To be honest, I thought I wouldn’t shop that much.
It was an insane assumption, given that I was flying to the US, otherwise known as the land of great polish, but I really really thought I’d be able to exercise some control.
I was wrong.
We arrived at Peter’s apartment (our home during our first two weeks in New York) and a few polishes were already waiting for me.
L.A. Sunrise, which I won on Ebay weeks before the trip.
My longtime lemming MAC Dry Martini, also won on Ebay.
Chanel Feu De Russie (yes, isn’t she lovely?), also won on Ebay.
Peter surprised me with a couple of polishes from Urban Outfitters too.
And here’s MAC Beyond Jealous, which has also been on my wishlist for ages, which I received from a very sweet lady from MakeupAlley.
For the first few days of my trip, I didn’t buy a single bottle of polish. It was kind of crazy.
There was no lack of polish. The Duane Reade branch which was just a couple of blocks from Peter’s place carried OPI, Essie, Sally Hansen, Wet N Wild, a ton of other drugstore polishes, even those Nox Twilight bottles. CVS, Walgreens and all these other stores that sold the same brands were everywhere. There were branches of Sephora left and right. I would go in, look at bottles, but I didn’t feel like buying any of them.
“You’ll be ashamed of me,” I think I wrote to Miss Bun in the postcard I sent her.
But then the shopping started.
We went to Macy’s on Herald Square and there I reserved bottles of Sly As A Fox and Style Clan which were going to be released the next day. I signed a form, gave them my credit card info and told them I’ll be back to pick up the bottles.
That’s a shot of my arm at the MAC counter, checking out the Tartan collection. And yes, I was wearing two watches. And yes, I’m crazy, I know.
A couple of days after, Jill and I went to Rescue Beauty Lounge where I bought The Real Housewives of Tudor Collection, but you already know about that.
Here’s where it gets funny.
Aside from the visit to Rescue Beauty Lounge, I never made concrete plans to go polish shopping. My approach was totally laidback. There was no, “Oh my god, we have to go here and here and here and buy this and this and this.” It was more like, “Oh hey, Sephora, can I go in for a sec?”
So here’s the awesome part. Despite making zero plans, all the different kinds of polish shopping you read about on MakeupAlley? CCOs, Beauty Supply stores, surprise bargains at Ross? I got to enjoy all of them.
It’s magic, magic, I tell you.
First, CCOs. I’ve been reading about CCOs – mostly from girls showing off their MAC hauls on MUA, their blogs and YouTube. A little Googling told me that some big outlets in the US have The Cosmetics Company Store branches that sell makeup at a lower price. The idea of visiting a CCO was exciting to me because of the prospect of finding old MAC colors that have been on my wishlist and that are no longer available at the regular counters and stores. But I didn’t think we’d be able to go since hitting the outlets weren’t really in our list of priorities during the trip.
But one day, Ver said, “Hey, we’re going to Woodbury on Saturday.”
And I thought, okay, cool, even though I had no idea what Woodbury was. It turned out that Woodbury was Woodbury Common Premium Outlets and it turned out that there was a CCO there.
I found the MAC polishes on a bottom shelf against the wall. Prices ranged from $7.75 to $8.50 which is pretty cool, considering MAC polishes go for $12 or $13.
Here’s my CCO haul.
Hello, babies.
From left: Cool Reserve, Peaceable, For Fun, Metalist, Naturally Rich, Demi Blanc, Rich Dark Delicious
And then, one really cold day, Jill and I set out to go to Fedex in Maspeth to pick up my Kindle replacement. It was a long trip that involved subway and bus rides and while waiting for our bus, I looked up and saw this sign:
Holy crap, a beauty supply store! And I wasn’t even looking for one.
I was dying to go in but our bus was coming. Jill told me to run in for a minute.
Inside, I found two Asian guys manning the place and rows and rows and rows of nail products.
Don’t let the unimpressive store facade fool you. This place is polish heaven.
I saw aisles filled with bottles of China Glaze and OPI. Sadly, I had no time to even look.
But I had time to grab bottles of Seche Vite top coat (one for me and one for Tatin) and a bottle of Restore before running out to catch my bus. The best part? They were only $5 each.
So freaking awesome. Sadly, our route back to Peter’s place did not take us by that beauty supply store again.
But that was okay because I found other places to keep me busy.
Like Sephora.
I cannot count the number of Sephora stores I visited. There were a lot.
Although strangely, even though I kept looking at the nail polish they had available, I didn’t buy a lot of things for my polish collection there.
Just a bottle of Nars Bad Influence.
That’s me checking out the Nars display at Sephora.
And my hand holding Bad Influence.
And here’s the beauty that is Nars Bad Influence.
I bought Nars Pokerface at Henri Bendel on Fifth Avenue.
