LUXURY BEAUTY I DIDN’T BUY | Victoria Beckham, Charlotte Tilbury, Gucci & More!

Contrary to my reputation, it turns out that I actually am a girl who can say no, because I've said no to an awful lot of new releases recently. In fact, I like to think that I've really lent in to BOMO, the bliss of missing out. Let me show you the products that I said no to and stick around to the end to see the one that I find a slightly complicated rejection. Watch on. Saying no to Victoria Beckham's new blush stylus, I found really easy because I am a fan and an owner of the contour stick. I've got mine, I think mine's called Marble, and I really like it because it's thin and easy to apply and easy to control. And this is something that I don't want in my blush. Yes, I do want the easy to control bit, but I don't want it so thin that I'm going to end up putting lots of little dots and not working out how to do it and ending up looking a bit like a post-impressionist painting with pointillism. And I'm not trying to channel that at all. What I want to be able to do is use a brush. In fact, I know you know what a brush looks like. I don't know why I'm lifting it up. But anyway, I want to be able to use a brush, put it on my cheeks and get a nice, decent flushed effect. And it seems to me that something as thin as this, and I don't want to fat shame anybody, but for a blush, this is too thin a delivery system. So for example, quite a few of you have encouraged me, and I did buy only one, to buy the Westman Atelier blush. I've got it in doodoo, in this delivery system. Now, I didn't like it to begin with, and I know why now. It's like me. It basically, this particular one, feels the cold. And it just didn't feel like giving me any blush. It was very cold and very rigid. And then we had a mini heat wave and it warmed up and it's been an absolute treat since. But my point is, there is a big difference between the diameters of these products. That's what I'm trying to say. And one of the reasons why I like this and others that I've got in this similar delivery system, is I can take my brush and sort of load it up and do that kind of thing. If I did it on something as thin as this, I would kind of feel like I was forever dusting something very delicate. You know, what am I going to do? I'm going to sit there doing this and trying to kind of make sure I've got enough on it. I just find it a bit odd. I'm not interested. It's a shame because the shades look good, but that's not enough. It just feels a bit perverse. That's what I think. It just feels a bit perverse. Also, I have to tell you, for the purposes of this video, I had to find this and it was quite hard to find because I haven't used it recently. I've not really been contouring recently. Make of that what you will. Because it's quite thin, couldn't find it. One thing that I like about blushes is they're sort of chunky enough for me to be able to find them in my drawer. So that was an easy pass. Really easy, in fact. I'm surprised at Victoria Beckham because she tends to nail stuff. In the absence in my life of it raining men, it does seem to be raining highlighters. So for example, I have happily said no to the Dior, I can't remember what it's called, oh, the Backstage Glossy Glow Stick because I'm highlighted out in whatever shade. I've also said no to the Charlotte Tilbury Glazed Goddess. There's only one shade, which surprised me. I thought there were going to be a couple of shades because we saw those images of two shades bobbing up and down in the water. But anyway, and I also said no, although this was a bit harder, to the Dolce & Gabbana Glaze Lighter, which firstly looks like a deodorant, so I quite like that. I quite like that sort of lifty-uppy thingy. Unlike the others that I've mentioned just now, the shade looks cracking and interesting. And it's the kind of shade that if it wasn't a highlighter and it wasn't shiny, I would enjoy as an eyeshadow. However, I do not need more highlighters in my life. I am baffled by clearly the amount of highlighters that I think everybody is buying because the brands are certainly pushing them out there, aren't they? So we're buying them, aren't we? We are buying them. And we're clearly buying them in different shades because look at what Dior's doing, Dior's output. Dior's packaging, it's just so beautiful. It's really lovely. And the packaging of the Dolce & Gabbana is really lovely. The Charlotte Tilbury, we've kind of seen before, and I suppose there's a mix here because with Charlotte Tilbury, I'm kind of a bit over the brand. I mean, I am. I want to be dazzled the way I was dazzled a few years ago by the quads, by some of the bronzers, certainly by the lipsticks. I love her lip products. In particular, I love her lip products. And her mascaras are still great. But I think what I'm trying to say is the recent output has been disappointing. Yeah, it has been disappointing. And just kind of, it felt to me, phoned in. Nowhere near with the same level of commitment to doing something really interesting and usable and exciting. So that's kind of how I feel. I should also say this word glazed for me is problematic. I've said this before. I'm not a donut. I don't want to be glazed. I want to