The Makeup Show NYC Weekend Recap
Last weekend The Makeup Show came to NYC and I was there for a long three-day weekend to take it all in. The Makeup Show was founded by The Powder Group for makeup artists to discover new products and learn new techniques and trends. This is the fifth year for The Makeup Show and next year they’re planning to expand to a European destination. It’s an amazing trade show and I was honored to have been invited to attend.
As always, I pack every trip to NYC with meetings and outings and basically run myself ragged. But I figure I should make the most of it and I certainly did that on this trip. Between the show, meet-ups with fellow bloggers and meetings with a few brands I had a blast. Read all about my adventure and check out what I brought home after the jump! |
Day 1
I landed in NYC bright and early at 10am and hit the ground running. After dropping off my bags at my hotel I headed to Chelsea to see some of my fave beauty pals for brunch at the Rocking Horse Cafe. I met up with Dina from eye4style, Paula from Older Girl Beauty, Sarah from StyleIT, Karla aka The Arm from KarlaSugar, Carla from Product Girl, Heather from SeoulDiva and Lesley aka LesleyKat. The food was delicious and affordable, the company was fantastic and the chips were the size of a human head, as modeled by Dina below.
Since I haven’t been drinking much post-cleanse, the margarita at lunch left me a little tipsy as we walked to the Makeup Show NYC Blogger Preview but I quickly recovered. At the preview James Vincent, Director of Artistry for The Makeup Show, talked us through some of the brands that would be exhibiting and highlights from each line. We also heard from Kevin-James Bennett aka Blenderella the Director of Artistry & Development for Make Up For Ever. If you’ve seen him on HSN you know what a big, fun personality he is.
After the presentation we had a chance to mingle with the other bloggers at the event and meet with reps from some of the brands. I ran into Stila’s Sarah Lucero who was there setting up the Stila booth and I was flattered that she remembered me from doing interviews backstage during Fashion Week. There were so many bloggers at the preview, it was overwhelming. I wanted to chat with everyone. They’re such a great group to hang with. It makes me wish I was in NYC more often.
I spent the rest of the day wandering the city with a small group who wanted to go fragrance sniffing. Being that my fragrance knowledge is pretty amateur, I was geeked to spend time with Diane from The Beauty Alchemist and my roomie for the weekend, Meredith from Retrodiva’s Beauty. They astound me with their olfactory know-how. We stopped by Aedes de Venustas and Bond No. 9 and thanks to Meredith I may have found a new Bond to purchase, Spring Fling. I brought a sample home to test out since my skin reacts oddly to a lot of scents.
Meredith (above) and Diane (below) sniffing a Diptyque candle at Aedes de Venustas.
Reality Star Spotting – While standing outside of Aedes I recognized Top Chef Season 1 Winner Harold walking towards us. Apparently I was the only one to notice but when I said something to Paula, she chased after him, iPhone in hand to snap THIS and say “good job!” That girl kills me, I love it!!
Day Two
I started off my morning meeting Jane Schub, founder of StrangeBeautiful at City Bakery for breakfast. I’ve heard of City Bakery because of Sex and The City but never been. Jane had me try their maple bacon biscuit which was phenom but I completely forgot to order the hot chocolate they are famous for. Next time! Jane showed me her Volume 4 colors which are so utterly gorgeous (I’ll be reviewing them soon) and shared with me a special project she’s launching that I’ll tell you about next week.
Next stop – The Makeup Show. Holy crowds batman!! I swear, every makeup artist in the city and surrounding areas must have been there. To give you a picture, there were like 7 rows of booths and each brand has a booth to sell their products at a discount. Surrounding each booth were crowds at least two deep, trying to purchase. The discounts varied by brand but MUFE, Becca and Stila were all 40-50% off so you can imagine why there was such a frenzy.
As soon as I walked in, I couldn’t help but notice the Inglot Cosmetics booth. It was a madhouse. Inglot is a Europe based brand with one store in the US. It’s right in the middle of Times Square and the last time I was in NYC, it was closed. The main draw was their Freedom System palettes that you can customize with any of their 320 shadows, 29 blushes or 21 face powders. Girls were going crazy creating their own palettes and the employees must have worked into the night building them.
Of course, the draw for me was the nail polish. As of right now you can only purchase Inglot at their NYC location but let’s hope they add an online store soon!
I also made my way to the Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics booth to check out the product bloggers have been raving about for over a year now, Lip Tar. I purchased Memento with a portion of the proceeds going to CancerCare. I didn’t pick up any polishes because I have some at home to review but I did come home with their matte top coat to try out.
On my way out, I stopped by the Eve Pearl booth to meet Aina from Lacquerholic. Aina is a professional makeup artist and works with Eve Pearl, who is known for her work in TV and her current gig as Meredith Viera’s makeup artist. Eve’s booth was so packed with people it was hard to chat much but I was so happy to finally meet her.
