What’s up with all this makeup?

We interrupt your regularly scheduled makeup review for this special report!

No seriously. I was going to review my new microfiber hair towel today. That’s what my content calendar calls for. But I have AN OPINION and it cannot be held in check. Opinions are more interesting than towels any day, right?

The question of the day is “What’s up with all this makeup?” It feels like not a day goes by that I don’t see a new launch of some sort in my Twitter feed or inbox, or on Temptalia’s blog. Then on Tuesday it really hit home when Urban Decay announced they were reformulating their lipstick (the current formula only dates back to like, 2013 or so) and relaunching… with 100 core shades, 20 Sephora exclusive shades, and 50 lip liners.

120 lipsticks at $17 each and 50 liners are $20 each. If you wanted to buy them all, and you didn’t happen to have a convenient coupon, that would set you back $3040 plus tax.  Now, I’m sure they don’t expect most people to buy the whole damn line, but that hasn’t stopped them from sending out fancy display cases to prominent social media stars. I haven’t counted to see if they got all the shades or just the core 100 colors, but that’s at least $1700 worth of lipstick. Lest you think I’m just jealous because I’ll never be cool enough to get free makeup, believe me, I’m not. I’m in the middle of moving and there’s no way I want to drag 100 freakin’ lipsticks with me and try to find room for them in a tiny apartment, thanks anyway!

My problem isn’t specifically with the UD launch, but what it represents. I think we’re seeing a cosmetics bubble you guys. From constant launches and reformulations and special limited edition collections from the big companies, to blogs and YouTubers breathlessly gushing about the latest Insta-famous indie brands, we are drowning in cosmetics. We brag about our “hauls”, we buy the same color of lipstick in five different formulations and we all have at least ten different black eye liners. Why? Do we really need all this?

All of these products are surrounded by so much hype, thanks to Instagram and YouTube. Much of the hype is driven by supplying free products, or collaborating with popular makeup artists and style gurus for a line, or having these “beauty gurus” visit the company at their design labs, makeup show booths, or stores. While I don’t blame companies for taking advantage of the possibilities of viral marketing (after all, marketing is my day job!) it’s starting to feel a little over-done.

Already I can see people starting to lose their trust in beauty companies and the gurus who promote them. There are valid complaints about both sides. I see these issues cropping up over and over again:

1. First, people feel like the big companies are trying too hard. Too many launches, often of similar products (even the YT beauty vloggers who get them for free are starting to complain about neutral palettes!), too much blatant courting of social media stars, too many products that don’t live up to claims despite a high price tag.
2. Then when they decide to give the little guy a try and check out that hot indie company everyone’s suddenly talking about, they discover new problems. The scandals surrounding indie cosmetics range from stolen credit cards and drained PayPal accounts to shoddy packaging to weeks-long shipping delays to incomplete or missing orders to indie nail polish that caused serious damage to peoples’ nail beds. Any and all of these can be paired with poor customer service that clearly DNGAF unless you’ve got 10k Instagram followers. Taking a chance with an indie company can have bad results that range from wasting a few dollars on a substandard project to physical injury and stolen funds, which of course makes people wary of ever trying another indie brand, even though some are quite nice.
3. After being burned a few times by indie upstarts and failed launches from the big brands, you might feel tempted to sit back and wait for the reviews from now on. So before buying the hot new palette that everyone’s abuzz about, you watch a video by your favorite YouTube guru. She swatches the colors on her arm and they look great! She says they’re so soft, buttery, and highly pigmented. Sure she only swatched 3 colors, but they all looked great, so you buy it. When you get it, you find that those three colors are great, but there’s 4 or 5 colors that are just powdery and patchy. Well, maybe you’re not using them right. You go back to YouTube and watch another MUA channel. She swatches the same few really popular colors and says they’re so soft, buttery, and highly pigmented. Wait, this sounds familiar… It’s almost like they all received a promotional package that touted the brands new soft, buttery, and highly pigmented eye shadow formula.
4. Well, you’ve still got the palette so you might as well enjoy it. You see a tutorial for an eye look based on the palette, and you figure that will maybe help you learn how to work with some of the more difficult colors. But you find the tutorial difficult to follow because the person doing it has very different skin tone and eye color from you and makes no suggestions for how to adjust it. You do some digging and realize that despite presenting herself as a makeup expert, she is entirely self-taught* and actually has lots of videos full of terrible advice.

With all of this happening, it’s no wonder that some of the more cynical members of the community are starting to get a little burnt out. When you sit down and realize how much you’ve spent on makeup in the past year, and how much of it turned out to be not that great, and how much of it is fine but not your favorite so you rarely use it, you can start to feel a little silly. It spirals out of control so easily, because going to Sephora and buying a couple little things is a great pick-me-up on a bad day, especially since you can put that new lipstick right on in the store and feel cute and happy. But all those little purchases build up, and suddenly you see the appeal of the anti-haul, the purge, the no-spend, the “use up 7 products before July”.

I think much like the current backlash against the wasteful nature of fast fashion, we’re going to start to see a lot of resistance towards the constant new cosmetics launches and must-have products. I think there’s going to be more of a trend towards buying beauty products that are a real staple — a good classic red lipstick, for instance — instead of a rush to have one of every color of everything, and every limited edition palette that comes in a cute package. I’m curious if multi-taskers will become more popular too (such as products that can tint lips and cheeks), or if we’ll retain a preference for products that are really great at one thing instead of OK at two things.

Either way, I just don’t see this current growth as sustainable. Yes, millennials like to spend a lot on makeup, but they’re also facing a tough job market and high student loans and constantly rising housing costs in the most popular cities. How long are they going to keep dropping their paychecks on liquid matte lipsticks and highlighter palettes, instead of paying down their debt and investing in their future?

So there’s my thoughts. You’ll see my disillusionment with the current frantic release pace of the cosmetics industry reflected in less purchasing and less product reviews. Don’t worry! Beauty Blogging for Belly Dancers will still be posted on every Friday, but some of the reviews will be replaced by tips & tricks or opinion posts or brand overviews.

*Not that there’s anything wrong with being self-taught. I’m not a professional makeup artist, after all. I just think it’s important to be clear about who you are and what you know, and if you’re not a trained professional, maybe don’t go around giving people advice like telling them to make DIY face masks out of products that are terrible for your skin.