be glowing. I don't want to be glazed. The difference between glow and glaze, it seems to me, is glow is from within. That, you know, the phrase is overused, isn't it? Lit from within. But it's definitely from within. Glazed is imposed, isn't it? It's kind of poured over us. And as I said, I'm, yeah, I'm not a donut. I'm not a sort of, I don't want to be a cronut or something like that. I mean, I really, I'm reminded. Do you know what I'm reminded of? I'm reminded of years ago, we were on a cruise and every night we were given a similar starter. Until we'd worked out that cruise brand wasn't for us and we needed to go somewhere else. But anyway, my children seemed to enjoy it. The point is that we were given ceviche pretty much every night as a starter. And at one point I said to my husband, I'm not a penguin. I can't eat raw fish every night. At which point he got very technical and said, well, it depends what kind of penguin you are. No, you know, he shouldn't be quarreling with me in the middle of an ocean. When I'm capable of staying up very late and I'm sly and I can look at where the CCTV is. No, he shouldn't have done that. That was a mistake. Anyway, we managed to get over it. But my point is, I'm not a penguin. I'm not a donut. And I want products that make me look glowy. Not like I've been poured, you know, a couple of litres of honey. I don't want to look like that. And I don't like that stickiness. So that was a no. Yeah. Have I said enough? Yeah, I think I have. In a similar vein, I should add that I was and remain singularly unexcited by Charlotte Tilbury's exaggerated pencils. I'm just not interested. I actually don't like the eyeshadow stick delivery system as a general rule. I'm not saying there's not exceptions. Notable exceptions, I've got them here, are the new Dior's, which I think are cracking if you want like a quick, a quick cheeky eyelid. You want to quickly do it as I did a couple of weeks ago. You do it quickly on a plane. So I kind of look decent when I was coming down the stairs in case somebody was photographing me. Yeah, I know. Completely delusional. But anyway, my point is, it's not generally my, you know, my preferred thing. I like a nice single if I'm just going to do a one and done with my finger or a brush or whatever. However, I must tell you, probably two years ago, I would have jumped and been all over these simply because it was Charlotte Tilbury. And that's kind of why this in a way follows on from what I've said about her highlighters, the new highlighter. Because it's the same thing. I've kind of lost confidence, you know? Yeah, I think that's what it is. When I look at the shades, the shades are really right up my street. But do I need them in that delivery system? And do I need to be kind of disappointed? No. What I really want from Charlotte Tilbury when it comes to eyeshadows is some new, really good quads or a nice palette. And I can see the one that we know may well be coming, although I think originally it was flagged because it was going to Asia. Maybe that's not going to be great. Maybe it won't be very pigmented. As I said, I've kind of lost confidence. So yeah, that's a no. I don't know what she really needs to come out with to really kind of dazzle me. Because I think what's happened is I've been disappointed too many times. So the trust isn't there. Listen to me. Anyway, on to the next one. When I first heard that Lisa Eldridge was releasing a Marilyn Monroe range, I was really excited. Not least because I love so much of Lisa's makeup. And let's be honest, if anyone's going to convince me to get a highlighter after everything that I have just said about highlighters, it's going to be Lisa Eldridge. OK? And I kind of looked briefly. I saw the lipsticks. I thought they're exciting. I was delighted to see more lip glosses because I love that lip gloss formula. And I really enjoyed the Christmas shades as well. At first, I thought this range would have illustrations from Blair Brightenstein like we enjoyed last holiday season. Do you remember those beautiful girls wearing their gorgeous makeup, these marvellous illustrations? And in fact, I've kept all the boxes. I just wish there was a lovely tin, something that was more durable than a bit of cardboard, frankly, with these gorgeous illustrations. But anyway, so at first, I thought that's what we were looking at, that there'd be sort of illustrations of Marilyn perhaps because I hadn't looked that closely. And then when I did look closely, and I should caveat this by saying, I can see that the range is really lovely. So I should say, this is no kind of shade, as it were, on the actual products themselves. It's more what goes on around it by making it as a, or marketing it as a Lisa Eldridge, Marilyn Monroe collaboration. Marilyn didn't get a say in this. And this is the problem that I've got with this range. So in case you don't know, and if you do know, and you're not interested, you know, skip along to the next bit of the video by all means. Basically, Marilyn Monroe trained at the Lee Strasberg Actors Studio, which was a method acting studio. So very much in the kind of Stanislavski kind of tradition, but a more film-focused, cinema-focused, and therefore more