At that point I was over fighting to buy product so I decided to wait until Monday for any more purchases hoping it would be less busy on a weekday. Instead I headed over to Union Square to meet the ladies behind Ginger & Liz for lunch. We had a wonderful time chatting about some of their upcoming colors and the inspiration behind them. Get ready for Swagger’s foil metallic sisters to hit their online shop soon. I had a chance to see them both and let me tell you, they’re gorgeous. They also have some fun brights coming out for summer and more tricks up their sleeve come fall.
To end my day, I went on my first adventure off the island of Manhattan to meet up with some friends in Astoria, Queens at Studio Square Beer Garden. I’ve been seeing Heather’s beer garden pics for a while now and wanted to experience the BIG BEER. Thankfully the weather was in my corner all weekend so it was the perfect day to chill outside.
Me with my big beer. Yes, I finished it all by myself. And I was very thankful for the dinner that followed at Omonia to soak up all the booze.
Day 3
I spent the majority of Day 3 shopping at the show and watching seminars. That’s the beauty of The Makeup Show, it’s not just about products it’s about education. All day long they have technique and trend seminars going in two locations on the show floor and special hands-on classes upstairs. Here are some pics I snapped while wandering around the show floor.
Eve Pearl Makeup
Meredith getting airbrushed with Luminess Air
Body Painting by MAC Pro
Mattese Booth. Yay eye candy!
Rouge Cosmetics Eye Lashes. Lady Gaga wore their Marlina lashes on a recent cover of Cosmo
Meredith wearing Rouge Cosmetics Gwen lashes
One of the seminars that I was most excited for was the MAC Fall Trend presentation by MAC Artists Keri Blair and Romero Jennings. During the seminar they both completed a look on their models with Keri focusing on a dark lip and Romero doing a heavily sculpted/contoured face with blanked out eyebrows. My fave quotes from the session include Keri telling us that if we don’t own MAC Smolder Eye Kohl, “you better check yourself,” and Romero raving about the new Superglass gloss stating it’s so fabulous, “it comes with a cape!”
Reality Star Spotting – I saw Alexa “The Glam Fairy” from Jerseylicious going into The Makeup Show and while she wasn’t rocking the overly contoured cheeks I see each week on TV, girlfriend needed a deep conditioning treatment in the worst way. Her hair is crying for moisture.
My Haul
I didn’t go overboard on purchases because I kept thinking about how I have no room to put them away at home. So I kept my shopping in check which is more than I can say for my blogging-partner-in-crime Meredith. I can’t wait till she posts the rest of her haul because she went all out.
Thanks to some fool at UPS who ripped open the package I shipped home, I’m missing a few things and receipts (GRR!!) but here’s the majority of my haulage with a few of my fave beauty treats from the Blogger Preview goodie bag.
Luminess Air (I’ve been dying to try this!), Beauty For Real gloss (it lights up), Inglot polishes & matte top coat, Temptu Concealer Wheel, Knock Out Cosmetics matte polishes and top coat, OCC Lip Tars, Crown Brush brushes and Eve Pearl Kisses of Pearl lip gloss combo.
How did I do? If you were at the show, what did you buy? Reviews of all the polishes are in the works so stay tuned!
Disclosure: Tickets to the Makeup Show NYC and Blogger Preview were furnished by representatives for The Makeup Show NYC. Product samples from Beauty For Real, Eve Pearl, Luminess Air, OCC Cosmetics and Temptu were provided by representatives of the brands. For more info please view my Disclosure Policy.
Lisa N.
Ms Meatballhead
Birdie
Spa pediccure chairs
You left out the most important part! What polish did you decide to rock for the event? Is that Turquoise and Caicos in the pic with the giant beer?
Sorry about that. I’m still iffy on the polish so I didn’t mention it. I ordered some Quirius polishes and it chipped something fierce but I layered the Chanel glitter on top so I don’t know who’s to blame for the chipping. I didn’t want to send anyone out to buy Quirius until I know if it’s worth the $$$.
Why don’t you write any negative reviews? As much as I like reading all your reviews and seeing the swatches, creating numerous lemmings… I would also love to know what polishes to avoid!
Mainly because I don’t feel like it’s a good use of my time to negatively review a product. When a collection has both good and bad polishes, I say so but if something is entirely bad, I skip it rather than waste editing/blogging time on it. I spend a LOT of time editing my photos to make them as accurate as possible and to do that for a product that I don’t recommend buying seems like a waste. There are so many polishes I want to review and don’t always find the time for, it doesn’t make sense for me to put something good on the back burner to highlight something bad.
I understand completely, but that leaves us (your devoted readers) with a conundrum- do we assume that if you haven’t posted a review of something- that you didn’t like it?
It would really help to know the bad things you have experienced, because then we can weigh that information and see how it applies to our own criteria. That, in turn, would then help us to either save or spend money accordingly- which would be righteous, and we’d appreciate companies more.
Personally, having purchased something only to have it not work for my nails makes me feel duped by the company- Unreasonable, I know- but when a company claims it’s “best” for my nails, and I take them at their word, when it isn’t “best”, or even “good”- I get really, really cranky. It would SO help to have someone say “it’s ‘best’ for these types of nails, but not these”, or the like.
In short, if you were as levelheaded and fair about a negative review as you are with a positive one, it could only help us, and the np companies! Even if it were just a line or two.
