauty; the rose embalmed in the transparent lid like some kind of evil fairy’s trophy. I love it! Very different. Of all the more…novel…mascara inventions I’ve tried, this one is by far the best. Apart from perhaps the cannon-ball mascara from Givenchy, though that one is really an acquired taste. I can imagine pretty much everyone liking the Grandiose. I wonder if the swan-neck will catch on?

I asked Alex Babsky to give a few tips on how best to use the Grandiose mascara – he did my makeup last year in Paris and is the UK’s ambassador for Lancome. (You can see him doing my makeup here in a funky little video I made.) Alex said,

“The swan neck wand of Grandiose enables full control over application, as it gives you the perfect angle for all lashes, top and bottom.

Start from the outer corner and work your way in, wriggling the brush all the way to the tips for length and separation.

Work the mascara right into the base of the lashes too, as it’s a blacker than black formula it will give extra definition, mimicking fuller lashes.”

Lancome’s Grandiose launches at Selfridges on the 15th July – I’ll give you a little nudge when it goes live! To read more mascara reviews, have a click over here.

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younique lashes

I’ve had a lot – and I mean a lot – of contact via email, the BBB contact form and Twitter from a brand called Younique, so decided to do some investigation into the brand.

First up, it’s a direct sales and party plan company (like Mary Kay or Avon) with the point of difference that it uses social media almost exclusively to make sales. Actually, in the US it seems to have been very successful so far.

Sales people are called ‘presenters’, which is kind of confusing to my ear – it implies that there is some kind of media associated with it when there isn’t. When I look at the presenters’ starter pack (in the US it’s $99 and you have to buy it) there’s really not much in it (mostly testers to show at parties – mineral pigment testers, concealer testers, blush testers and 3D Fibre lashes – their best seller; the rest is things like a Younique bank account and instant access to their Virtual Party System). Younique is adamant that it is not a pyramid selling scheme, but it does operate by presenters taking on other presenters to their team and then the money filtering through, as far as I can work out.

To be fair, so far, I haven’t found one single negative review regarding either the quality of the products or the sales tactics. The brand targets women to sell to women and despite being email bombed by presenters, the one that I did reply to saying that I didn’t want to test, was very gracious and very polite. However, there is a big emphasis on the brand’s aim to ‘empower women’. I’m not sure how empowering it is. The whole presenter tiering bothers me.. you can go from Presenter to Exemplary Presenter to Elite Presenter and finish on Exclusive Presenter, but I imagine with such a huge slew of new entry level presenters (judging from my inbox) dilutes the chances of ever finding your way up the chain. Oh, and you get ‘deactivated’ if you don’t sell a certain amount over a 3 month period. It’s not a lot, but I’m just not sure how empowering that can possibly be. Far be it from me to want anyone who feels entrepreurial enough to take this on not to succeed, but so far it’s clear that the right hand doesn’t talk to the left – I have the feeling that no one presenter knows what the others are doing, so it’s really not their fault that cumulatively, it’s too much, and its working against them in terms of being received well.

So, bottom line is – for anyone who is also getting a lot of Younique contacts via social media – in order for presenters to get anywhere up the chain they need to be very active in social media; a blog review is certainly very helpful to promote their individual businesses so they will definitely be chasing for it. I’m interested to see how high pressure their sales techniques will be to get blog reviews.

I will repeat, I haven’t had any kind of bad experience (other than just far, far too many contacts – 15 at the last count within the past fortnight, not including Twitter) with Younique, but I have a wary eye out to see how this pans out in the UK market. We’re not that good at being ‘sold’ to and I’m starting to feel uncomfortably bombarded by Younique Direct Selling.

The post Younique Direct Selling appeared first on British Beauty Blogger.

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Some of the Youtube-phobes amongst you might actually like this video; it’s really short and I don’t speak! I’m planning on doing a few more music-only videos, mostly because it’s a relief not to have to sit there listening to the sound of my own voice for hours on end as I edit. I’m not sure that they’re as effective, really, when it comes to showing how the makeup is applied, but…a change is as good as a rest and all that jazz.

This video is an “affordable everyday makeup look”. I was trying out bits and bobs, researching for my Makeup Starter Kit video which will be out in the next couple of weeks. Unfortunately, two of the staple products featured no longer exist. They are both from Avon – an eight colour neutrals palette and the Earthen Rose blush that I have been harping on about for years. It’s just a brilliant matte bronzer or contour for very fair skin and I’m incredibly sad that they’ve stopped making it. Especially as I spent about six hours filming and editing a video with it in! Fear not, though, for I have tracked down the eyeshadow palette on Amazon here, and if you want an alternative to the Earthen Rose then I’d go for the Honey Bronze bronzer from The Body Shop (here) – I use shade 2, but if you’re really fair then shade 1 will do the trick.

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