American approach. So she really wanted to be taken seriously as an actress. So she trained there. Now this actor studio had pumped out one, you know, one successful actor after another. It was James Dean, and Marlon Brando, and Jane Fonda, and who else? Dustin Hoffman. There's, you know, there's lots of Paul Newman, lots and lots of big stars. And Marilyn kind of wanted to be in that milieu. And then what happened was, she was basically taken under the wing of the owner of this actor studio, Lee Strasberg, and his wife, Anna. And they really became a surrogate family for her. It's very well documented this. This isn't kind of my interpretation. It's very well documented that she was, you know, she had a close relationship with their kids, and they were very close. And in fact, Anna Strasberg would accompany Marilyn to the set of some of her later, of some of her films. Basically as a mother figure, you know, completely understandable. Marilyn had had this awful childhood, very troubled adolescence, and, you know, lots of awful things had happened to her. So a safe, secure family was what, you know, what she was looking for. When Marilyn dies, tragically, in early six, was it 62? I think it was 62. She had left the bulk of her estate to Lee and Anna Strasberg, basically her family. The rest, interestingly, well, the rest was not an insignificant portion, was actually left to her psychoanalyst. But that's another story. What then happened was a few years later, Anna Strasberg dies, Lee Strasberg remarries, and it is this woman, Paula Strasberg, who in the 80s, effectively licenses Marilyn's image and sells it to this company, which I can never remember, so I've written it down, Authentic Brands Group, ABG. They own quite a few images of people. I think they may also own Elvis, but I may be wrong. Now Elvis, that's another story, isn't it? And if you haven't seen the biopic, it's worth seeing because it goes into that with this Colonel, can't remember his name, played brilliantly by Tom Hanks. But anyway, that's another story. So she then sells Marilyn's image, having gone through a lot of legal wranglings to get her image kind of isolated from the rest of her estate, and she sells it to this company, who now are basically the gatekeepers of her image. And that's my problem. My problem is that Marilyn didn't get a say. It's not like she sold her image. So for example, Albert Einstein sold his, not sold, but he left his image to a university. I forget where it is or what it is. But he himself bequeathed his image to a university. I think it was a university in Jerusalem, but I may be wrong. But that was his volition. That's my point. With Marilyn, it seems to me she didn't get a say. She doesn't get to collaborate. It wasn't her decision at all. And it's actually somebody's second wife who sold the image. And so for me, it's kind of problematic. This isn't about the makeup. It's not about Lisa Eldridge. It's about the fact that it's really somebody whose image is now controlled, and it was absolutely not in any way in her plan. Now, look, I realise I could bequeath to you my beloved Hermes bronzer that I'm still using. And weirdly, by the way, can I just say, can you still see the imprint? I digress. I'm just saying that's quite something, because we know we don't get that with Dior, for example. Anyway, but I could bequeath this to you, and then it's up to you who you leave it to. The difference is this is an object. It's not somebody's image. So I think that's what it is. It's the fact that it's someone's image that is being... It's not it's being exploited, but it's being marketed. And there's money to be made, and that's fine. But she didn't get a say. And that, for me, is what the problem is. So that's basically what my problem is. The range looks lovely. It's just that somebody's image is being financed and being used for commercial use without her say so. It's not a collaboration from beyond the grave. It's really not. I just want to say one thing. I'm currently wearing the Dior glass lipstick. I don't know what the shade is because I can't see, and I'm going to squint, and I'll write it here. But can I just say, this is doing it. This is doing the thing that... This is why I don't like this lipstick. It does that thing where it forms a white line. It's done it a couple of times in this video. It does this all the time. I'm gutted because I love the shade. I've just rubbed it off and then reapplied it. But it's problematic. It really is. I should probably save that for another video. But I'm just saying, it's annoying because the shade I really, really love. Anyway, on to the next one. There are two eyeshadow palettes that I happily walked away from in one instance. And in the other, I feel bad. And I kind of feel that my resolve, having been stiffened, will end up getting softened. Yeah, I don't know. Does that happen? Is your resolve one of those things that can only be stiffened as opposed to softened? I don't know. This probably isn't the place to decide that. But anyway, my point is that with the second eyeshadow palette, I feel there may be a moment when I just think, I'm going to go for it if the discount's big enough. So the first one is the Gucci, the