BUT, no matter what you do, you’re still great, and we think the world of you!
The thing is, just because something works/doesn’t work for me doesn’t mean it will work for everyone. I could never make a blanket statement saying that a product is “best for these types of nails, but not these” because I’m only one person. I have no way of knowing if something will work for other nail types.
And I don’t think it’s fair to assume I don’t like something because I don’t post about it. There is an overwhelming amount of polish brands on the market releasing a LOT of polish each year. I am one person. I don’t have time to write about every collection. I just don’t. That doesn’t mean the ones I don’t write about are bad. I just didn’t have time to review them.
I do the best I can but because I am a perfectionist. I try to put out the best work I can. That means I can’t crank out dozens of posts a day. So I choose to review the things I love and even sometimes those don’t make it on the blog due to time constraints.
Hey Michelle,
Those who think you should review everything don’t realize that this is a labour of love, and that you are not paid to do what you do. Yes, you may get items to review, but it is your choice what you post on your blog.
I for one read everything you post, not to select polishes, but to get inspiration, and to see the lovely swatches. I know what is on here may be selective, but again, it is your choice. I appreciate everything you do!
Politely butting in
I kind of see where ReaderRita is coming from. I don’t think she was implying that you the editor are expected to make the judgement call as to what works best for us but when negative aspects of a product are presented the readers can make judgement for themselves. Sometimes these negatives can be a positive for certain consumers or simply remain negative.
I think Rita was saying that if these reviews aren’t even presented then the reader is left wondering why? We all know that there isn’t enough time for every polish to be analyzed. You do a heck of a lot of work! I was just reading two different arguments about the same subject, so I thought I would step in
Keep up the great work Michelle!!!
Great post, thanks for the shout out. It was a pleasure to take all of you sniffing. I had no idea you snapped a photo. I am camera shy but me in Aedes is very appropriate
Ginger and Liz are gorgeous aren’t they? I was lucky to meet them at FW. Can’t wait to hear more on the new metallics.I love shimmer and more shimmer on my nails.
Great re-cap of the show. Never been to that one. I am attending the Premiere Beauty show in Orlando, Florida and this has me worked up now. Love the body painted people. They usually have a few Silver studly men roaming around promoting a hair product line. Nice to look at.
Enjoy your blog…as always.
LindaAtTheSpa (twitter)
INGLOT stores are everywhere in Canada! To be frank,I am not impressed. I find most of their products very cakey. But I never thought of trying their nail polish, maybe it is good, hopefully you will review them!
There are a few in Quebec but nowhere else throughout the rest of Canada. I have always been curious about trying them though. Especially the lacquers and the lipsticks.
I love the polish colors that you have. I can’t wait for the polish reviews/swatches. BTW I think that your haul was great not to much not to little, just the right amount of things that you liked.
omg…the nail polishes and lip tars look AMAZINGGGGGG!!! can you do swatches of the lip tars as well? thank you! :]
hmmm, i always go somewhere during the summer but i never stumble upon makeup stores…
only the really expensive ones that’s in sf though
Always a thrill to introduce someone to my favorite fragrance brand – Bond can take some time to grow on you, but never lets me down.
Had an amazing time, and can’t wait to do it again!
First, it was great to meet you in person. There were so many great bloggers there and to meet you was like meeting a blogging legend
And feel free to email me your tech questions.
I bought the Make Up For Ever Aqua Creams – INSANELY fantastic. Best thing hands down and I have used the airbrushing system and I really like the finish on me.
Hey! Great post!
I ended up purchasing lip tars, some e/s palettes from Inglot, their liquid illumator, emryolisse lait creme, a brush belt, brushes, face atelier foundations, alcone spnges, beauty so clean brush cleaner
great post, i wish i was there just to get the INGLOT nail polishes, they seem awesome
u’ve got great lacquers…..can’t wait to read ur review on them
love ur blog
What nail polish color is Dina wearing in the Day 1 picture and what color green are you wearing in the Day 2 picture? They are really both cute colors. I would totally wear both those colors (not together at the same time), but I would wear them on my nails. Super cute.
It was great finally meeting you too! Great shot of the EP display1 Hope you like the lip gloss!
You wish you were in NYC more often? You should move here so we could hang out!
Michelle usually tells us when polishes are streaky, have a bad formula, etc. Also, somewhere on the site- I think in the About section but I’m not sure- she explains why some polishes are chosen and others aren’t.
This is a blog. It’s a super-excellent one, but still. I don’t think it’s fair to expect her to give specifics about how products would work on nails other than her own. Besides, isn’t this all trial and error anyway? :shrug:
“Chased” may be too strong of a word. I would say “strode quickly and purposefully, at a rapid pace, down the street behind him, until we were at the same intersection together”.
Always a joy to see you, pretty lady!!
Hello,
i just wanted to let u know that i’ve been to Dubai for the weekend and i found INGLOT store there…i was so excited that i bought 5 colors and a quick dry drops…i’ll make a post about it soon and i’ll give u the link to know what u think about it.
thanx for ur great blog…love it