2010 Year in Review

I think this year was one of my oddest in beauty world. It was great but I really changed many of my beauty product purchasing this year. I loved everything that I bought but I feel that I bought from the same few companies over and over again this year instead of trying all kinds of new products. This year seemed to have a lot of repeating trends and patterns and I picked the ones that I loved and followed them like crazy.

My two favorite trends this year were the plaid craze and the Lady Gaga obsession. I was obsessed with A Tartan Tale from MAC and the entire Burberry makeup line just because of the plaid packaging. It is at the point where I don't even know if I could use the Burberry products because I don't want to ruin the plaid markings imprinted on the product. This year's release of Viva Glam Gaga just continued to feed my Lady Gaga obsession and with the addition of the lip gloss shade in the early fall, I could continue to feed the craze. Lady Gaga love went full circle with the late in the year releases of Bad Romance from Lippmann Collection and the shades Pokerface and Petit Monstre from the NARS Holiday collection. So it seems like this year I was very into packaging and names and this might have distracted me from other quality colors and products that just weren't wrapped up as nicely.

I was looking over some of my purchases from this year and I noticed a trend of three major brands: MAC, Urban Decay, and Clinique. I bought a huge amount of products from MAC To The Beach and Venomous Villians and I kept coming back to my local MAC counter for everything from primer to foundation to eye liner. I am normally a MAC addict but this year really took it over the top. This also was the year of Urban Decay eye shadows for me, I bought both the Naked Eye Palette and the Book of Shadows NYC and I can honestly say that I wear the shades from these palettes at least three to four days a week. I spend much of this year using through my giant collection of clinical skincare products but anytime that I had to replace products, I went right to Clinique. As happy as I am with all these purchases, I do wonder if perhaps I slanted my beauty budget too much towards those three brands.

I found that I had a great year for perfume in 2010, I bought my first bottle of Creed and just love to look at it on my bureau. My surprise of the year was the new fragrances that came out late in the year from Bath and Body Works. Previously, I had never purchased any perfumes from this company. But with the release of Dark Kiss and Secret Wonderland, I now have these EDTS featured proudly next to Chanel and Creed bottles. The fragrances from that company greatly improved in quality this year, making it another favorite spot of my mine when spending money.

I think this is the first year that I don't really know what I want to focus on in the coming year. I haven't really thought of any great beauty goals this year since I have been able to accomplish so much in the past two year with eye makeup application and finding the perfect shade of red lipstick. My only outstanding goal to get false eye lashes on correctly but with my history on this matter, I don't know that I will be able to accomplish this in only a year. I guess that I could call my goal for the upcoming year to open up my shopping and try new brands and products out instead of always going to MAC and Urban Decay. But somehow I doubt that that will really happen...

photo courtesy of MAC

2009 In Review

Well, the year is almost over so I decided to take a quick look at some of my favorite products and trends from the year.

My favorite products of the year...

- MAC A Rose Romance (whole collection)
- Stella McCartney StellaNude
- Lippmann Collection Purple Rain Nail Polish
- Bobbi Brown Chrome Eye Shadow.'

Overall, this year, I feel that I spent the largest amount of money on makeup and body products out of any beauty categories. I still have lots of products in both categories that I have never opened and therefore will have to be reviewed in the new year. I think this year I spent more money on MAC than any previous year and may have actually spent more money on MAC than any other brand this year. I purchased most of the products in A Rose Romance and ended up buying a large amount of both lip and eye products from that company this year.

My favorite trend of the year was the popularity of rose in fragrances. I have loved rose forever but this year, it really came into the mainstream of beauty and so many different rose blends came out that I can wear rose everyday and never smell the same. Also with all the new fragrances, even those who previously hated this fragrance can find a scent that is appealing toe them. Another trend that I liked was the emphasis on lip products. I purchased and tried all different types of shades this year, especially reds. I really expanded my makeup collection and ended up loving many shades that I would never have picked up before.

Of course, there were some trends that I hated this year. I feel that a lot of the trends and makeup collections were very polarizing this year. The first one that leaps to my mind is the blue eye makeup and mermaid trend of the summer. It seemed that every single company offered tons of bronzers and sparkly blue eye makeup in their summer collections. Which didn't work for anyone with colored eyes of pale skin. So most of the summer collections were a complete wash for me and therefore I ended up purchasing a bit less than I normally would have that time of the year. Another very polarizing trend came in the fall collections, especially in MAC's Style Black. Many ladies will not wear heavy black eye makeup, let alone black lipstick shades or nail polish. I know many of use felt that one collection was okay but when multiple companies jumped on the bandwagon, we had a bit of harder time makeup shopping.

I think my least favorite beauty aspect of the year is what I consider to be the "cheapening" of the beauty industry. With Hard Candy now being available only in Wal-Mart and now Fekkai is heading down to Walgreens and other drugstores, I feel that some companies experienced a slight slump in sales,freaked out and decided to lower their prices to match those available in discount stores. What I really feel that they didn't fully take into account is that most beauty addicts don't shop in discount stores and now will not be purchasing their products at all. I was also disappointed in the demise of Bath and Body Works Flagship stores. I used to enjoy going in there to pick up high end beauty products and then being able to use coupons to pick up a free shower gel or two. With the lack of high end products, I end up going in there much less often and spend much less money there. Also with this "cheapening", some beauty brands that I used to love are getting much harder to find in stores. Some quick examples are Vincent Longo, Awake, Me! Bath, Biotherm, and Modern Organic Products. On the other side of this debate, I did notice that some high end companies released products that were much more expensive than there usual fare because of sumptuous packaging. Two examples that come readily to minds are MAC Baroque Boudoir collection and many Guerlain products.

In the new year, I am hoping to master tight-lining and loose eye makeup. I also am trying to embrace my curly haired texture and find products that help me to do this. The two major items that I am looking forward to so far are the Lady GaGa MAC collection and the SJP NYC perfume being released in the first few months of the year.