new Gucci palette, which I looked at. And my initial thought was, I've got to buy this. It's beautiful. And then I realised I thought it was beautiful because the actual packaging, the component is absolutely beautiful. I think Gucci makes the most desirable products from a packaging point of view out there. But when I looked at the eyeshadow colours, I just kind of thought, I've seen this before. It's not very interesting. My previous forays into Gucci eyeshadows have not been successful. I think Gucci's lipsticks are the most divine things. And so that's what I look for. And that's what I get excited by. So for example, They Met in Argentina is my all-time favourite Gucci shades, even though I've now got an awful lot. I'm looking at them over there. I've now got an awful lot of them. And also, what a romantic name. You know, just makes me think I'm going to meet somebody divine called Jorge and we're going to be dancing the tango for four hours or five hours. This is my fantasy. In my fantasy, I'm a really good tango dancer. Anyway, and we do all of that. And then late at night, we share a steak or something. I mean, it can't be the other way around because the amount I eat, you know, I don't think tangoing involves rolling around the floor going, oh, I've overeaten. You know, you've got to be kind of lithe and sexy, haven't you, to be able to do that. Bending over backwards thing and the, you know, holding the flower between your teeth or whatever. But anyway, my point is, I said no because the actual shades, I just thought, pretty unexciting. Didn't really do anything for me. The other one is the YSL 9 Pan Palette, which in a previous video, quite a few of you were kind enough to write and to encourage me saying, it's worth buying. I've had immense success with it. The formulas are lovely. It's just a lovely, lovely palette. And here's the thing. I was just on the point of buying it when Natasha Denona announced that she was coming out with her Tan Palette and I thought to myself, I'm only going to buy one palette this month and it's got to be the Natasha Palette because I know those formulae for me are always, you know, they're always a slam dunk. They always work really well, regardless of whether I like the shades or not. The formulas never let me down, actually on my eyelids, you know. So I went for that. However, the YSL does still seem a little bit like it's the one that might have gone away. So if there is a cheeky discount that's big enough and it's in a sort of a more kind of Mojave Desert state in the eyeshadow sort of release moment, then there could be a couple of weeks, couldn't there? That's what we're dealing with now. We just have to wait a couple of weeks and that's counted as like a really long period. But anyway, I may yet go down that route. But for the moment, Natasha's Tan Palette is pressing all the buttons, hitting it out the park and any other idiom that I can think of. And I can't think of any more, otherwise I would do another one. But anyway, my point is, that's why I said no to Gucci, even though it looks mouthwatering, doesn't it? And I like to think that if I wore it, Jorge might compliment me on my eyeshadows. I know I'm very, very easily seduced. And I'm also, just for the record, a very cheap date. I am so cheap, yeah. Anyway, there does come a point where, you know, I've got to understand my market and I'm in the cheap market at the moment. But it's working out fine, it's okay. Anyway, that's what you need to know. They're the two palettes that I said no to. One, I'm kind of still, you know, winking at across the dance floor. If you're enjoying the video so far, do give me a thumbs up. It really, really helps my channel more than I can express. And if you're not already subscribed, do consider it. I give women a thoughtful and critical perspective on beauty and lifestyle with intelligence and humour. So hit subscribe so you don't miss any forthcoming videos. I review all sorts of new beauty products. We talk about skincare a lot. And there's always the ever-popular new releases video. So hit subscribe and join us for the fun. Saying no to Patrick Tarr's transition blush, notwithstanding the whole debacle over it, was actually quite easy because I like a blush. That's what I like. I like a blush. I don't need to sort of complicate it for myself. And also, to be honest, like a lot of people, I've got an awful lot of blushes. So if I want to do something a bit creative, not that I ever do. But if I do, and actually that's not true, occasionally I do do a little bit of layering, you know, and I kind of feel quite professional when I do that. That's basically the extent to which I fiddle about and I'm creative with blush. Otherwise, I like a nice pan or a nice fat, not thin, stick and I can do my thing, you know? So there's that. I think also there's something larger going on because with Patrick Tarr, I don't see the brand as something, again, that I'm that interested in. I really, really love the eyeshadow duos. I'm a big fan of those. I don't find them fall-outy, which I know a lot of people do. I love the glow and the glitz and the glitter that I get and the smoothness. There's a lot to love and I kind of do pull them out of the