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Shopping 101

On the Right Road For Cosmetics

By Jessica Brandon, B.S.
(Bachelorette of Spending)

Hello, Darlings! If it's February, that must mean Valentine's Day is right around the corner! The month when love is in the air, and sales on flowers and chocolate goes through the roof! Since my column comes out in the first week of the month, let me give everyone out there a big, fat cyberkiss! (SMACK!) Don't forget to shower your significant other with love instead of bon bons! God knows that stuff is hideously fattening!

This month, Ladies, we're going to touch on cosmetics, and where one should buy them. I begin with a rather humiliating, but totally true story. Some eight or nine years ago when I started experimenting with makeup, I was rock stupid about what I needed. With no one to assist me since I was in the closet at the time, I had to experiment on my own, so I sauntered into the nearest drug store and literally bought the first bottle of foundation I saw, Cover Girl I think, and rushed home to try it out. Behind closed (and locked) doors, I slathered the stuff all over my face like butter and toast and promptly freaked out when I saw the end result: I looked like Al Jolson in reverse! The problem was that I had bought foundation tailored towards Caucasian skin types, which, as you probably know I am most definitely not. (See, I told you I was dumb.) Needless to say, I set speed records washing the stuff off, then spent days trying to figure out what I did wrong. Had I been bold enough, or brazen enough to ask for assistance, I would've avoided that dreadful little faux pas. But then, getting help in a drug store for anything, least of all cosmetics is next to impossible unless you're buying something with a prescription. At the time, I honestly had no idea that cosmetics were sold in department stores (or that makeup comes in different shades) where one could get loads of help in selecting the right product.

For the purpose of this column, you have two routes, as I like to call them, as to where to purchase cosmetics: "Cheap Avenue" (drug stores, discount stores like WalMart and supermarkets) and "Expensive Boulevard" (high end department stores like Macy's, Lord & Taylor's, Neiman Marcus, etc.). Actually, you could add a third route, "Home Shopping Street" (Avon, Mary Kay), but you would really need a lot of nerve to have an Avon lady come to your home to sell you makeup.

I'm sure we've all started our cosmetic journey on Cheap Avenue, using such familiar names as Revlon, Maybelline, Cover Girl, Max Factor and L'Oreal while women of color chose Zuri and Posner. With the most expensive item here usually being foundation or powder at no more than say, ten dollars or so, it didn't take much money to build a sizeable collection of cosmetics. Whether or not what you bought was of any appreciable quality was another matter. The rap against Cheap Avenue stuff was just that, it was cheap. In spades. You had outdated colors, inferior formulations and less than top notch materials, not to mention it even smelled cheap. Also, you couldn't get any help on making a selection. You're left to your own devices, guessing like mad as to what might work best on you from just looking at a product, which isn't nearly enough help to make a good decision. Believe me, folks, I'm living proof of that.

Now we take a drive down Expensive Boulevard where you see brand names like Clinique, Christian Dior, Chanel, Prescriptives, Esté Lauder, Lancôme and Bobbi Brown, just to name a few while women of color had Flori Roberts and Fashion Fair to fall back on, although, nowadays, virtually everyone mentioned here carries colors for African-American women. Just strolling through a department store's cosmetics section is a thrill because of how elegant and sophisticated everything looks.

The one key thing that sets Expensive Boulevard head and shoulders over the pack, beyond the quality of the materials is that you get excellent, one-on-one service for your money as the salespeople, highly trained and knowledgeable about their products will help you buy just the right items you need to make you look your best. Make no mistake, you do pay for what you get on this particular street, but I happen to think it's more than worth the cost.

When I first purchased cosmetics in a department store some four years ago, I was stunned at having spent nearly one hundred fifty dollars for everything I needed to bring Jessica to life, with the cheapest item being a liplining pencil for $8.50! WOW!

But, it was well worth the money for the assistance I received from the saleslady who waited on me, taking the time to test each and every product on me while in my boy guise to make sure the colors would look good on me. That meant a lot.

Even though the quality of Cheap Avenue makeup has dramatically improved (Case in point being Revlon's fantastic line of ColorStay cosmetics which both looks good and wears like iron), thanks to state of the art technologies, impressive research facilities and the use of high class ingredients like hydroxy acids, silicone and vitamins, I still prefer to buy my cosmetics on Expensive Boulevard because of the one-on-one contact with a salesperson to help me make the right choice.

Now, I've given shopping lectures over the past couple of years to the local Renaissance faithful where I've mentioned how one should never buy cosmetics in drug stores (Commandment of Shopping Number Six), but have been told by sisters who swear by Cheap Avenue stuff, saying it's just as good as Expensive Boulevard brands. Perhaps they're right, this is, after all, an extremely subjective topic and opinions usually vary, depending on the individual and what she prefers to wear.

Next is how much makeup one should have. This too is subjective, determined by how often you dress. If you only go out say once or twice a month like I do, then you don't need to have a substantial amount of cosmetics beyond foundation, powder, mascara, three or four shades each of eyeshadow and lipliner, one or two shades each of blush and eyeliner and half a dozen shades of lipstick. If you dress more frequently, then I'd say it might be okay to double those amounts. That depends on you.

Also important is what you keep your cosmetics in and where you store them. Regarding the former, a couple of years ago, I bought a fairly large makeup case made by a company called Sassaby at one of those everything-from-soup-to-nuts drug stores that opens up like a tool box and has sufficient compartments for all of one's makeup supplies and brushes. It's transportable and comes in several colors, including blue which I chose. At $24.99, it was a steal.

As far as where to store your cosmetics, a good rule of thumb here is to choose a safe, dry environment, like your bedroom. Living alone as I do, I keep my makeup case on my dresser. Avoid damp, chilly places like basements, stuffy, humid places like attics and keep your supplies away from direct heat sources like the sun. And with makeup brushes, make sure to thoroughly clean them after every use. Treat your makeup well and it will treat you well.

To sum everything up, I say if you want the very best cosmetics, along with lots of helpful advice, hop in your pink Cadillac and motor down to Expensive Boulevard. It'll be worth the drive. In the meantime, if you have any comments, tips or opinions, please address them to me at treetop@voicenet.com. And, until next month, shop not just with your heart, but with your head!

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