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What was the first beauty brand that you fell in love with?
MAC!
— Christine
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MAC!
The very 1st one was in 1974, Mary Quant!
Back then, I also loved: Aziza (now a dollar store brand, but they were once almost mid-end!), Revlon and LOVE Cosmetics, too.
Oh gosh – I remember Mary Quant cosmetics….the trademark daisy on the packages. I had a highlighting set – a matte brown and a sparkly highlight – that I thought would give my pudgey pre-teen face the look of Jean Shrimpton cheekbones! Some years later, when I had my first job after high school, I got a lovely eyeshadow palette – browns and rust shades. There is a wonderful novel – very much fact based – by Allison Pearson called P.S. I Love You in which a Mary Quant eyeshadow trio figures quite prominently. I was so delighted when I read this reference running through the novel.
I remember Mary Quant cosmetics – they were just the ‘it’ brand way back then.
That book you mentioned above sounds really interesting too.
Genevieve, the book is delightful. It’s about a group of young girls who grew up in Wales around the time of David Cassidy’s last tour and who were all madly in love with him. I wasn’t a fan but looked up all the references and they were all real – his final concert at a place called White City where (in the story and in reality) a young fan died from being crushed. The story is told in the present day when the narrator/main character is clearing out her mother’s things after the mother has died and finds a letter from the 70’s (which her mother hid from her) telling her she’d won “The Ultimate David Cassidy Quiz” and the prize would have been a trip for her and her best friend to go to LA to meet him. Sorry for making this so long but there’s so much that is delightful in the book – mention of a girls’ fashion mag (Jackie or Jacky) that really existed and all the “questionnaires” they would do “do you have sallow skin or skin that is prone to redness….” that sort of stuff and also mention of products I remember seeing in British mags (a beer shampoo, a skin cream that promised miraculous results) and the details of what clothes the girls wore, their plans for what to wear to the Cassidy concert…. I actually listened to it as an audio book and it was read by a Welsh actress so she had the lovely Welsh lilting accent just perfect. The author also wrote I Don’t Know How She Does It (about a woman struggling to be “super-mom”) which was a great read but was made into a movie that wasn’t so great. Seriously, if you can get PS I Love You, especially as an audio book, I’m fairly certain you’d enjoy it.
Thank you Mariella for that detailed synopsis of the book. I am going to get this for my twin sister for our birthday. Not only is she into audio books, but she loved David Cassidy as a teenager. It sounds like the perfect present for her (and me!).
The paper book is good too, don’t get me wrong – but hearing the Welsh words (like “thank you” and “grandma”) pronounced properly and the whole thing read with a Welsh accent where appropriate really enhances the book. Ooooh, I can’t wait to hear how those of you who do read it feel about it. I so hope you enjoy it (and your sister does too).
Mariella, Genevieve, Donya, did any of you have the cream eyeshadow in a tube that worked just like MAC Pro Paints? I had a bronzey brown, a lilac and a blue. They didn’t crease on my 15 y.o. oil slick, hooded lids, which was a huge surprise!
Nancy, I don’t remember those but then I didn’t have heaps to spend on makeup so didn’t haunt the makeup counters like I do now 😉 I’m trying to remember what I did have and I think one item was a liquid highlighter (which I think I put all over my face!). It’s also possible that they didn’t come to Canada. I’d love to see some sort of “retrospective” of the products that were available in the late 60’s and the 70’s, just to see what there was and what jogs my memory.
Those may have been Yardley. Shiny pastels in a tube.
No, none of our cream eye shadows were in a tube, just little quartets – which I thought was so glam at the time.
Hi, this book sounded great so I looked it up on Amazon, its called “I think I love you” (after the song), now in my shopping bAG.X
Sorry about that – I was confusing it with the Beatles’ song PS I Love You. Are you getting the book or the audio book? Either way, it is such a delightful read…a woman approaching 40, her mother (a huge, disapproving figure in her life) has just died and on the same day, her husband, for whom she put her career as a cellist on the back burner, has told her he’s leaving her for a younger woman. Then she finds this letter and her adult self and her teenaged self are sort of reunited.