drawer occasionally and sort of rotate them. It's something that I kind of think about and enjoy reusing. But as a brand, I'm really not that interested in Patrick Tarr. I'm not quite sure what that's about. Another brand that's like that is Chantecaille. With Chantecaille, I've enjoyed a couple of the single eyeshadows but they are horrifically expensive. I mean, they really are and both of them I have bought on a hefty discount but I do believe that as a brand, it's just very expensive and I think that matters when you're... It matters anyway and I think it matters certainly when you're buying quite a bit of makeup because are you really getting something so much better over and above anything else to be paying such an inflated price? So that's kind of how I see Chantecaille. So for example, the new Chantecaille bronzer which again, very easily I can say no to. I've got lots of bronzers I'm interested in. I certainly don't need to be paying those kind of prices and I also feel with two very fair shades, I don't feel a brand should be rewarded for not entering the 21st century frankly in the inclusivity department. So there is that. I mean, I do think that and I think Chantecaille also has form for this as well. So yeah, there is that. So I'm saying no to the bronzer not just for that reason. I mean, bronzer, I don't need so many. It's not quite as bad as the highlighter situation. I do like quite a few bronzers because I use them whereas with highlighters, I'm a very occasional user and I love my Prada highlighter and I'm done kind of thing and my Hourglass. But again, Chantecaille is one of those brands which leads me onto the next and I think I need some help from you because this is the Violette FR, the whole range. I've got the blurring lip balms which I enjoy. They go a bit patchy on me. There's that and I think I'm not really into that whole blurring thing. I think it's because I had very early cataracts. So blurring for me is not a romantic thing to aspire to. It really sort of, for me, it's got connotations of tripping over the bottom stair and realising I need to go and see an eye surgeon. So there is that with the whole blurring thing but also I looked at the blushes and I actually looked at them in store I was in Paris actually a few days ago and I looked at the blushes and I also looked at the single eyeshadows and I was a bit uninspired. The eyeshadows didn't seem as pigmented as I would like for one and done because I do like a one and done but it needs to have impact, you know? I don't want it too subtle. And the blushes, I couldn't find a shade I was excited by. I have watched reviews. The shade thing, I just kept sort of stumbling on and then when I was there in person, again, I just, I was a bit uninspired. However, if you have tried one of these products and been wowed, let me know and I might have to go and have a look again particularly on the blushes, you know? Because the thing about eyeshadows is there's an awful lot of good eyeshadows out there in the single department. There really are. But with the blushes, if you really are going to say to me it's one of the best blushes you've used, I may listen and I may wait for a cheeky discount and it can go in the same basket as the YSL and Violette and Yves Saint Laurent can have a moment while I'm putting in my credit card details. I know, it's so romantic. I know, I'm basically a matchmaker at this point, yeah. And finally, at the risk of the theme of this video being all about highlighters, I'm ending on a highlighter, but not because of the product but it is the product's name and it is, of course, Marc Jacobs' Money Shot. I don't understand why this product has been reviewed as much as it has been reviewed because honestly, I think most of the range should have been given a wide berth and I count myself in there as well because I think actually what happened was I was interested in the singles and if I didn't have a channel I'd have bought the three eyeshadow singles that I was interested in and that I did indeed buy and I wouldn't have bought much else. I think that's the truth of it but I did want to review one item from most of the range but I drew the line at Money Shot because I don't want to be in anybody's Money Shot as I think I said in my review and I think most of us don't want to be in somebody else's Money Shot unless it's our choice, a bit like Marilyn. So here's the thing, it seems to me that we are with this particular brand and it does happen as we've said before with NARS, we have said it with sort of other ranges that kind of skirt along that because it gets a little bit of a headline in a marketing point of view and in a social media point of view but it seems to me that I just don't think we need to allow ourselves to be subjected to this kind of aggressive sexualization and then pay for the privilege by buying the product. I am baffled how more people aren't talking about this. I really am. I remain baffled of London, United Kingdom. I really do because it's a big deal, you know? These are, this is aggressive behavior. It really is and by the fact that we sort of ignore it, it becomes, it's permission. It's de facto permission. It's not okay. It really is and I count myself