Being all the rage right now, Korean road shop brands have been entering major retailers like Ulta and Sephora, they are also opening new stores in New York like mushrooms (well, to be frank lots of them were closing off like mushroom as well).
Last spring, the Saem opened their store at the busy corner of Canal and Center street. Since it's right off the subway station and past my favorite Chinatown bakery (5 pork buns for 3.5 bucks, yo). I walked by the store many times and finally stepped in when they ran a buy one get one free promotion.
The first products caught my eyes were the Colorwear Lip Fluid, concentrated gloss in a lipstick-shaped tube.
The gloss has an artificial fruit scent, thick gel consistency, medium pigmentation and comes with a cushy applicator.
I picked 02 Lady Again (got pink with a slight warm lean) and Hot Cocoa (brownish red that looks much redder on my mouth). The formula is thick enough to fill line but not sticky. Color wise they don't look obviously plasticy or cheap, but it certainly doesn't look mid-high end either.
I am not saying I want a 6 dollar (this is their discounted price) gloss to look a million buck but (back in the good old days 2010-2012) you could find "expensive looking" shades from Maybelline, Revlon and L'Oreal.
Cute tubes
Lady Again - I like that it's a hot pink that stays hot pink (not turning magenta).
Hot Cocoa - For a deep (ish) shade, it's very even easy to apply with no streak. On the lips they also stays for 2 hours or more before I need to drink. When it dries down it remains balmy and soft. The quality of these are good for drugstore and they are very comparable to Maybelline Color Elixir lip lacquer and NYX butter lip gloss (NYX makes better colors).
They are great toys at 5-6 bucks but I would never pay the marked up US retail for them.
Saemmul (a cutsy name for the Saem?) Honey Essence is this adorable honey scented lip essence. Both the scent and sweet taste are a bit overpowering and artificial, much worse than the Bonnie Bell stuff I wore back in middle school.
The applicator is a flimsy plastic (not silicone ones Japanese drugstore brand uses)
The texture is very watery and thin that all it does is dampen the lips (then evaporate). Even at the half off price of $5, this is garbage.
For a few bucks, their makeup are OK. It's pretty much the same quality as American drugstore brands but with slightly more interesting colors.
Those revlon cushion lip tints came out in Australia. I was looking forward to them. However all the shades are terrible- so white and purple milked based, not a single shade looked good. You know those icing sugar shades you put on a cake? Well that's what it looks like. Seriously I wish drugstore brands bring back those liquid lip gloss? Remember the maybelline color elixir gloss? Or the loreal color Roche extraordinaire gloss not long ago? Those were the bomb until they discontinued it for the matte trend. I literally yawn when I'm browsing the drugstore makeup aisle these days. I'm still on a MAC craze, I've even bought some of their skincare which is suprisingly good, because estee lauder owns mac,probably same formula. I've figured a way to make mac studio fix fluid foundation work-i mix it with a tiny bit of mac face n body foundation. The good thing about mac is they have heaps of options so you can play around. If one mac product didn't work for you, mix it with another mac product to make it work.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if you guys have Sephora, their new lipstories lipsticks are really good in terms of colors. I saw maybelline and LOreal brought back their own range of sheer lipsticks this year but the shades are lame so i never bother.
ReplyDeleteYeah I saw those loreal shine lipsticks they're crap, very slippery and thin, even worse than revlon lip butters. Lancome do sell a liquid lacquer gloss but it's too expensive $54aud and I'm barking mad at lancome because they discontinued dual finish powder in Australia. Now I will have to order online from Nordstrom but that will cost crazy expensive $$$ shipping. I'm currently using Clinique Almost Powder makeup as a replacement but the shades are crap, too pink, but it is a really good powder with sunscreen protection, it has 13% titanium dioxide and a little bit of octinoxate.
ReplyDeleteOh no...I just bought two LOreal Colour riche shine lipstickd yesterday. Our temperature and humidity finally dropped so I was able to wear sunscreen and powder (I use a cheap one from Shiseido Integrate), I tried clinique and liked it but so many powder at hand already!
DeleteWhat shade you use in the clinique almost powder makeup makeup? I use 04 neutral which is ok but I wished it was more yellow. 03 light works too but is a bit light and pink. 02 was way too pale. I think I like clinique more than lancome dual finish powder. The clinique one has sunscreen in it which offers more protection on top of my own sunscreen. Yeah my love affair with lancome is kinda over now that they discontinued dual finish powder in Australia. Honestly outside the US, lancome is shit. The shade and product range outside US is limited and even worse in Asia. We lucky we got the 40 shades of lancome foundation here in Australia but that's it, everything else available in aus is crap.
ReplyDeleteI dont own any but buff beige seems to be a good match for me (when I tested at counter). It cosmetics cc cream just added a shade between fair and light and I am so happy! Still gotta wait for a sale to buy though.
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