La what?

I hope those of you in the U.S. had a great Thanksgiving holiday. It's very cold in Milan! Snow, rain, sun - we've had a bit of everything this past weekend!

There are quite a few pharmacy brands in Europe that are worth looking into, if you are interested in slightly lower prices and consumer-safe products. Most of these brands use the least number of ingredents, which means the products will be more tolerable to the skin.

La Roche-Posay is perhaps best known for its Anthélios sunscreen, one of the best out there. In Europe, the brand's makeup collection is also available.

• La Roche-Posay has a few types of fluid foundation. I have the Unifiance Optic Smoothing one. The texture is emollient, application foolproof, and the colour stays put all day. However, since it has a matte finish, it's too dry for me during winter.

• The Respectissime collection for the eyes is good. I have this eyeshadow in matte chocolate brown. Pearl white, pastel blue and a couple of other fun colours are available. The formula for all eye makeup is non-irritating, non-flaking. The same goes for their mascara: lightweight, very comfortable.

• I hardly ever finish a product completely, but I've almost used up this Nutritic chapstick. With coriander fruit oil, apricot kernel oil, biolipids and no petroleum, this is an excellent base for lipsticks.
  

However, I've tried La Roche-Posay skincare products and don't particularly recommend them. I used up a tube of Mela-D with SPF, which is supposed to even out my skin tone. The product worked fine as a makeup base, but I didn't notice anything different with my skin after 6, 7 months of continuous use!

Toxic (cont'd)

Happy Thanksgiving!

I've compiled a list of the less toxic cosmetics brands/products for you, which I'll put up this weekend.

Also coming up is a tutorial on contouring your cheeks with two blushes.

Today, I let myself out of work a little earlier (6pm) than usual (8pm), and got up the courage to check out all the major drugstore cosmetics brands: L'Oréal, Maybelline, Rimmel, Max Factor, etc.

I gotta say the experience was overwhelming, because I couldn't tell the difference from one brand to anther. Not only was there no salesperson assisting you with your choice, all the ingredients labels were well hidden, in a point-2 font. Needless to say most products were full of lanolin, parabens, dimethicone and other good stuff. It's scary how widely distributed these major brands are.

The search for ethical and safe makeup continues...

Toxic

The Eucerin eye makeup remover solution isn't working out so well so I guess it doesn't even deserve a photo posted here!

Except for removing eyeshadows, it can't seem to take off eye pencils, liners, or anything that's a bit more difficult to, well, remove. So now I even doubt if the brand's facial cleansers even work at all?

I'd like to bring your attention to this site called Cosmetics Safety Database. Here, cosmetic products are tested for their level of toxicity and flagged from 0 (innocuous) to 10 (high hazard). All you have to do is type in a brand name and let it do a search.

I'm sorry to say that a lot of the beautiful, high-end brands have pretty high toxicity in some of their products. To my surprise, some drugstore brands aren't so bad!

In general, it seems like highly pigmented blushes, lipsticks, bronzers and compact powders have the highest toxicity, while sheer lip glosses or lipsticks are quite innocuous.

Also, the European Union has stricter regulations on cosmetic products than the USA. So a number of American brands actually are not distributed here, simply because they use ingredients that are not allowed by the E.U.

And no, the FDA does not do jack to regular cosmetics made in the USA. Beware, ladies!

Mauve Away

Apparently after my 100th post, I disappeared for a few days :-) This morning instead of heading straight to the gym, I snuck into the department store.

I browsed quite a few brands' holiday collections: Lancome, Givenchy, YSL, etc. I think Guerlain's theme is most outstanding.

I also checked out NOUBA's palette sets. I don't know why a youtube guru says NOUBA is like a NARS sister brand. There's nothing comparable between the two.

But being a nerd, I just had to look at something even less mainstream.

Royal Effem is a wonderful laboratory makeup/skincare maker that collaborates with the University of Pavia, a school well-known for numerous studies on Italian cosmetic products.

I picked up the long-lasting lipgloss in #02, a warm mauve. The flash made it look light here, but you can see the ever-so-slight pearlised finish.

The tube is small (compared with my palm-sized hair clip), but that's what I want, because I can never seem to finish a whole tube.

So it's between brown and purple. This is close to the autumn look that I've been looking for.

This brand does not use any lanolin, paraffin or petrolium-derived ingredients, and a minimum use of paraben. The only drawback is the collection offers mostly "practical" colours so you won't find anything crazy here.

This is my 100th post!

Time flies when you're having fun. It's good to share and read about so much beauty news on Blogger.

Unfortunately this post has no photos because I'm dead tired after a pretty intense day at work. But that's every day for me, it seems.

I am happy with the Make Up For Ever Aqua Eyes pencil, with the exception that it's a bit difficult to wipe off.

Tonight, I purchased Eucerin's high-tolerance eye makeup remover for sensitive eyes with balanced pH. Hopefully it will work well.

I would like to ask those of you who have tried Bobbi Brown's gel eyeliner: is it really better than M.A.C.'s fluidline?