It must have been love, but it's over now.

A few days ago i bought the Joie-De-Vivre Cremeblend blush. While i am really happy with the actual product, a lovely coral coloured cream, i'm becoming more and more disenamoured with the company.

My intense love for Mac started years ago, i got my first Mac lipstick (Ruby Woo) when I was about 14 and they soon became been my go-to company. While I always used drugstore brands as well, if i could afford it i've always plumped for Mac, believing them to be special, a brand i was proud to support.
Well not anymore. Recently Mac have done some things which i really take issue with. Firstly i've always been really unhappy about how in the UK we have to pay so much more for Mac than in America, for instance over here a lipstick costs £12.50 whereas if we were paying the US price it would be about £9. I'm not sure why this is, do Mac really have to import everything from the US? I can't imagine so seeing as there are so many Mac counters and stores over here, as well as the UK website, i would imagine they have their own stocks, maybe i'm wrong. Anyway if they aren't importing the products there's no proper reason for it to be so much more expensive.

Then i was really annoyed when i bought the blush recently, which is from the Mac in Lillyland collection. Over here the collection is online only, meaning there's no way to test the colours before buying (to me as well as being annoying this just seems stupid. For instance i really liked all the cremelend blushes, but decided to only get the one because i think i might have dupes for the others. Had i been able to swatch the other 3 i might have found they were different and bought more!) and i had to pay for delivery. I don't know about you, but to me £4 seems really overpriced to deliver one small blush, it meant i paid amost £20 for one blush. It arrived in a box big enough to fit 10 of them in, which is just stupid overpackaging too. I really shouldn't have got it, it was stupid of me.

But what has really left a bad taste in my mouth is there recent downsizing of products. You probably all know this but at the beginning of the year Mac changed it's pigment jars, making thm smaller, from 7.5g to 4.5g . I've also heard that Studio sculpt (and i dont know what else) has gone from being 40ml to 30ml. And you're still paying exactly the same price as you used to. Now this to me is just extremely unfair. Even if i never finished an old pot of pigment it now means i never could even if i wanted to. And while of course the size has only gone down a tiny it i'm still paying the same as i used to so i should get the same amount! It just seems really disrespectful to your customers to lower the amount of products they get but keep them paying the same price. While we may only be losing a few pennies worth of pigment, by putting less in every pot Mac will be upping it's profit margins hugely.
I understand the reasons ehind changing the jar were both aesthetic and as it uses less plastic it's better for the environment, but why not reduce the price to reflect the new size? Having less packaging means they're paying less for packaging and product, so there's no excuse not to reduce the price except profit. If they'd reduced it by as little as 50p at least it would have been a show of good faith.

Anyway, those are just my thoughts on the matter. Here are the swatches of my Joie-de-vivre blush:





it is very beautiful and i'm really looking forward to using it ut it was really overpriced and in retrospect i shouldn't have bought it all. I will of course continue to use the Mac products i have, and i do really like them and think they're great quality and i probably will buy from them in the future, but i'm going to be a lot more reticent to do so, and really check i can't get something similar elsewhere. I've never been able to wear their foundations, know to stay well clear of their nail polishes and can find dupes for a lot (if not all) of their eyeshadows and pigments, but i do really love their lipstick formula.
And sadly for the company i know a lot people are feeling the same.

(also really not part of my argument but i actually really prefer the way the old jar looks, anyone with me?)