Hi, no problem, only just got this as the notifications where going in my junkmail, hopefully now sorted. Will get the book, seems to me like a good holiday book for June, a real trip down memory lane. Thank you.x
Ooh! I remember the Mary Quant goods at Judy’s, circa 1979 or so. If I recall, they were loose pigments. I was too poor to use them but did drool.
Urban Decay!
Drugstore was L’Oréal. Mid-range was Urban Decay. High-end was Lancome. I hardly buy anything from Lancome these days. My ultimate would be to try Chanel and Guerlain.
Nars
Mary Kay Cosmetics. For many, many years that was my favorite brand!
Chanel.
Kiko, that was the first brand than I tried. It was affordable and I loved their eyeshadows, lipsticks, lip pencils… Now I prefer other brands as Mac, Bobbi brown, Dior… 😉
Stila, but that was before the Lauder buyout and collapse of brand.
Truly in love with? Probably also MAC, yep.
Urban Decay!
Urban Decay 🙂
MAC
Prescriptives!!
MAC here too! I have the feeling that will be most people’s answer.
I love how people are like I used drugstore then I discovered this brand… As if those drugstore brands are not beauty brands or worthy. Goodness people are so fake and full of sh$t. Lol Sorry had to rant…
The first brands I fell in love with as a kid were Revlon, Max Factor, Cover Girl and the original Jane cosmetics. They were everything. When other cosmetics became available with online shopping, I tried Urban Decay. Bought lipstick.and eyeshadows. This was before they were bought by Loreal. Thought they were utter crap. Stiff unblendable eyeshadows. Dry partchy lipsticks. Only more expensive makeup I tossed. Began my hate for this brand that has never recovered. Lol. Still think they are the most overrated.
As an adult, I discovered MAC and Clinique. Like them mostly. But they got me interested in others like Tarte and KVD. Still love Revlon. Miss Max Factor. Wish Jane was as good as it was when I was a teen. Now, the last time I saw it, was nothing like the brand when it began. Should call it Jean. Lol
Max Factor’s back. Spotted a lipstick display in CVS a week or so ago… assuming you’re in the U.S., that is.
We would have to go back in time here. Borghese was the first high end brand that I fell in love with. If we want to go really way back to the beginning of my beauty journey it would have to be Love and Yardley.
Urban Decay 🙂
When I was really young and restricted to shopping at WM and Target, I really loved Jane and Caboodles Makeup (they had neat stuff, I swear!). My first “prestige” love was Urban Decay!
Chanel
Dior. About 14 years ago
LANCOME 30 years ago, followed by Urban Decay.
MAC for me, too!
MAC. It was their lipsticks.
Budget: NYX (and for the record, that was the actual ‘first’ brand.)
Dept. Store: Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics
Niche/Indie: Sugarpill (and still very much in love to this day!)
Dior was my first love. No wonder I always have my eye on the newest Dior collection. I’ve been doing it for more than two decades, and had completely forgotten why. Wow, this question caused me to stroll back onto memory lane — so many Dior purchases over the years.
MAC
Make up for ever!!
Fashion Fair – as a teen
MAC – in my late 20s
Mac for me as well!
MAC!
I used MAC early on (and it still has my HG Taupe lipstick) but I fell in love with Aveda makeup. Loved that it offered product pans with magnetic strips to place into a variety of compact sizes. I repeatedly hit pan on the eyeshadows. Aveda offers a broad and varied shade range for eyeshadows and blush. I pulled out a bronze eye shadow the other day and it held up as well or better than any similar high-end shadow in my collection. Recently purchased an Aveda rust shadow on sale en route to an appointment. Highly pigmented, affordable makeup.
Clinique!
Prescriptives first, then followed by MAC and Chanel at about the same time.
MAC, I was a fangirl starting in about 2003 with a Nordstrom counter makeover shoutout to Prrr lipglass and Spice lip pencil and that fateful livejournal community. Shout out to Prrr Lipglass and Spice Lip Pencil!
