I'm Going to do a little Naming and Shaming today...

Possible subtitles include "I got my makeup done at Dior so you don't have to", or "No, crazy lady, I will not be coming back to purchase what is no doubt an absurdly expensive amount of cosmetics..." But those are kind of wordy.

 Today - or yesterday now, as you're reading this - I went to the mall. I've talked a lot about this regimen my dermatologist has me on, and when I frantically emailed him back and said that it made the wide majority of my makeup burn like fire, he responded that he'd prefer I weren't wearing makeup at all, but if I was going to, he wanted me to be wearing Clinique.

 So I kept my eyes peeled, and the Macy's Clinique counters have a free gift with purchase right now, so I happily trooped myself in to the counter to get something to get my regimen turned in the right direction. The free gift time is the best time to purchase makeup counter makeup! I got "deluxe sample" sizes of...I think it was a moisturizer, an eye cream, mascara, three eyeshadows, a blush, a lip gloss and a lipstick. All for the cost of the foundation I purchased. So my money really went a long way toward some makeup then!

 On the way in to wander the mall, I get stopped by one of the artists at Dior, who basically doesn't intend to let me pass her by. I'm going to sit in her chair, pretty much whether I like it or not. Fine, whatever. I like trying new stuff, I'll talk makeup, whatever. Let's do this.

 The first thing she does is ask to get to wash my face. Now, again - I've got a battery of prescribed skin care. I've already mentioned it by the time we get to this point in the consultation. She won't take no for an answer, and I'm visibly uncomfortable, but too nice to take my obvious out, so I let her do it.

 She uses a cleansing water, and proceeds to begin slathering me in serums - all while extolling the virtues of each, but never crystalizing why, exactly, they're different from each other. No fewer than 4 serums and 2 moisturizers later, she's very, very proud of how well moisturized I look. She keeps exclaiming over all the moisturization, and how much better it is. Actually, I point out, my being dry skinned was sort of what the dermatologist was going for (he specifically said the words "Your skin will be red and irritated. That's the point.") She shrugs me off again, with a "but this is better". Listen, I go to a University of Michigan dermatologist. I'm paying dearly for someone who knows better. If he says dry, then dry is the gig.

 One of the serums, evidently, is "correcting", which will heal "the rosacea". That I don't have. She proceeds to mention the "healing properties" of Dior makeup, and how it will heal my rosacea several more times over the visit. So she gets to foundation, and can't find a color she's super satisfied with, but tells me that she's going to go with a color that's more yellow than my skin tone (that she'd already dismissed once for being too dark!) because the yellow in the foundation will counteract the redness in my skin. Unless she's got some kooky color wheel no one else has...that's not how that works at ALL.

 So she settles on their Flash foundation, which is an airbrush foundation, like a spray. She sprays her brush, and applies the brush to my face. Weird, but fine. She asks about brows, which I say I do - and sidebar: if you don't, you should - she selects their "Universal" color, and does one brow, and shows me, before doing the other. I personally prefer my brows a little darker than that pencil was, but that's fine. She does the other brow. I didn't realize until after the fact, but she did one quite a bit heavier and bolder than she'd done the other.

 As we're sitting there, she specifically tells me that she's not going to do any sort of sales pitch, that she gets paid by the hour, and it doesn't make any particular difference to her whether I buy any makeup or not.

 She does my eyes - after asking her boss for makeup brushes because her's have been misplaced somewhere - in purples. It's cool, that's not my beef. I told her that she could play with color, it didn't matter to me. She does my eyes in purple, and again effuses over how much the purple brings out the blue in my eyes. Couple of problems - purple doesn't make my eyes look blue, it makes them look green and kind of flat. Eyeliner and mascara, and we're on to the cheeks.

 Bronzer. All bronzer. Because apparently, I can't wear any red tones.

And the four layers of serum and two layers of moisturizer that she applied and self-congratulated for the moisture it brought? Wasn't enough moisture anymore, because she applied a hydrating masque to my cheek bones, to give me "more moisture". Did I mention she's been repowdering, on the regular, this whole time? And paying strange attention to my cheekbones and neck? Cause she has. So she basically applies no blush at all, just bronzer. And masque.

 Pink lips - PINK. LIPS. And she's done. I look at my phone. This face has taken her almost 90 minutes. Oh, remember that promise that she wouldn't do any sort of sales pitch, that she gets paid by the hour, and it doesn't make any difference whether people buy makeup or not? Apparently that's not true any more, cause she gestures to the table and goes "So, how much of this will you be purchasing today?" Really? No subtlety there at all? Apparently not.

 I try politely to demure, she goes in on it again, a little less subtle this time, going "So, you said you wanted to get these products today?" No...lady. No I didn't. So I ask her to write down what she used, so that I can "think on it". She gets the paper to write it down, and gets her boss to come give me HER sales pitch. At this point, I just really, really want to go home. After a couple of shots by the boss, and even one by the perfume girl, I break free, and have to control myself from not running in the other direction. I check my face in the mirror in my car, and I'm boggled. The eyeliner is uneven, the foundation is plainly the wrong color, the line of demarcation is unbelievable (I could never really do it justice in pictures...), and the lip liner is...uneven. And I don't just have "moisture", I'm a living oil slick. And yes, I took pictures.

This is the closest I could come to doing justice to the demarcation. There's yellow, then there's no yellow.

The actual finished look;

And the eye, to her credit, does look nice. But, it's also $153 worth of product. It should look nice! No product on my nose at all. And clearly yellow.

One from a different angle, a little closer to the lip. In the above pic, the color looks a little uneven (she applied it straight from the container, which at mall counters, is a bad idea...), but she also overlined the uneven looking corner;

And so shiny!

The right side of my lower lip - left as you're looking at the picture - is inexplicably overlined. It makes the color look as if she applied it unevenly, which she actually didn't.

I came home and washed it all off. I was so upset - as you've no doubt guessed by now. It took me two rounds of my prescribed face wash, and a round of exfoliation, to get all the product she'd applied.

Then I found out a bigger problem. My eyes began to burn. BURN. B. U. R. N. With the intensity of 1,000 suns. I could barely open my eyes afterward. I tried eye drops. I actually had to take Allegra to get some relief. So after all of this, I find out that I'm also apparently allergic to something she used as well! It's a good thing I didn't drop a small fortune on all of it, right?!

The point of all this? Besides that I probably should have thrown an elbow and gone past the artist?

1)Makeup artists don't always know better than you. She told me she used to work for a major news channel in our area. She's reasonably got a lot of experience. I left with different shaped brows, she knowingly and willingly matched me incorrectly to my foundation shade, and appears to have missed putting foundation on my nose all together.

2)You should trust your instincts. I was uncomfortable from the face washing question. I should have gotten up and walked away, and didn't. It's affected the rest of my day - my eyes still burn!

3)I've wanted to be a makeup artist my entire life. It's all I've ever wanted. I remember being a kid, and wanting to do makeup one day. I'm a trained cosmetologist by education. Yet I can't get a job in the cosmetics industry for "lack of experience", but this woman got a job, no problem.

I'm a big fan of makeup. I celebrate it. I love to wear it, talk about it, talk to people wearing it. I love what it does for people. I love what it feels like to wear it. 

I was not impressed with anything at the Dior counter today. I can't stop you if you want to check it out yourself, but I don't recommend it (clearly)!

See you later - Dior free!

Later, lovelies!