What brands have lost your interest because of their current/newer product offerings?
(Today’s question is worded in such a way to dial in on brands that you’re no longer interested in solely because of their actual releases/offering rather than if they’ve said/done something problematic that isn’t related to actual products!)
I’ve found that some brands that I used to be excited about have become more redundant with their offerings OR they’ve really deviated from what they were known for. Tom Ford has been inconsistent with releases and new releases often feel like a rehash of something previously released. Viseart seems to have changed directions and lost a lot of their creativity, plus a lot of recent releases have felt light-leaning (and Viseart was a brand that I felt was more inclusive previously). Bite Beauty has had a few too many disappointing releases since rebranding that the brand itself feels and looks different to the point where it’s not a “me” brand so much.
There are so many brands with which I am done, and that doesn’t include brands that are problematic (for me that would be anything NOT cruelty-free).
Based on releases and offerings, I am DONE with Tarte, TooFaced, Smashbox, NYX, BareMinerals, Dominique Cosmetics; a few brands are teetering on the edge of that cliff (Huda, KVD, Lime Crime). Also, since I cannot take anymore glitter and repeat gold shadows, Pat McGrath (the nail in that coffin came after I received repeated assurances from the brand that they — and any third-party manufacturers — are cruelty-free and in the process of getting their certification, I have seen no update on their website).
There are a core group of brands that I’m still interested in, and indies have been dominating most of my purchases these days.
I agree with so many of your choices: Tarte, TooFaced, Smashbox, MAC, Bare Minerals, but I will add Pat McGrath Labs, Natasha Denona, and Charlotte Tilbury to my list.
Pat McGrath. I hit delete whenever I see an email from her company. I used to schedule lunch breaks around her releases. Too many things from the brand. Colorpop isn’t really my jam. But their products were solid. The constant hits and misses from this brand and the weekly releases and emails worded to instill anxiety over FOMO. It’s overwhelming and it’s a really a crass way to handle your marketing. The next release from CP good be solid gold dust and I still wouldn’t buy it.
Could, not good. Typo.
ALSO one of the things I really appreciated, from a consumer perspective. Was the way you handled your own release of your palettes. You knew they would be restocked if you sold out. Your entire ethos was very soothing. Relaxed. “Like don’t worry makeup hoarders. I got you.”
I agree with what you said about the Temptalia/SG collaboration – talk about decency, honesty, integrity in communicating with customers! It’s like Christine is the fire extinguisher for “FOMO”.
For me, Tarte and Nars haven’t been too interesting for the past few years. And aside from a few older standbys, Urban Decay’s newer offerings haven’t appealed to me either.
Truth be told, the Prince makeup collection is already on sale, and most likely Naked 3 mini will follow soon. Urban Decay just didn’t get the memo…
UD in just four days has 300 reviews at Ulta and Sephora EACH with a 4.5 rating for the Naked Basics 3. By comparison Natasha Denona Triochrome has been out for almost 2 years and only has 80 reviews at Sephora with a 4 star rating.. The Circo Loco has been out nearly 6 months and only 40 reviews. You tell me what is more successful? Urban Decay is doing just fine and actually is very successful. A limited music collaboration is not necessarily anything to judge a brand by. Remember there is a world outside of YouTube, Tik Tok. Just some perspective 😉
Those reviews are hard to trust—many of them come from Influenster or the like. Products with fewer reviews typically weren’t given to “influencers” for free (because the companies, including the manufacturer, that may gift products in exchange for review does it in large numbers) so it’s often true you can trust the reviews if there are fewer of them.
I totally agree! The idea of sites like Influenster are great in theory, but in practice, it’s hard to know who’s being honest, who feels compelled to be softer to keep getting product. I’ve heard from folks who participate that there doesn’t seem to be pressure to review positively, but when reviews get seeded at launch, I just ignore them because it’s too time-consuming to parse through them.
Using Naked3 mini as an example, if you click ‘verified purchases,’ to sort, there are none. For Vice Lipsticks, there are six reviews that are from verified purchases.