I’ve said it before, but it’s been really interesting to see members of that early online makeup scene go on to prominence as bloggers, makeup brand founders, “controversial” makeup brand founders, and beyond. 😛
I also remember spending a lot of time on Urban Decay’s website and longing for tons of their stuff but only ever buying the original Frostbite lipstick which I recall as an insane glitterbomb of a semi-sheer purple-navy blue, way more so than the relaunch. I used to save a lot of their face charts too. It was very quaint in retrospect. 😉
Oh man, I wish we could edit these, cause obvs I forgot to delete part of my first sentence after moving it! lol
Too Faced, all started with the Romantic Eyes palette!
As a teenager I fell in love with Chanel. I know it sounds crazy for a teenager in the late 60’s and early 70’s but a friends mother worked for a cosmetic counter and got me a lot of high end makeup and skin care. I loved Borghese for skin care and at the time it was a luxury brand. From the drugstore I loved Max Factor and was so sad when they pulled out of the U.S.A. I know they have released a limited range back in drugstores here in the U.S. but not anywhere around where I live.
BareMinerals
Bare Minerals for me too – however I find that I don’t use it at all anymore. In fact I just purged all but a couple loose shadows. They just aren’t the same since they’ve been sold.
I recently went back to the shades I did not give away when we moved, but there aren’t many and most are about to be used up. So surprised Dove, a light, cool gray, is no more … and I only have a quarter of a jar. They took a perfectly wonderful company, sold it to a bigger company, and after that they mostly went downhill.
I always liked makeup, but I fell hard for Urban Decay and it’s been an expensive hobby since. They are still my favorite for making makeup fun for me and rekindling my interest in prestige brands.
Mally!
Fell in love with? Goodness that’s a tough call. I came Close with L’Oreal in the drugstore. There was a brand called Naturalistics in the 90’s in the drug store I loved that was more natural/organic in the 90’s I really liked. And then the closest I came for sure early on was probably Prescriptives. I always needed a custom foundation. I liked MAC too because they had colors no one else did for shadows and lipsticks. As a Goth, you really need some different colors. I still have a few things from those days even though I don’t use them much anymore.
First Azziza in the late, 1970s, then Clinique in my 20s until I discovered Shiseido and Lise Watier 20 years later.
UD, of course!
Shiseido – also the same brand that started me in wearing make-up and skincare!
MAC and its still my fav brand!!!! Started wearing it at 16. 20 years strong!!!
Maybelline in my younger years
Estée Lauder! My mom always loved their makeup and so when I wanted a foundation in high school for a wedding I was attending, she took me to the Estée Lauder counter for some Double Wear! Still love that foundation so much to this day, but now I know I shouldn’t wear it in flash photography 😉
Avon – their lipsticks and blushes and nail polishes are wonderful 🙂
In High School I could only afford Wet & Wild so I didn’t even look at expensive brands. Then after I got a job and started working, I made a mistake and stopped at a MAC counter.
Angel Face, Max Factor, Revlon Moondrops …. that was a LONG time ago!
Chanel! I used to buy it when I would visit my cousins in Ireland, this is 32 years ago because it was so much less expensive in Europe, and they had huge counters for the product, before it was really widespread in Canada.
MAC
Biba and Mary Quant! I’m old.
I branched into makeup very gradually, one product at a time and I discovered different brands for each new item.
Revlon: Black Cherry lipstick, which I bought in multiples of and also introduced to my mother.
Prescriptives: first powder foundation, blended just for my south asian skin tone which was hard to match at the time… cosmetics companies have broadened their market!
Kevyn Aucoin: first truly blendable eyeshadow I’d ever tried. Still some of my faves.
Lancome: skincare
Sisley: mascara that was soft and wonderful and now that I’m spending my own money instead of my parents’ I will not buy!
Same here. I “used” Clinique , Lancome, and Prescriptives in my youth but never fell in love until MAC came to the US. I remember Madonna on the cover of Rolling Stone with a credit to MAC for “Russian Red” lipstick. First order had to be phoned into Canada since no shops in US. They were smart! I told them the names of other brand lipsticks and they sent their equivalent…all better of course. So many good brands now.
