The Eyeliner Effect: Is the “new normal” heavy on the eyes?
In times of massive uncertainty and change such as the one we live in now, economists have noticed a behavior called the Lipstick Effect. This describes how consumers still tend to buy small luxury items (like premium cosmetics and trips to the cinema) during recessions or when they personally do not have much cash. Makeup doesn’t stop being a mood booster when things go south, so we don’t stop trying to be beautiful despite our situation.
This is why there aren't more local beauty brands being made locally
When local brands claim to be local, we expect it to mean that they are proudly made in the Philippines. But this isn't always the case. Their teams and concepts originate from the Philippines but manufacturing the actual products is a different story entirely. They go to Taiwan, China, Korea, Thailand, Japan, and Indonesia to bring their concepts to life. Why is this?
When the feeling is gone: Five products I used to love
Everyone has a right to change their minds - beauty bloggers, of course, aren't exempted from the privilege. Sometimes I do change my mind about products I review. Not because they're intrinsically terrible, just that my preferences and skin condition have changed over time.
That moisturizer I used to love to bits might be too rich for me now, for instance. But that doesn't mean the product is no longer effective for everyone else, or that my review is no longer valid! I just feel that it doesn't suit me right now.
Here are a few products that I loved in the beginning, but switched up to something else eventually.
I was a huge, huge, HUGE fan of the Shu Uemura High Performance Balancing Cleansing Oil before. I still think it's a great product, but I now prefer to use water-based makeup removers. I find that rich oils like Shu's don't clean my pores as well as a water-based remover would. I also find that Shu expires within a year and a half, so if you don't finish that bottle within that time frame you'd be wasting money (which is what happened to me).
Oh, I loved this conditioner so much. The Snoe Beauty Hair Heroes with Intense Argan Oil helped revived my damaged colored hair back then! But since I've eased up on the coloring and hair styling considerably, I find that this conditioner is too heavy for me.
Featured on Philippine Star
This is pretty late, lol. A few weeks back I got interviewed by Jori Pamintuan, a columnist from The Philippine Star, about fashion and beauty blogging. As you all know, that's my favorite topic so I was really happy to ramble on about it.
Here's the full article online. It's surreal to be on print - I'll never get used to it although I've been on print a couple of times (once in UNO Magazine October 09, a mention in Smart Parenting Dec 09) and once on TV (Fit N' Fab on beauty bloggers - I'm embarrassed to share). I don't know! It's fun, it makes me feel good that all my hard work is actually manifesting itself physically.
Anyway, the feature just has a few snippets of the full interview so I want to share the whole thing. I must warn you that it's pretty long but I hope you get a few useful insights from my ramblings.