Exactly! That “verified purchases” thing makes me stop and think (when there aren’t any!). And to be clear, I have no issue with people receiving products for review (I trust and enjoy your reviews!) but the exchange of free products for leaving a star rating on a website results in so many 5-star reviews, you have to wonder.
For sure. You have to build trust with a reviewer usually, so with me, you’ve read enough reviews to know what to expect! With a lot of the Influenster reviews, it’s so much time and effort to try to see each person’s “body of reviews” to see if they seem trustworthy. Whenever there is a big dump of reviews at product launch, it just seems so rare that they are less than 4.5-star average 🙁
I’ve also found it helpful to look for longer reviews, since longer tends to be more detailed and therefore sounds like someone really tried it… along with looking for 3-star reviews. I was looking at the Bite lipstick reviews, and the verified reviews definitely skewed lower (though there weren’t many) over the non-verified reviews.
What the heck happened to NARS? They were never really “my” brand, but they at least would put out some interesting collections and stuff. They’ve discontinued a lot of stuff and havent really replaced what they’ve gotten rid of. I feel like they’ve stopped even trying to be relevant.
Pat McGrath went from palettes with amazing editorial color stories that you would never see from anyone else to a generic run of pinky beiges. I’ll pass.
Tbh there is no brand that I wait to see what they are releasing next. I don’t really have any brand loyalty nor do I buy every single release from anyone. I basically look at what’s currently available when I’m able to shop and buy something I want. It may be popular. It might not. It may be mainstream. It might be indie. I think when you subscribe to their emails and follow their pages etc and you see their quarterly releases whatever, you get caught up in it for a bit but eventually, you are going to get bored and hard to impress. With that said, ABH has to be one I was a bit of a stan and now I’m like NEXT!
So many! Tom Ford, Nars, Urban Decay, ABH, Bite, Chanel, Dior, Givenchy, Marc Jacobs, Melt, Colour Pop, Hourglass, MAC, Charlotte Tilbury, and even to a certain extent, Pat McGrath.. I call these out as I used to have some representation in my stash. I’m also totally bored of all these new labels by pro MUAs or pop stars or social media stars as I am not seeing anything that innovative or interesting to me. At best, I applaud some who have focused on inclusivity. Is it them, or me? I dunno.. I’m am definitely not feeling the thrill.
I just wonder were all the MUAs/stars/influencers brands will be in a couple of years. Yes, many people might buy their products at first even if they are more expensive (you can’t compete with pricing of big brands with more expensive), because they want to support a favorite artist or influencer. But how many will constantly re-purchase? They really have to put out really outstanding products to be able to convince people not to return to bigger brands or not to support the next public figure makeup company.
It’s their money into it, they can do as they please… But some people should acknowledge their limits and stick at collaborations with brands, rather than generating more consumerism and waste with a brand dying off in 2-3 years.
Unless things change in a big way, I’m done with Urban Decay, Tarte, Morphe, and IT Cosmetics. For drugstore brands, no more buying Almay or Wet n Wild. For indies, I’m done with any brand whose products are almost always out of stock, forcing you to place multiple orders to get all the stuff you wanted in the first place. Not worth the hassle.
Urban Decay, Tarte, Hourglass, Benefit, Colourpop. For the most part, I’m getting tired of a lot of releases in general. Any brand that releases weekly (Colourpop) or continues to flog a dead horse (Urban Decay Naked) loses my interest. Hourglass releases look the same and I usually end up decluttering Tarte after not too long. Benefit keeps putting the same things in their releases (how many pans of Hoola does one need?).
About as many as Orgasm and Laguna.
I feel like I’m unexcited by most brands’ offerings these days, but the ones who have had the hardest fall from grace are Urban Decay (the first brand I ever loved!), and Bite Beauty.