My mom started me off with Clinique when I was in junior high – Black Honey Almost Lipstick and Clover powder blush, which are still around today! I was hooked from there til high school when I started trying other brands.
In roughly chronological order:
Revlon, Borghese, Estee Lauder
It’s a tie between Urban Decay & MAC. I love them both!
Cover Girl was the first when I was a teen. Then I tried Clinique and Estee Lauder and those became my favorites. Now I don’t use any of those brands. I mostly shop Bare Minerals, L’Oreal, UD, but tend to experiment still.
Back when I was a teen, Rimmel was like gold dust in my eyes. Their frosty eye shadow quads were a dream to me.
Now I still love some of their products: Perfect Match Foundation, some lippies.
I’m probably one of your oldest followers. My first makeup product that I absolutely loved was “CornSilk” face powder. It took the oily shine right off my teenaged face without looking cakey. Next in line was the Aziza brand of cosmetics. They had the most wonderful eyeshadows, mascara, and lipgloss back in the late 70’s and early 80’s.
Walking up to the MAC counter and choosing blushes and lip pencils was pure pleasure….
As an adult, MAC. But as a kid, I just can’t forget a very fancy and big box with all the stuff to make 3 different looks, one for every day makeup, one more glamorous for a day and one for a night out. It was so pretty and classy! It had foundation, shadows, lipsticks, blushes, eyeliners, mascara. It was from Estee Lauder and it was a gift from my dad to my mom in her birthday. I could just sit and stare at that box for hours 🙂
The first brand I truly fell in love with was stila. This was back in the late 90s when the makeup artist founder still owned the company, and they had lots of minimalist, cardboard & aluminum packaging. I had to order from an actual catalog. Lol
Ahhhhh Chanel!!!!
I remember Avon being my first makeup brand!
My auntie gave me a light pink blush (too light for my then NC30/35ish skin LOL), and blue and pink shadow duo, and a eye liner from Avon when I was around 11?
And that’s when I fell in LOVE!! I loved how bright and pretty my brown eyes looked with the purple eye shadow back then!
Good memories!
Mid to late 80s Lancôme (because of Isabella Rossellini), and Christian Dior Maquillage by Tyen – google the ads. My high school friends and I were in love with the crazy technicolor eyeshadow palettes with bright lips. There was no “lips or eyes” rule back then!
MAC! And I still love them. Especially their lipsticks.
Bare Minerals, and have to say I don’t own one of their products now. I was obsessed with them for so long but slowly I started trying more brands and left them behind.
Shiseido
Mac !!!!!
If we are talking the first brand I fell in love with, it was hands down Kat Von D. I tried a bunch of different things from the drug store growing up, and for my oily skin growing up in the Midwest, I had a lot of issues trying to get anything to look good and not melt off of my face. I was introduced to prestige makeup when I started working at a JCP that had a Sephora in it some years ago, precious to that I thought makeup counters were for old ladies, lol, except the MAC counter. After trying a few KVD products I was hook and fell in love! I love most of the products I’ve tried, I love the packaging and the aesthetic and I love Kat.
If we were to talk about the first makeup product I fell in love with, it was a shimmery/glittery pinkish purple single shadow from Milanin that came in a round pod with a curved spongetip. I bought it at Walgreen’s when I was in high school and I dropped it on the floor and it busted and when I went back to buy another one it had been discountinued ?
Urban Decay! The first real makeup palette I ever got was the Naked palette.
Mac too over here. Mac will always have a place in my heart *love*
Estee lauder
Mine was Fashion Fair. Drugstore brands didn’t carry shades for brown women back in the day.
Max factor and maybelline brown eyeliner to fill in my eyebrows . Early 90″s awful trend of pencil thin eyebrows
Clinique, Elizabeth Arden, Estée Lauder I do live WetnWild now as an adult! Oh! Max too.
Lancôme many years ago then Bobbi Brown.
Sugarpill! I only wore a few makeup items in high school and wasn’t loyal to any brands at the time. When I was starting to get really into makeup, I bought a bunch of Sugarpill pressed shadows and a few pigments and have been loving them ever since.