The Henri Bendel girl tried to sell me bottles from the vintage collection but I said I already own all of them. She looked at me like I was crazy.
I am, lady, I am.
I found adorable candy-scented Nerds and Runts and Pixy Stix polish collections at FAO Schwarz.
I bought them not knowing that I could buy the very same collections from TJ Maxx and Ross in California at a much lower price.
Still, I have no regrets.
I love Nerds, I love nail polish, I love Nerds nail polish.
I have drooled over StrangeBeautiful’s fantastic shades for a long time and I hate that I couldn’t find Libraries 1 to 3 anywhere. Jill and I went to Anthropologie at Chelsea Market one day and I started scouring the place for signs of StrangeBeautiful because I remembered seeing StrangeBeautiful exclusive creations for Anthropologie online. But there was no sign of StrangeBeautiful anywhere in the store. I struck gold at another Anthropologie store and asked Jill and Peter to help me pick out which duo to get.
I’m so glad they picked this one. This is called Aged chartreuse and The gradation of color on the fur of a taxidermy caribou head. I’m not kidding.
The packaging makes it look like it’s going to be hard to use. We’ll see.
I just think it’s really pretty in a pretty-ugly-ugly-pretty kind of way.
Despite not being a glitter girl, I love Deborah Lippmann’s chunky glitter and I’ve made it my mission to own them all.
So one day before dinner, Jill and I went to Barneys to pick up a couple of them. Across the Universe and Bad Romance.
Chunks have never been this sexy.
I’m a little late to the party but I don’t care. I can’t wait to wear these two.
I bought Dior Vernis in Czarina Gold from Saks Fifth Ave.
I searched for Nailtini in Duane Reade after Duane Reade branch until a girl finally explained to me that there’s a difference between a regular Duane Reade drugstore and a Duane Reade Look Boutique. The second one has a kick-ass beauty department – and that’s where I’d find Nailtini.
I finally found You Call It, the Mad Men-inspired set I had been searching for, at the Duane Reade Look Boutique near Lombardi’s on Spring Street.
And here’s the super sweet thing – Peter used his Duane Reade rewards card to get me $5 off my purchase.
So awesome.
That blue one is just incredible.
And yeah, I bought a few bottles from H&M too!
And there was the YSL Beautiful Day duo that Jill surprised me with.
Remember how we went to Macy’s in Herald Square early on in our trip to reserve the two shades from the MAC A Tartan Tale collection?
We went back to Macy’s over a week later to claim the bottles. But the pretty boy in MAC told me he couldn’t find it. He went through boxes and boxes of reserved goodies but not a single bag was for me.
He was apologetic, he said he’d ask his superior, and I said, can’t I just buy them now?
And that’s exactly what I did.
These two colors didn’t get a lot of love from polish fanatics but I don’t care because I love them. In fact, I have Style Clan on my hands and Sly As A Fox on my feet right now.
We spent a weekend in Philadelphia and Joel and Ver took us to South Street to check out the shops. I found an awesome shop run by an Asian lady selling many different colors of Manic Panic hair dye and I bought two kinds of purple. Just a few doors away, there was another awesome shop selling many different colors of Manic Panic hair dye, this time run by an Asian couple. And they had something the other awesome shop didn’t have – a small box of Manic Panic nail polish.
“How much is this?” I asked.
The lady thought for a while. “Hmm, dollar twenty-five?”
Cheaper than I expected. Awesome.
I wanted to get bottles for friends but unfortunately, the one I had grabbed was the only decent bottle left in the box. All the others were seriously dried up.
Since we decided not to push through with our trip to Atlantic City, we went for cheesesteaks (both Pat’s and Geno’s – Pat’s was better) and then Joel and Ver took us to Franklin Mills, another outlet.
There was a CCO there too and when I saw how many MAC polishes they had, I went kind of crazy.
Okay, really crazy.
From left: Perplexing, Varicose Violet, Dance All Night, Black Enough?
From left: Asiatique, Mercenary, Studded, Gee Whiz
From left: Violet Fire, Silverstruck, $$$$$ Yes, Wham Bam Glam
And here are all of them together:
I knew I had already done some pretty crazy shopping so I said I’ll slow down in California.
So I just bought this full set of Color Club Electro-Candy from Ross because it was such a great deal.
And I picked up a bottle of Borghese and a couple of other Color Clubs too.
And my friend Lala, who is more of a twin sister, really, because we have the same birthday and we grew up together (we even slept in the same crib as babies!), gave me a lot of goodies too when we met up on my last night in Cali. Here are some of them:
So, as you can see, I’m all shopped out. And that is why I’m going on a six-month no-buy – with the exception of Chanel, Rescue Beauty Lounge and MAC.
Wish me luck!