Also, I’m already getting really bored of Melt. I was never a superfan but I loved some of their early palettes, during the period when they started to move away from the stacks and were getting picked up by Sephora, but all their recent releases have been a bit boring to me. I would possibly consider getting a SexFoil for a body highlight if I ever decide to get on-stage again, but given how makeup brands go they’ll probably have DC’ed the line by then 😛
When Bobbi Brown left her company, I got the feeling they decided to appeal to a different demographic; younger and very ‘image’ centric. They discontinued a lot of my favorites, don’t have much interesting anymore, and have gotten too expensive. Not sure if the quality has suffered because I never buy them. NYX and L’Oreal raise my eyebrows and I put them back, they are too expensive for drugstore. Colourpop has too many of the same things, and I guess I never got the memo, I don’t think their formula is all that great.
Most makeup companies are over-saturated between the selfie market, the increase in heavy makeup/Instagram types and recently the pandemic. I have everything I need, and recently discovered the Cosmetics Company store. When I am looking for something, I always find something I like there that is high end. Everything else, I wait for sales.
Nars. Used to love their products. Now I don’t own a single non-discontinued product. Pat McGrath needs to expand their lipstick range desperately. The LuxeTrance are desperately missed by me. I also find Laura Mercier and Bobbi Brown to be pretty boring.
I buy from about three companies at this point between this issue and problematicness. I need to expand my range!
The list of brands I’ve never purchased from is much longer. However, the brands I no longer pay any attention to are Armani, Anastasia, UD, Tarte, all drugstore brands, MUFE, Bite, Estee Lauder, Guerlain, Hourglass and Laura Mercier.
It feels like most of them.
(Dis)honorable mentions:
*ABH — I don’t know what they’re thinking or doing, and neither do they. Makeup wipes and a mini Soft Glam palette?!
*Urban Decay — Lost its edge; boring releases of mediocre quality; switched to an inferior eyeshadow formula; ditched all its cool lipstick colors; Naked Basics3 released about 8 years too late; they did Prince dirty. They still have some good permanent products, but how long will it be until they’re reformulated for the worse?
*Bite Beauty — Terrible rebranding; few products; ruined their lipsticks.
*Tarte — All neutral all the time; retreading Tartelette Juicy and Shape Tape. I still love their mascaras, but the rest is boring me.
*MAC — Except the Botanic Panic collection is giving me hope. But they’ve been churning out awful collections for awhile now. The Cruella de Vil collection was terrible. They still have plenty of great core products, but they aren’t generating a lot of new interest.
*Too Faced — Yeah… I can’t even tell you what their last few releases have been.
Too Faced and Tarte lost me when they started launching tons of products. 75% of them are not even talked about because they are too many (especially Tarte). Sometimes I visit their website just for the fun of seeing how many more products were released. Tarte has like 7 brow pencils, 4 of them nearly identical types; they even have body products and tons of cosmetics, not even mentioning the multiple seasonal eyeshadow palettes.
The quantity is overwhelming, only ColourPop is worse. And it’s not the quantity in itself, it’s just they do nothing less than producing sub-par quality products most of the time. And I wonder who buys those products I see reviewed? Most of them are not even on the Sephora website, just on the Too Faced or Tarte websites.
It’s not that recent, but Benefit starting losing me when they switched their brow products from the classic packaging to the that awful cheap looking silver wand like one for their brow products. While I like that they expanded the shade range, I never felt they improved the actual quality. And since better formulas come up from other brands for brow products and other makeup items… I simply lost interest. I remember loving their old BB cream (Big Easy) and buying the boxes with multiple products… but the latest releases have been disappointing.
Urban Decay is another brand I lost interest. I still miss the Naked Smokey palette, the original Naked foundation, the old formula of the Primer Potion. From odd / unflattering color schemes, to formula quality and inconsistency, and to poorly design packaging… it’s not a brand that spikes my interest with new releases.
Ana Maria, I share your pain re Naked Smokey (and the original Naked palette…that was always my go-to for travel until it was discontinued) and about UDPP. Talk about a company that snatched defeat from the jaws of victory!
All of them.
Maybe it’s just that makeup is not as big a priority or focus for me anymore? Maybe maybe my collection is fully saturated? I’m not sure. I tire of finding HGs only to have them discontinued.
