Milani Color statement lipstick review. Teddy Bare and Plum rose

My new favourite Nude! Yay!

I cannot say how much i love these lipsticks. They are fabulous. The Milani Teddy Bare is great if you have dark lips like me and want a brown nude with just hint of pink. It is extremely hard to find in a lipstick and i'm always having to mix and match when i want something i can just drag across my lips in one fell swoop!

 I also picked up the plumrose shade. Again a great pink for darker skintones. I wear both regularly and have done so for weeks. Teddy Bare is my everyday lipstick.

They smell like in the words of Beyonce "watermelon", they smell exactly like jolly ranchers( which no longer exist in the UK) or any other watermelon scented sweet. They are very creamy and don't dry out your lips.

Per the Milani site the shades come in Pearl, matte, shimmer, vinyl, metallic and cream.

http://www.milanicosmetics.com/p-153-color-statement-lipstick.aspx

The only con? They are not readily available. I bought these at an Afro hair shop or BSS as they are known called Juliets in Peckham. I don't even know if they sell them anywhere else! They also came with the whole behind the counter testers, no testers for certain products, personal space being invaded that happens at so many of these stores. Come on Milani get it together! Roll out your new products in ALL Afro hair shops and have some sort of directive on how they are displayed and sold!

Anyway they cost £3.99 each and i will buy LOADS.

Teddy Bare no flash

TeddyBare Flash

TeddyBare 

Plumrose no flash

Plumrose flash

The curious case of L'oreal and Liya Kebede's missing Lipstick.

Are "we" worth it?

I'm sure you've seen the ad here in the uk, but let me just give you a refresher.

The L'Oreal Paris Color Riche Collection Privée

The L'Oreal Paris Color Riche Collection Privée

L'oreal TV AD- Click me baby

This is the ad currently airing in the UK. There are different versions on youtube as i understand different lipsticks are being released in different territories. There has been fanfare that L'oreal have designed a nude  lipstick for all skintones.  Their L'Oreal Color Riche Collection Privée range. I was excited to read about this colour range online and i thought the next time I'm at the L'oreal counter I'll swatch Liya's shade and buy! ( Barely Moka nb7 by the way) But something strange happened. In shop after shop i could not find Liya's shade, i at first blamed it at these concession stands being small ( every other shade Cheryl Cole, Eva Longoria, Doutzen Kroes, Freida Pinto and Julianne Moore was there) but i finally saw Liya's shade in a Superdrug. Alas the tester compartment and section was empty. Totally empty. Hmm maybe it's all sold out i thought. I asked the sales assistant. She actually went into the back and began looking for the shade. It wasn't there, ( she had wheeled the box the lipsticks in to me) and she confessed she HAD NEVER seen the lipstick there at all. Ever.

I called Boots customer service. The lady there couldn't even see the lipstick on the system. Then she asked one of the online staff. It was online only. OH. So no if i wanted to get the lipstick i would have to buy blind. No boots store will be stocking it, in stores.  I emailed L'oreal asking if it were available anywhere in store. As of today still no reply. ( I wrote to them on the 12/9/13)

So Why would L'oreal go to the trouble of creating a lipstick, advertising it and then making it unavailable in stores? What would be the point?

More troubling is that they decided that every other skintone could be stocked in store but not Liya's.  I visited 7 stores and did not find Liya's shade. If it is available in stores ( most probably Superdrug or independent Chemists, as boots aren't) then it must be one or two in London. Even in a heavily "ethnic minority" area, it wasn't stocked. Lets not even get on to the fact that Fan Bing Bing's lipstick isn't stocked over here when there is a sizable East Asian community in the UK

It just baffles my mind. Why advertise the fact that the shade is available but make it online only? Making the inevitable sales figures  low. Most people are not willing to A- Buy blind or B- traipse all over London in pursuit of one lipstick they may or not buy. Then when the next time L'Oreal think about stocking darker shades or ranges, their data says it doesn't sell. Its a vicious circle.

L'sigh. People wonder why i like to purchase from brands that actually cater to me ........