Claridges on a BMX? // Expensive beauty products: discuss…

Let’s talk about expense.
As in , why we would buy an expensive eyeshadow over a cheap, Barry M version?
Or why we lust after a Guerlain bronzer when, in all honesty, the world wouldn’t fall apart if we plumped for the Rimmel Sunlight in shade 021 (a very fine bronzer, by the way, for those with fair skin) or Avon’s ‘Earthen Rose’ (a pale, tawny bronze-blush that’s a dream to use and often sits on offer at £3)?

All very well to buy inexpensive; very well indeed, if you’re making-up in private. But what if you’re out and about? What if, for example, you’re in The Dorchester and you want to check your forehead for shine, or examine the pluke that has pushed it’s way out of your skin on the end of your nose? Would you like to pull out a plastic compact with a cracked lid, flurries of powder bursting out around it, or would you like to slide a beautiful, solid, engraved metal number from your handbag? Something with a reassuring ‘click’ when you fold it back up – something weighty and elegant?

Of course you could argue that the cheap buy serves the exact same purpose as the ‘investment piece’, but let me further my argument by introducing a comment made by a You Tube viewer on one of my videos – this one:

The video features Chanel’s new Coco Shine lipsticks – sheer lipcolours with only the faintest hint of pigment. The comment read, “isn’t this just expensive tinted lip balm? I have one from Superdrug that is exactly the same.”

Missing the point, Dear Viewer, missing the point. And I’ll tell you why – in fact no! I’ll illustrate why with the most irrelevant and tenuous example ever to slip through an editor’s word net:

Imagine, if you will, that you are heading out for dinner at Claridges. You need to get there somehow because you’re wearing skyscraper heels (expensive!) and a short cocktail dress recently purchased from Net-a-Porter. (And you balk at Chanel makeup? HELLO?!) Would you spend twenty quid and book an Addison Lee to get you to your destination? Or would you ask your local Onslow with his backfiring, rusty old Ford Orion that has one door held on with a piece of rope? Now here’s where my bonkers illustrative piece of writing comes into its own: the Addison Lee is an expensive ‘sheer’ lipcolour, a la Chanel’s Rouge Coco Shine and Onslow’s backfiring rust-mobile is a pink plastic lipbalm with goo all over the sides and a picture of a cartoon cat. Are you really going to fetch that out in public? As a grown woman? Why not just go the whole hog and hitch a lift to Claridges on the handlebars of your mate’s BMX? (Makeup equivalent: rub a beetroot on your lips and add a slick of Vaseline.)

I mean for Pete’s sake.

What you use in the privacy of your home /the toilet cubicle is one thing, but every lady should have 1) a nice compact and 2) a ‘show’ lipstick in a sheer, easy-to-wear colour. Yes it’s essentially just a mirror and yes it’s basically a chapstick with a touch of crushed beetle but sometimes in life, it’s all about appearances. A pulled-together look = sleekness. Makeup that suggests you’re about to have high-tea and not ‘seventeen cocktails followed by puking up in the potted palms.’

I’m not a makeup snob, believe me – for every expensive product I can probably find you something pretty similar – but for those essential handbag items, I’m all for a bit of luxe.