If you go into a Woden store that has lots of gadgetry, you can watch a little infomercial about a new Swedish product. It's a vegetable slicer – you put your onion in, press down and there it is, all neatly cubed with no tears or missing fingers. Great for those who have nightmares about those sorts of things. The infomercial is of the sort that you might have watched in the 1990s where a grinning Tim Shaw would shout, "I know you want more!" and offer you steak knives.
The interesting thing about gadget infomercials is they teach you to want something you never knew existed. It never occurred to me that I was slicing onions the sucker's way – my fingers always in peril, my eyes always streaming. But now, I'm thinking, hey, maybe I really need that.
Make up sample kits work in a similar way – we end up conditioned to feel things we had no idea existed are must-haves. A girl with an uncomplicated skincare routine suddenly finds herself spending an hour or more in the bathroom because there are now so many interesting things to do to her face. She wants the kit because as it's free with purchase, it seems like a good idea. She wants it even though the free make up bags or purses that hold the samples are typically of average quality at best – hello vinyl.
These bags have normal looking things inside – miniature lipsticks, perhaps, or tiny bottles of perfume. Then there are things that are NOT normal and sound vaguely scary. Lifting spray in a little silver canister? Lifting what? And there's a revitalising spray in a mysterious little red bottle with peculiar symbols on it. Sounds like a spray with which you would mist yourself on a red-eye flight. But, no, no misting, instead, it purports to be "a treatment lotion, pure, transparent, supple to the touch, impregnating the skin, ideally conditioning it … making it bloom …"
Furthermore, it is "subtly perfumed with an accent of rain-washed peonies". Good, because, you know you ought not wash your peonies with anything else. It actually smells more like a tiny, pungent bottle of alcohol.
Fear of rain-washed peonies aside, a simple skincare routine can soon evolve from a once a day cleansing of the face in the shower followed by a moisturiser and some Vaseline into something far more elaborate. Twice a day this girl has to wash her face with a brightening cleansing foam (the word "brightening" is disconcerting here. Is going to brighten the same way many elixirs in Asia promise "whitening"? If so, what kind of interesting Michael Jackson bleaches are in the bottle? Will she end up looking more glowy and dewy, or more like an actor in Twilight?).
After the foam there's a brightening softener applied with soaked cotton wool. She suspects this is merely toner and it feels like applying rubbing alcohol or nail polish remover to her entire face. It’s also quite drying, which leads us to step three –
"moisturising emulsion" NOT moisturiser, mind you. For daytime, it comes with a sun protection factor. Compared to other goodies, it seems quite normal.
Then, she applies a couple of coats of mascara and some mineral eye shadow and a SPF30 lipgloss. All of this from a girl who used to roll out of bed to face the world barefaced. You can’t not use your tiny samples, you see, that would be wasteful.
Famously beautiful bombshell Marilyn Monroe's skincare regime is said to have consisted of just a wash several times a day with soap and water, according to The Bombshell Manual of Style by Lauren Stover. It seems she did just fine without being brightened, whitened, revitalised or lifted at all.
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Calling all recessionistas – the Outnet, the bargain basement counterpart of luxe online store Net-a-porter has finally launched.
Natalie Massenet's latest ven ture is expected to be a hit, especially in times of financial strife, with its offerings of covetable designer clothes, shoes and accessories from labels such as Marc Jacobs, Mulberry and Miu Miu with prices slashed by as much as 80 p er cent. The heavy discounts are because stock is usually a few seasons old.
But it's a bit of a case of the early bird gets the Prada – anything heavily discounted and beautiful was snapped up the day the site went live. But don't give up – new offerings are being upl oaded from time to time.
The Outnet also has "flash sales" (sales that pop up for a short window of time only), "going, going, gone" sales, and giveaways. See it at www.theOutnet.com.