Category: Lumene

Great drugstore finds

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As the interview with Aunt Beep for ThisNext showed, I’m an inveterate roamer at CVS, particularly its cosmetics aisles, which not only have the usual mass-market brands, but also Lumene, a cosmetics brand from Finland exclusive to CVS and the French skin care brands Avene and LaRoche-Posay.

Here are some drugstore finds that I’d like to share with my readers:

Maybelline Dream Mousse Shadows in Rose Kiss and Black Spice from their limited edition Sugar and Spice collection for Valentine’s Day (the collection even featured nail polish with heart-shaped sparkles!) . Rose Kiss is a beatiful shade for the lid, while Black Spice is great for the outer corner of the eye for the class smoky eye look. If only Maybelline would add these shades to its regular collection!

L’Oreal has now added liquid bronzer to its popular True Match™ collection of foundations, powders, concealers, and blushes designed to flatter a wide variety of skin tones. I am very fond of True Match™ liquid makeup in N3 – see my review at ThisNext, so I picked up the liquid bronzer in N1-2-3. This liquid bronzer may be blended with your foundation or be used alone.

UPDATE: The May 2007 of Lucky has a good tip: apply liquid bronzer before foundation to even skin tones. It worked for my skin, which has a tendency towards ruddiness


Physicians Formula Mineral Wear™ Talc-Free Mineral Eye Shadow Quad

Finally, Physicians Formula has released six different talc-free Mineral Eye Shadow Quads, all in beautiful shades. My complaint is about the packaging – you have to flip the compact over to use the mirror, so it’s a clumsy way of applying the eyesahdow.

You can find Maybelline, L’Oreal, and Physicians Formula at major drugstores, mass-market retailers, supermarkets, and drugstore.com. Lumene is exclusive to CVS, and you can also find Avene and LaRoche-Posay at select CVS stores. Stores carrying Vital Radiance are now trying clear their inventory, so now is the time to snap up these products (which were good, although the line was badly marketed) at the right price – I was fond of Vital Radiance’s Smoothing Eye Primer mousse, so I bought two at half-price. Paula’s Choice may be purchased through the web site for Paula Begoun.

UPDATE: I have since found out that drugstore.com and Amazon.com carry a wide variety of Vital Radiance products.

What’s New in Beauty – May 12, 2005: Yue-Sai, Costco, Webby Awards, cosmetic buying trends

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China’s Yue-Sai goes global: L’Oreal will launch Yue-Sai, the Chinese cosmetics brand, first in Asia and then in Europe and North America. Yue-Sai was founded by Chinese-American TV presenter Yue-Sai Kan. L’Oreal acquired Yue-Sai from the Lancaster Group in January 2004.

Costco developing its own cosmetics brand – Costco, the Seattle-based wholesale buyers’ club that can supply you from cradle to grave, is developing its own cosmetics brand in partnership with Borghese. The Style Page has previously written on cosmetics brands exclusive to a store chain: IsaDora (Walgreen’s), Lumene (CVS), Per Una (UK’s Marks & Spencer), No 7 (UK’s Boots), and good skin, American Beauty, and Flirt! (Kohl’s).

The Webby Award winners have been announced: in the Beauty and Cosmetics category, the winner was comeclean.com, a web site for method‘s holiday gift set. Its gimmick was providing a place to read confessions and post confessions to “come clean.” The People’s Choice winner was the Mary Kay personal consultant site – no surprise there.

Finally, the article Specialty format steals department store beauty dollar from Cosmeticsdesign.com discusses how specialty and discount stores are taking market share for cosmetics purchases from traditional department stores. The merger of the major U.S. department store chains – Federated (Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s) and May (Lord & Taylor, Robinson’s-May, Hecht’s, Famous-Barr, etc.) will result in fewer consumer choices among department stores.

The Style Page notes that one challenge is that salespeople at department stores represent and work on behalf of a particular cosmetics brand. If department stores and their suppliers (notably Estee Lauder Companies) want to win back market share, they should scrap the current system in favor of salespeople/advisors who can advise on several brands and provide central checkouts for cosmetics purchases.

Update: Soon after I published this post, I found that Shoppers Drug Mart, a drugstore chain in Canada, is negotiating with Estee Lauder Companies to distribute various Estee Lauder brands through their stores. More evidence about the change in buyers’ habits.

Walgreen’s IsaDora, CVS’s Lumene

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I live in the Mid-Atlantic States, where the dominant drugstore chain is CVS. I visited Walgreen’s while I was in St. Louis, and checked out the IsaDora cosmetics line, which is carried exclusively at Walgreen’s. There’s a growing trend for chain stores to carry lines exclusive to that chain. While IsaDora, a cosmetics line from Sweden, is exclusive to Walgreen’s, Lumene, a cosmetics line from Finland, is exclusive to CVS. (Interestingly, I found eyeliner pencils from CVS’s Essence of Beauty line at Big Lots!)

I found IsaDora unappealing and dated in its displays featuring overly made-up models and its packaging. Lumene, on the other hand, strives for an image of Nordic freshness and coolness through its use of cool blonde Nordic models and dark blue packaging (think Noxzema or Nivea).

The Style Page has tried Lumene’s Vitamin+ Energy Cocktail serum, a two-phase formula that needs to be shaken for application, and it does impart a nice glow to the skin. It also likes Lumene’s Delight Solo eyeshadow in Never Alone (a subdued pink) from its Skin Couture collection.