#7 The Goody Bag

I get sent so many products that sometimes, before opening them, I hope that I won't like them. If I don't like them, I'm at liberty to pile them into pretty paper bags and give them to my friends and relatives - who lap them up like Augustus Gloop in the chocolate river - and save me some more space in my bathroom cabinets. It's not that I'm ungrateful (even though I must sound it), it's that I've become worn out by the fickle falling-in-love affair that happens every single day when you're a beauty editor. It's like a rather shallow case of Stendhal Syndrome - that sort of palpitating ecstasy that one experiences on witnessing a catalogue of beautiful, sublime things (in Stendhal's case, Art in Florence), but on my part, it's bag upon bag of new scent, new shade, new skincare. And when the sensation passes, you're left feeling rather numb.

So when I begin to feel numb, I take a rifle through my goody bag. Things I've kept aside for myself - after they've been shot - to test and trifle with. It cheers me up, it invigorates me, and it reminds me of why I like this little game and how fun it can all be. Something, I've certainly not forgotten yet. It's also a very democratic little bag. Big fish mingle with little fish, hefty tags with measly sums, drugstore cowboys beside park avenue princesses... here's the rundown:

1. DuWop Shadowlift in Heat. A shadow that is supposed to lift and tighten eyelids. That sounds David Gest scary. I felt nothing. What I saw, however, was a smooth, highly-pigmented layer of creamy shadow that illuminated my eyelids. This shade's a killer too. A burnished, pink-bronze, that looks devastatingly good when worn with jet black maccy + liner.

2. Urban Decay Deluxe Eyeshadow in Shag. Name aside (is it supposed to be a conversation starter?) this is IT. Admittedly, it is rather similar to the shade above, with more gold and less pink, but it has an unusual, spongy-powder texture that glides onto lids and really takes root. It loves the light too and is therefore ideal for any night when you're planning to flirt like a brazen little hussy. Oh, I see, there was method in the naming madness...

3. Bourjois Lovely Brill in Coquillage Rose. The smell, oh the smell, takes me back in a two-second swipe to my very first nicked lipstick. There was a rubbed down stub of a shade that my mum saved from the seventies - it was glittery, and bright and pink and HORROR, frosted. I wore it every day until a cotton bud was unable to extricate one last atom of colour from the hollow casing. Now, I've found this. In the tube, it looks completely different, then I smell it and the rose-y confectionary whiff - Pez crossed with Fruit Salads - makes me think it might work. And then I apply it - what do you know? If the 70s stub had grown up and had illicit sex with Chanel's Rose Baby, this would have been their lovechild.

WINK WINK...
In June 2007, Bourjois will be launching a selection of four new lip care products, called Lip Clinic. They'll include a lip scrub (mini exfoliating brush) and moisturising balm duo; a nourishing night balm; a lip-plumping gloss and a clear mint-scented gloss. Packaging, as ever with this cute little piece of french fancy, is pleasing and the products will take some beating too.