I happened to stumble on Gorgeous Cosmetics within days of their introduction to the U.S. market when I was scanning Nordstrom. Any time a new cosmetics brand is made available in the U.S. I get super excited because I feel I have tried almost all the brands available to me, so being introduced to something new is refreshing. Gorgeous Cosmetics is especially interesting to me because it hails from Australia. The only other Australian brand I am aware of is Becca Cosmetics and since I loved them, I was anxious to try another aussie brand.
Of course, these brands couldn’t be farther from each other from a branding perspective. Becca Cosmetics favors a skin-natural look with textures and shades that favors a beach, bronzey, sultry look with an emphasis on sheered out skintones. Lately, I have noticed with their new production introductions that they are going more for the “made-up” face with opaque, matte colors. We will see if this fundamentally changes the branding dna and philosophy of the brand over time, if it does at all.
Gorgeous Cosmetics branding appears to be more of a traditional red carpet, or C-suite executive, or politician on the stump, fully “made-up” face. A power face brought down to a minimum of various standard looks and textures. However, they have not invested in promotional images the way Becca Cosmetics have.
As always, I stayed within my bread and butter for trying out a new cosmetic brand. I picked up a foundation. Earlier in the winter, I reviewed Gorgeous Cosmetics Sheer Brilliance foundation here. It was not a good option for me shade wise. So those went back. I also picked up the Base Perfect Foundation in two colors since I wasn’t sure which would work out: 2Y and 2N. I figured Level 2 shades would be equivalent to a light-medium depth and it is, but on the darker side. I actually fall on the lighter side of light-medium. I am usually the darkest shade in the Light category, or the lightest shade in the Light-Medium spectrum. However, my undertones are closer to medium shade undertones that favor yellow-olive skin. Gorgeous Cosmetics shades are a better fit for beigey skintones, which is not a good fit for me. Oh well. But this actually makes sense if you consider the ethnic origins of the bulk of early immigrants to Australia, primarily English and Irish.
As you can see from my swatches below, these were not a good shade option for me because the undertones were off and it actually oxidizes a bit deeper over time. If you look at the outer edges of the swatch you can see where the color is turning darker and more soft orangey/peach. I returned these because these were not a good shade match for me, but I received PRESS SAMPLES of all of the Level 1 shades of the Base Perfect Foundation and I was able to find a close shade match. Yippee! (Disregard the red inflammation as a result of me scrubbing off staining swatches on my arm!)
I will reserve my comments on the pros and cons of the foundation for the PRESS SAMPLE post simply because it was with a PRESS SAMPLE foundation that I was able to see how this works on my oily, acne-prone skin.
*On another note: I am soooo happy I am getting through my “Upcoming Posts Sneak Peek” posts. I thought that previewing products that I would post about would light a fire under my butt to get them posted sooner, but the opposite happened. I had less desire to post about them. I now realize the error of my ways and will not do posts like that because it actually kills my desire to post full reviews.
Second, I can now understand the slippery slope of posting about press samples. I haven’t even done a press sample post yet, but even referencing a future post felt funny. It was foreign territory for me to be contacted by the public relations department of a cosmetics brand. Do I try to be all professional? Do I just act like a regular ‘ole consumer who is tickled pink about getting to try a new product for fun and FREE? This isn’t a business for me and I don’t need to receive press samples go review stuff. It doesn’t mean that I would be reluctant to growing my blog and investing more time and money into it to take it to the next level. It’s just that my interests and time (or skills!) aren’t there right now. Right now, this is fun and a way for me to share my interests and opinions on things that I enjoy. But my thoughts definitely flirted with the dark side of beauty blogging and all the ramifications it came with. I had to step back, re-center, and plug along as usual.
Fairytales and Coffee 