First up for me has to be Urban Decay. They seem to have gone steeply downhill since deciding to go vegan. Same issue, but even worse, with Bite. They both really lost their way with poorer quality reformulations, also far less shades in their new lines than before. Worse yet, shades that had been staples have changed enough in tone, depth or finish that they in no way compare to the originals.
Urban Decay is the worst, because I started buying from them the year they were founded and they’d been my favorite, go-to brand until recently. Roach, Mildew, and AC/DC are my most used, HG, all time favorite eye shadows and now after 25 years (!!!) I need to find replacements :/
But also Bite, Melt, ColourPop, Huda, Illamasqua.
Top of the list would be Urban Decay. In spite of packaging I didn’t like, their eyeshadows used to be the BEST. Not so their revamped shadows (and there’s not nearly as much variety). Same with their palettes – quality has been iffy at best. Their wonderful blushes and highlighter – gone. And UDPP – as I’ve said before, the packaging manages to embody the WORST of their previous packaging and the contents – the actual product – seems much less effective than the UDPP of a few years ago.
I would say that I am not totally “done” with brands. It is mostly that I feel abused over sub par products and WAY to many releases of the same thing different packaging at nausea. I understand beauty is a billion dollar business and everyone wants in on the game.. but I am exhausted. Now that I have my PMG, ND, 2 TF palettes and 3 CT palettes… I don’t feel the need to even buy other brands. I don’t even buy all the releases of these brands. At what point is enough? I have stopped purchasing ABH, Too Faced, Tarte, UD, and not really interested in the celebrity/influencer products (simply money grabs in my opinion). I find that when I buy now it is mostly to replenish things I run out of like concealer/mascara.. I am not opposed to buying some new make up however I only have one face and I pretty much think I have what I need to achieve the looks l like. I am also not really buying much that is not on sale. Honestly I have so much make up nothing is really “urgent”
I wasn’t really a Bite Beauty fan, but if I was – their lipsticks now are rubbish and just glimmer of their previous glory.
Urban Decay is another brand that I wouldn’t give the time of day (or my money to) nowadays for their substandard eyeshadows.
ColourPop because of their frequent and yet same-looking palettes that they keep releasing – although their lux lipsticks are worth the price.
Nars – because of their high prices here and sexualised names
bareMinerals – since they departed from their Ready formula, it has been the same for their eyeshadows
PMG and Tom Ford – waaay too expensive and their products are all looking the same.
*Putting aside all problematic nonsense per request*
Honestly, this going to be such an unsatisfactory answer – basically all brands. I can’t remember the last time I was truly interested in anything besides the Melt Betelgeuse collection of last holiday season – and that was solely due to the red/black/grey eye palette. Dunno, I’m just not feeling a lot of brands, new or old. What’s trendy now, and has been for what feels like forever, are color stories that aren’t for me. So I’m just kind of blah about new releases all over.
If I had to pick one, Urban Decay. They’ve been around since I was a wee twenty something, I think, and they used to really excite me. Now it feels like they’re churning out “trendy” color stories (again, not for me) at below subpar quality for money only and not even real inspiration or coolness. While I did love the Honey palette and think it’s good quality, same for the GoT, it’s one note in a whole lotta years of bland.
What do you mean Viseart is “light-leaning”?
A lot of their recent palettes are not as inclusive as they used to be – they are doing a lot of very light beige, lighter brown, pastels, etc. One of the bigger complaints about the Grande Pro Vol. 1 was that it had a lot of very light shades, and then they “updated” it and… didn’t address that.
For me, it is MAC, MORPHE , CLINIQUE( nothing interesting coming up), COLORPOP( can’t keep up with their releases), BITE BEAUTY, BARE MINERALS, URBAN DECAY, ANASTASIA BEVERLY HILLS, NARS, TOM FORD, even NATASHA DENONA, In fact. I am tired of both testing and buying newer eyeshadows( singles or palettes), lipsticks, foundations and mascaras. Having found the perfect ones for me in both drug store as well as high end brands, and with no where to wear them in this pandemic, I have lost interest in the entire color section. But yes, skin care is what I look for now a days.
