NWPosh

Ode to Make Up, Part One November 18, 2007

I absolutely love make up. My love affair with make up began around the age of eleven. My father remarried around that time. My step-mother was quite a bit younger than my father. She introduced me to Vogue, Elle and make-up. My step-mother used Chanel and Yves St. Laurent makeup and consequently, my own make-up “bar” was set high. I never used the typical teen or pre-teen brands like Bonnie Bell or Wet and Wild. In fact, growing up I never used any drug store brands and the lost price point line I used was Clinique. Without coming across as a make up snob, as I will quickly admit I am, it was more so that even at a young age I recognized the power of make up and the importance of branding.

Like most connoisseurs, above all else, the quality of the product was extremely important to me. If the company spent money on its packaging and branding, then it was logical to think that the same, if not more, attention was given to the product itself. Packaging or branding is the very pretense of make up. The product in its self is a sort of branding of the wearer. The brand of make up we choose to purchase in many ways reflects how we want the world to see us. It is our own packaging. The classic, sleek black Chanel compacts, the clean, clinical packaging of Clinique and the embellished, shapely vials and baubles of Estee Lauder all to some degree embody how we want to be seen but also how we see or hope to see ourselves.