Benefit. The first product I got was the Realness of Concealness kit. It contained Boing concealer, Lemon Aid, HighBeam, Oh la lift and lip plumper (can’t remember the name of this). I still regularly buy Lemon Aid and would still by oh la lift had it not been discontinued. Loved this little kit and used it all up
Aromaleigh.
I should add that I’ve used makeup for the past 25 years, but didn’t love any of it until recently. (I think I had my first “this is amazing!” moment about 3 or 4 years ago.)
KatVonD – It was the first higher end product I bought after years of EXTREMELY horrible acne, two Accurate treatments and I finally found groups of skin care advocates. I got ready by not even looking in the mirror I was so disgusting to myself. So at 35 I realized I wasn’t hideous, got Lolita on a whim and though I started exploring others I have loved everything from KVD since.!! Well only her primer for face other than that I have been in love! And thanks Christine and people like you celebrating everyone’s beauty!
I have always loved makeup but have cherry picked from loads of brands never actually coveting one in particular until very recently when I fell hook line and sinker fro Bobbi Brown, love the skincare, the shadows for my getting older eyes and the whole ethos.
Mac! Lol it’s still my favorite for lipsticks!
NARS
Urban Decay.
Even 10 years ago as a teen I gravitated to the counter as it was brighter and bolder than anything else I’ve ever seen.
Make Up For Ever! I’m still in love actually because all of my favorite products that get used regularly come from the brand.
Mac, all the way! I had a MUA Aunt who took me shopping at the Mac counter the summer before HS and again for my wedding. I still have two of the wedding eyeshadows.
Avon!
I remember when Chanel first launched. Wow, was it gorgeous. It was a simple line of cleansing lotion, toner, a couple other things including a sheer lip balm that was a beautiful natural lip color in the jar but clear on the lips. All were packaged in heavy glass jars and bottles with the black top with the logo, so gorgeous, impressive and oh so French! It was magical!
Borghese! I used to drool over their huge eyeshadow palettes. I think they may have been holiday releases? I know I got at least one as a gift and used it to death. I felt so fancy. I also remember adoring a pink opalescent L’Oréal lipstick that I bought with my own $$ after walking to the drugstore to pick it out. I can still smell it in my head.
Mac
Urban Decay! (though my first everyday palette was from Too Faced before I was really that into makeup)
MAC for me as well. SO VERSATILE!
Urban Decay!
It all started for me in 1982 when I was 16 and my mom took me to the Estée Lauder counter and bought me a cream eye shadow and blush ( which was a total splurge) for prom to go with my white, off the shoulder Gunne Sax prom dress. I was hooked after that. When prom rolled around the next year i told my mom that I don’t need a new dress, but could we please go back to the Estée Lauder counter and get another eyeshadow? Yes. That is when it all started! After Estée Lauder and after I graduated college and had some money in the late 1980s I was all about Lancôme.
L’Oréal!
Benefit!
Stila for their Lip Glazes followed by Tarte for their eyeshadow palettes…
For me it’s Nars.
Jane! I had one of the standard ’90s brown lipstick shades, which was odd because I loathed brown fashion-wise and didn’t have any place to wear it ( no make-up allowed at school or church).
I have used all sorts of brands but those that I “fell in love with” where Armani for high end and Bourjois for drugstore. I still love these brands and will choose one of them over some other. The readon of course is that these brands rarely disappoint!
I think it was Rimmel. It was also the only one I could afford in my mid teens, 14 to 16 years old, or so. Then next one was YSL.
I don’t buy much at all from YSL these days, but I do stop by the Rimmel conter for some affordable pick me ups now and then.
MAC, absolutely.
Estee Lauder
YSL and Dior
Clinique still love it since they have cooler shades for my skin type as well as Elizabeth Arden. WetnWild love it too! Helps me stay wild. Lol! Love many things from WetnWild except skin care haven’t experimented with it yet but eyeshadows, eyeliners, blushes! And lipsticks I find awesome!