Brands I have purchased that I no longer have real interest in: Colourpop, Urban Decay, Tarte, Too Faced, NYX, Benefit, Huda, and Smashbox.
There are many more that I have never purchased from but have considered in the past, such as Bobbi Brown, Charlotte Tilbury, BareMinerals, and Lancome, that I would probably not buy anything from anytime soon.
Based on their last releases? Nars, Urban Decay and Mac for sure. I feel they are continuously putting out the same products. I t has come to a point that I roll my eyes every time Nars puts out some “ new” blush, bronzer palette or UD comes out with a new “ naked”, “ all nighter”.
Benefit and Too Faced, plain bored. I also can’t stand brands that are putting out products every single week ( colourpop for example)…
Sadly, so many. I used to be excited by the Fall and then Holiday releases, you could plan and save for beauty. Collections were curated and there was maybe something special. But now, so many companies just release newness upon newness. (ColourPop, I’m looking at you.)
And as others have said, it’s hard to get excited about yet another warm palette or more beige eye shadow. (And I miss shadow singles, when you could buy the colors you wanted, not a palette where you really want maybe half the colors.)
I loved Urban Decay at the beginning, but it went downhill after being purchased by L’Oreal. So many brands I liked were purchased by conglomerates and then innovation and creativity seem to be taken over by corporate planning. I loved BareMinerals when they were loose minerals, why should I buy anything from them, now? I remember both MAC and Smashbox (remember the Max Factor great-grandsons?) before they were purchased by Estee Lauder. Smashbox, especially seems to have taken a nosedive.
Sorry, I sound like an old crank. 🙂
Lines like Make-Up Atelier are still quite lovely, but hard to get in the USA, unless you order from the French website. RCMA makes fabulous face color products, but it is a pro brand.
I’ve been trying more Indie brands and trying to support BIPOC-owned beauty brands, where my money might make a difference (Lauder doesn’t need my $$$). I got all three of the Sydney Grace Temptalia palettes. 🙂 And I just bought a beautiful eye shadow palette from Prados Beauty, which is Indigenous-owned.
Sigh. How sad that so many of us are done with brands. I could go on… Nars was much more interesting when it was Francois Nars. Same with Tom Ford. I still love that Tom Ford Emerald Lust quad (had to look it up) from 2013.
Has anyone tried Jones Road Beauty? It’s Bobbi Brown’s new line. I’m hoping we will see more makeup artists return to color cosmetics.
Sorry, long answer!
I’ve tried Jones Road. I really like the concept and want it to succeed, but there have been some misses. The eye products are like chunky glitter (at least in the shades I got l, sparkle wash in Ice and Just a sec in Icy Pink) but don’t look that way in photos or on the models.
I really like the lip gloss in the tube because it’s reminiscent of the DCed Bobbi brown formula, mint flavored but not tacky!
The Miracle Balm is nice, but it doesn’t dry down so to me, it’s more like a makeup artist product. The Face Pencils are good, a little dry in formula, but they are advertised to use with a moisturizer or something to blend.
Definitely Tom Ford also, have heard so many negative comments/reviews about new products that I haven’t tried anything new from them in a year or two.
Bobbi Brown, MAC, Nars…the list goes on.
I used to love when MAC would come out with a summer collection of largely high-quality products in fun packaging, instead now they repackage current shades and include two lipsticks and a crappy palette.
Nars used to be amazing— I loved their seasonal releases and products they’ve gotten rid of, like the really great eyeshadow duos in Hula Hula, Kazakhstan, Tzarine, Sea, Sex, Sun and Key Largo. And the lip lacquers were great, so were the face palettes with eyeshadows, blush, and lipstick.
Bobbi Brown had some great products, eyeshadows and shimmer bricks and pot rouge in more than three colors. Now it’s really paired down except for the monthly release of an eyeshadow palette exactly like the last one.
There’s just lots of deja vu in releases in general and not much thought or design seems to go into anything.