Showing posts with label dilemma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dilemma. Show all posts

Thursday, 1 October 2009

Lime Crime Makeup Dilemma

I'm really torn between whether or not to buy some new makeup (not now, i have no money, but in the future) from Lime Crime makeup (http://www.limecrimemakeup.com/). Specifically this problem has come up with her new line of lipstick.
The reason i am torn is that on the plus side the colours are beautiful and, as far as i can tell, the formulas look lovely. I want nearly every single one, probably not the neon pink, red or black because i have those colours already. But all the rest are really truly unique looking and stunning.

However the downsides are really really bad.
Firstly i think that, while they look quite high quality, it's a bit much to charge $16 for a lipstick when you're only just starting in the business, Mac charge LESS than that, and they are formulated by a whole team of professional make-up artists with years of experience, not just some girl who has decided to try her hand at it.

But the main reason is simple. She has pesonally insulted me and my family in the past.
I don't know if anyone remembers, but Lime Crime used to be a fashion line, ultimately it didn't work out which is why Xenia has now moved on to makeup. My Mum bought a dress from her and when it arrived we were shocked to find it was hemmed with Gaffa tape (Duct tape) but we still left good feedback and so on because we don't like to make a fuss.
Anyway a while down the line a friend saw this dress and decided to take photos and post them on an internet forum dedicated to bad DIY fashion. Now this wasn't kind or anything, but fair enough, it was bad DIY and my friend didn't otherwise slag her off. I didn't know she had done it until after the fact.
Anyway Xenia commented on the post defending herself, which was fair enough, but said (i'm paraphrasing as she deleted her comments) 'I sold a shoddy dress. Someone bought it for $100. Who's the real asshole here?'.
So well, as you can imagine i was furious. Even if she weren't actually calling my mother an 'asshole' it's terrible to say that to anyone. She was basically saying 'theres nothing wrong with me selling crap merchandise because people will be gullible enough to buy it'.
After i got angry and told her off for being rude she sent me a long email basically about how hard her life was at that point but not apologising or offering any real excuse. I found it very irritating as she just used to whole thing to try and get pity for herself.

Even if this hadn't been directed at my family, i would have been extremely put off. And so now really i'm dubious of the quality of anything she might make in the future. This has been bolstered by several bad reviews of her eye dusts on youtube. Apparently she sent larger pots of product to several gurus for free and gots lots of good reviews, but the actual product you buy is tiny. I've also heard that the pigmentation is not actually that great, and that a lot of it (or indeed all of it) is just bought from other mineral makeup websites, repackaged and sold for about 10x the original amount, if not more.

While i've loved the look of her eye dusts and so on since they came out, I've never been tempted to buy before. For one thing you can get a lot of good dupes (or indeed exactly the same pigments) from a lot of cheaper comapanies on the net. But Lipsticks are my ultimate passion, i love having every shade of lipstick and i really really would love these if they came from anyone else.

So i guess this comes down to whether or not i can forget about my personal problems with her and just enjoy what does look like a really good product.
If she had just apologised once, even if she didn't mean it and was just doing it to save her face, then i would have forgotten this long ago and probably would have rushed out and bought anything from her without a second thought. I don't like to give money to companies with ethics i dislike, and while her company seems ethically fine and i don't know her well, she could be a lovely person, i just don't know if i can fund someone who's called my mum an asshole :(