in this as well because I regret very much actually buying as much as I did because I wanted to show that and actually I was genuinely curious because I had enjoyed some of the items when some of the products in the first incarnation of Marc Jacobs and I know that was a very different beast but frankly I was a very different beast 10 years ago so I'm not expecting anything. My lipstick's doing the same thing again. I'm not, I'm not, I wasn't expecting anything of it. I'm just saying that, you know, I was interested. I was but it seems to me that this is the office equivalent and I don't know whether this has happened to you. It happened to me a couple of times and the most significant, not the most significant but the one that really stays in my memory was kind of mid-90s when I was quite young and I was probably, well, I was in fact the most junior person in the room. There was basically, I was in an office of maybe 25 men. There were three women and I was the new recruit so I was the most junior of the women and certainly the most junior person in the, you know, in the office and a senior manager, a really very senior manager, he was basically in his mid-40s, told a very crude joke about a celebrity at the time and all the men roared with laughter. Of course they did because let's laugh at the female. The other two women also laughed. I'm not in a position to tell you why they laughed and I didn't laugh. I mean, I didn't laugh because it wasn't funny, not because I don't enjoy a dirty joke occasionally depending on the context. So then said manager singles me out and says, why are you not laughing? And I said, words to the effect of because it fails the basic test of a joke which is I didn't find it funny. He then calls me a humorless bitch. I don't know whether you can say that. I might have to bleep that out. Forgive me if there's a bleep, I don't know. Anyway, and thereafter for the next two years did not refer to me by name and only ever referred to me as HB. So I had initials and everybody knew what that stood for. So it kind of reminds me of this, which is if we speak up and if we sort of say what's going on, then it's kind of like we're not joining in the fun joke. You know, somehow we're a bit humorless. We're a bit po-faced, you know? And I think we can all agree. The one thing that we are not is humorless. We enjoy having a little giggle and a little laugh. And why not? That gets us all through life because life's hard. But here's the thing. There's so much talk, isn't there? Of the younger generation being quote, unquote, maybe woke or whatever word you choose, just worrying about people's feelings as if that's a bad thing. That's actually a good thing. It's not a bad thing, you know, in proportion. I don't think that's a bad thing at all. Where are those people in that room, in Marc Jacobs Beauty, in Coty? Where are those people? They're obviously not speaking up, which makes me think they're either not speaking up because it doesn't matter to them. That's depressing. Or they're not speaking up because it's quite hard to speak up if everybody's laughing at the joke and thinks it's great. And that's equally depressing, it seems to me. So I don't know what I have to say about that other than the fact that it's really depressing. And it's probably for that reason, lots of people my age, lots of women my age, kind of get a bit depressed and think we've gone backwards because, you know, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, you would have probably put your hand up and said, I just don't think that's funny. You wouldn't have got promoted afterwards, maybe, potentially, but you would have been able to recognise that that was not okay. So I don't know what that means, generally. I mean, the thing that did occur to me is, and people wonder why there's a male loneliness epidemic. Give us something to work with, guys, you know? Give us some decent conversation. Don't make us feel like this. That's why I didn't buy it. I've regretted the other bits that I bought because they've all got porny names, or most of them have got some kind of overt reference or some crappy pun. OPI is what springs to mind. OPI has made it their brand to have witty names. Sometimes they're a bit risque. They're always funny. They're always witty. They're always interesting. And I'll tell you what I did, is I just went through some of my favourite shades in OPI. Listen to this. We've got, I'm not really a waitress. That's Hula Rios, because I think that was their, wasn't that their Hawaii range? Anyway, Teal The Cows Come Home, a great fit. They are happy to make puns that are funny and joyful and in keeping with their theme. That's not what's going on here with Marc Jacobs. There's a bit of hatred in there. There's misogyny in there, and that is not okay. And on that note, I will conclude my nopes for the month. What are your nopes? Do we share any? Is there any overlap with my ones? Or indeed, are there products that perhaps maybe I've bought and enjoyed and you definitely walked away from and were absolutely not interested? Do let me know in the comments down below. Please like this video and do subscribe if you haven't already. And I will see you in the next video. Bye.