Welcome to a brand-new year. Its February, congratulations you made it! January 2018 has been deemed by many to have been the longest month in human existence. Just joking, but it really was a drag. We are all most likely at a point where we are in the process of shedding, or attempting to shed those last few Christmas 2017 pounds, or Christmas 2016 pounds if we are being honest. We are also beginning to loosen our purse strings ever so slightly as our financials recover from the hectic and busy Christmas and New Year period. We are back to college and our lecturers have already handed out our next assignment deadlines. It’s a fresh start once again and we make the promise to ourselves that this year, we are going to spread out our course work evenly. (Promises, promises) So what better way to treat yourself for making it to February –because of course we need an excuse – than to pick up some of the best beauty products from 2017. Lucky for you, I have compiled a list to make it all easier.
Foundation:
For this category I have picked my favourites from the budget and high-end category. My favourite high-end foundation in 2017 goes to the Yves Saint Laurent All Hours full coverage foundation. This retails for €44 and can be found at all YSL counters in department stores such as Brown Thomas. This foundation does have a high coverage but it stays put on my oily skin all day (or all hours), which is something I look for in particular. As someone who generally only applies foundation once a day, I want it to last as long as possible. That being said, I have used foundations in the past that have promised to achieve this aim but I end up looking like the term ‘cake-faced’. This foundation gives you the coverage but you still can see your natural skin underneath. In the budget category comes from the brand The Ordinary and it’s called their Coverage foundation. This little beauty retails for €6.80 and can be easily found online via Irish website Cloud 10 beauty or via The Ordinary’s website. This provides a great coverage on the skin but doesn’t have quite the same staying power as the YSL option and looks that little bit more natural. However, for the price difference it is a steal!
Concealer:
My pick for concealer is easy, unfortunately it’s a little trickier to get your hands on. This concealer hails from the American brand Tarte and is called the Shape Tape concealer. It retails for €26 on the official Tarte website but I also found it sneakily on the QVC UK website. Who knew they sold useful stuff eh? This concealer hides all manners of nastiness. Been pulling an all-nighter? Use this concealer. Just been broken up with and your eyes are alarmingly red and puffy? Use this concealer. Wound up in Coppers with no recollection of it? Use this concealer. If the price tag is a little too steep for you, word on the street is that Make-up Revolution have a dupe called the Conceal and Define concealer that comes in at about €5 at Superdrug. It’s on my list.
Lipstick and lip liner:
There’s only one queen in this category, and her name is Charlotte Tilbury. Ms. Tilbury has created the perfect lipstick and lip liner formula in my humble opinion. Her matte revolution lipsticks have it all. The pigment, the packaging, the staying power. Don’t let the matte part scare you, they don’t look drying when applied on the lips. My favourite shade is Very Victoria which is named after the one and only Victoria Beckham. It is a subtle nudey taupe colour that goes with everything. These lipsticks are priced at €32 each and can be found at Brown Thomas or BT2. Underneath I like to wear the famous petal pink lip liner she created aptly named Pillow Talk. The lip liners will set you back € 22. This combination gives you a beautiful full lip without having to look into any of those dodgy lip injections. For budget lip products, my favourite brand has always been Kiko. Kiko is an Italian beauty brand with the majority of its shops on the continent but it ships internationally to Ireland. The lipsticks have all the great colours and designs that you find in more higher end products but at a fraction of the price. Their Smart fusion lipstick costs only €3.95. The shade 404 Rosy Biscuit looks particularly enticing…
Eyeshadow:
There is only one eye-shadow palette that I repeatedly reach for because for me, it has it all. Take a bow, the Anastasia Beverly Hills Modern Renaissance Palette. Possibly the only item I will ever own that has some connection to Beverly Hills, but this palette is so good, I’m okay with that. For days when you want something a little simpler it has three neutral lighter shades with lots of warm browns and tans for shading in the crease. If you fancy making things a little bit more dramatic, it has lots of darker, more vampy purple shades in there too. You can buy this online for the price of €50 at Beauty Bay. Wow, that’s pricey. I’m going to self-justify here and tell you all that they also include a free make-up brush inside the palette. Feel better? Yep, totally. For something with a price that doesn’t make me cringe so much, look to Morphe. The brand sells palettes for around €25 that include thirty-five beautiful colours. The 350 palette is a constant sell-out and can also be found on Beauty Bay.
Cheeks:
For my cheeks, I do love highlighter and have on occasion gone slighter overboard. I always reach for the Becca highlighter in the shade Opal. This is my ride or die product for making me feel special. The Becca highlighter has just the right amount of shimmer for everyone to know you have highlighter on, but not too much that you look like a moving disco ball. I sweep this over the tops of my cheek bones so that they stand out when the light hits them. You only need a tiny bit so it will last forever. Be wary of travelling with it however as it can easily shatter as it is so delicate. This can be picked up from Space NK on Grafton Street and sells for about €37. An amazing more budget friendly dupe for these kinds of highlighter can be found at Boots from the brand Sleek Makeup. Their Solstice highlighter palette contains four different pigmented highlight colours and is priced at €13.50.
Fiona Keaveny – Fashion Writer
