A couple of weeks ago Claire and I took a trip to Westfields which at the moment is my favourite place to go shopping. It really reminds me of a peoper huge American mall, has tonnes of shops I really like and it's really spacious and airy so it never seems too crowded (which means I feel less anxious).
I didn't do very interesting makeup as I wanted to get out the house quickly.
Claire wanted to take a picture of my (not particularly interesting) outfit but as we went out to the garden I realised that the burly polish builders working on the house next door (who constantly play really loud Europop from the nineties) were watching us, which explains my expression (I hope).
Our first stop is always at Butlers Chocolate Cafe because it is AMAZING! It does the worlds best hot chocolate and you get a free fancy truffle with every drink.
Drinking a delicious chocolate milkshake and wearing my fake Jeremy Scott sunglasses ( I wanted the real ones but these were £6).
Claire likes her Chai tea.
We shopped for a while and then had lunch. The food court is great, it has loads of choice and healthier items. I got falafel and hummous and Claire had a huge vegetable burrito.
Westfields is absolutely great for a makeup fiend like me. There's regular shops like Superdrug and Boots then higher end brands like Makeup Store, Mac and Inglot (I think it's the only Inglot shop in the UK, but I may be wrong) and Debenhams which has various brands like Chanel, Dior, Urban Decay etc.There's also an OPI shop (which I think is the only place in the UK to get Nicole by OPI polishes), some kind of mineral makeup place and Kiko (which is a great shop with bargain prices and fun colours but seems to always playing really horrible loud club music). There's also Beauty Base which is..odd. Beauty base is like a big discount
perfume place (though some of the discounts are only 5p off RRP) and
then it has some high end makeup brands like Shiseido (which seemed to have no discount) and also really cheap, obscure brands. You can get L.A. Colors there which is great because everythings under £5. And finally (I think, I may have forgotten some shops) a Models Own shop has just opened.
The shop looks cool because it's in the shape of a nail polish bottle!
My experience of the shop however wasn't that great. The staff seemed very nice and friendly but there were a group of about 5 SAs standing in a big group chatting to each other. This meant there were bits of the shop I couldn't access and they continued their conversation even when I was paying for my goods which is a real pet peeve of mine. The stock seemed a little odd, they had hundreds of the nail polishes but they seemed to be arranged by colour, while this might usually be helpful it means if you want something from their collections (I wanted some Beetlejuice colours) you have to go hunting for them all individually. And there were about 4 sections, all of which had the nail polish in a slightly different order (some colours were on all sections, some were only on 1 etc). Models Own has a huge variety of products but the shop only had certain products. Finally the check out system is just weird. Instead of scanning barcodes the SAs are all equipped with tablet computers and have to manually search for the colour you're buying, it seems really inefficient, especially as it took took of them (one to call out the name of the product and the other to find it on the tablet)
On the plus side however you can make your own little gift box of 6 polishes for £20 (on the website you can only get premade selections)
Those are (rather terrible) swatches of the new Models Own Matt Brite lipsticks. from top to bottom:
Flaming Red, Annalise's Pink, Pink Hawaiian and Orangeade.
Then an amazing thing happened, I was in Topshop looking at some glittery brogues when I heard a call of 'Lillian?' and turned to discover
Robyn, my fellow
Makeup Hero, looking at the same shoes! :D
Topshop wouldn't let us take a photo inside for some reason (they also wouldn't let Claire come in the changing rooms with me which sucked because I wanted her opinion on a dress I was trying) but we took one outside. Robyn is just as beautiful in real life as in her blog and a super funny awesome fellow!
We ended up both buying the aforementioned shoes. Oooh friend, shoe friend!
All in all a good day was had.
My nail polish (and one lipstick) haul is under the cut. I got a few other bits too (mostly tights) but I haven't taken photos of them yet.
