Thursday, November 28, 2013

Giorgio Armani makeup class


Heyaalll, 

A couple of days ago, I went to a Giorgio Armani makeup class. 
It lasted for about 3 good hours, and I learned all about their newest makeup and treatment line.. 
Let's get right into it :)
Small disclaimer: You are about to read my honest opinion about the products I used and learned about.. You might not like how honest I am but I just want you to save that penny for something better I think... So here we go..






For 3 hours of class, you received a very tiny goody bag, with just 4 samples: a matte lipstick, their regenessence cream, a sample of the newest Si perfume, and a sample of a tinted base primer.
But first, let's talk about the class a little bit.


The course took place in the Hotel Sofitel, which is really gorgeous! We had some information about their skin care, and what it does for your skin. They explained that everyone can use it, and that you should have a morning and evening routine using the lotion, serum, eye cream, and face cream. They really only talked about the Regenessence line, not about the luminessence line.
To be honest, after putting 5 coats of product on your skin, you kind of feel that it is not soaking in anymore. A tip for that is to wait about 5 minutes and then take a tissue and clean gently off the residue before applying makeup. Even though I did that, I still felt like this might have been the reason why my makeup was kind of caky instead of flattering.. 

After that whole skin ritual - and I must admit, I love treating and pampering my skin, and I even think I use about 3 to 5 steps every morning and evening... There was just something about the products that made my skin feel slightly itchy. 

Afterwards, we were able to choose our foundation shade - with the help of the Armani people - and I chose to use their Luminous silk foundation in the color 4,5. If you want to see me "in action", just click on this link and see what my skin tone looks like.  
I really did like the color pay off a lot, it is a nice neutral tone, not too pinky nor too yellowy. So for that reason, I would say hands down for their color range. However... I can't tell if it is because of the layers of skin treatment and tinted face primer before this layer of foundation, or whether the foundation itself is just a little bit streaky and patchy and at the end caky, but I was not amazed by the quality of the liquid.
The Armani workers told us that Maestro foundation is a way more liquid and less covering foundation.   At the end of the class, you could see that the people who used the Maestro foundation looked a lot more natural in a way. 
After that, we went and applied powder nr. 4. I am not such a fan of powders in any case, because I feel it can make you at least 10 years older if you use too much, or even worse, using a different colored powder than your foundation can just ruin the whole look and make you look dirty and slightly off. Since I didn't use that much, I can't really tell if I like it. I would say it caked up with my foundation, so I am definitely not going to buy that powder. 
We then moved on to the eyes: they had two limited edition holiday palettes and I used this one:


Hmm.. Now that I look at the palette, I am a 100% sure they changed up the middle color for a very bright turquoise color (which no one really liked to be honest).
I also used one of their Eyes to Kill eye pots, in lilac
This color here on the bottom. 

I actually am not a huge fan of these bright colors, but hey, I wanted to work with what they had, and I know that the green option would not at all work for me. 
So I placed the eyes to kill pot first all over my moving eyelid. Then I started to work that light grey shimmery color from the palette from the middle of my eye to the outer corner. I then took the darkest color of that palette and focused only on the outer v of my eyelid. I used their caviar crayon, which I am actually a huge fan of, it feels like butter on the skin, and traced a fine line just above my lashes. I then used one of the makeup brushes (see first picture) which I found horrible: really bad quality, way too big or too small, and just ... makes putting on makeup more difficult than easy to be honest. 
I went back and forth with the blending and the adding of the eye pencils until I was happy about the look. I kind of faked a cat eye, because I only used that pencil and the darkest eyeshadow of the palette.
I have to admit that I liked the eye look, but I wasn't really sold to buy the colors, one reason for that is that I already have a lot of eye shadows, and the other, that I find the prices to be very very expensive.
(they range from about 30 to 70 or more dollars so no cheap deals) 
We then finished of the look with a mascara (I can't remember which one, but I am pretty sure they used an old mascara, from last season). That mascara goes for about 35 euros, which is something in the lines of about 45 to 50 dollars.
I mean... Do I have to elaborate on this..... 

....
Anyway, I then applied some eyebrow pencil in ash or blond or light, which was pretty good, but still a bit too green/yellow looking once I left the building. 
Now that I think of it, there was no bronzer... Hmmm..
We had the option of choosing a blush color, mine was fluid sheer embelliseur
When I tried to look it up on the armani website, this was no longer available... Did they give us all products of last season? Why would they do that?... I already had a feeling they did this with the lipsticks, because I was soooo eager to try out the matte lipsticks. Plus, the lipstick kind of smelled like makeup gone bad. Yuk. 

I also used the fluid sheer, but I found it very liquid and hard to work with. It kind of resulted in making your previous layer of skincare, primer, foundation and powder very patchy. 
Sigh... 
I guess for me the Armani makeup line is slightly disappointing...
To finish off the look, I used a lipstick in nr. 102 beige. It had a greasy texture and as soon as I put it on, it disappeared again.
Voila. This is my review on the class.
The people giving the class were ok, but they didn't really make us learn new things, and although I am probably trying to learn new things all the time because of my obsession haha, I asked around and the other ladies felt similar. No blending techniques, no smokey eye technique or cat eye, no individual tips on how to work with your eyes or which colors to choose from.
Basically 99% of the class chose to work with the green colored palette and all looked overly done (turquoise eyeshadow, red/pink lips, and way too much blush due to the liquid texture that is hard to work with) 

So sorry if you feel offended by my honesty. 
This was just my experience, and to be honest, I am so glad I did not spend a dime on Armani makeup. I actually really thought it would be suuuuper good quality. 

Over to the goody bag (+ the class costed about 40 dollar which we are able to spend) 


Ok ok, I have to admit, this matte lipstick is THE BOMB, so yes, there are products that I am really liking, but this was the exact lipstick I wanted to try at the session but magically wasn't there. A bummer cause I would have bought it. The texture is INSANE, dries up fast but does not dry out your lips. Doesn't smell funky, has great color pay off and seriously, look at that perfect shade of red! I absolutely LOVE blue toned reds. So this gets a 10 out of 10! Bravo! 
 These are the 3 swatches: the Lip Maestro intense velvet color 400 - The face fabric second skin nude makeup with SPF 12 in nr. 4 and the Regenessence multi-corrective rejuvenating cream. 
I really like the lipstick, however, the cream is a little bit itchy and greasy, it won't soak into my skin and left the foundation looking patchy. The tinted nude skin makeup is a mystery to me: is it a primer? is it a tinted moisturizer? Once you apply this on your skin, you can't really see the tint, but you did smear a product on: not ideal. 
 Spritz :) This is the Si perfume. Not my favorite because I prefer more delicate smells, but if you are into a strong evening time perfume, you might like this one! 

Until next time, 
Lots of love :) 

Xo 

1 comment:

  1. Armani is armani!! I love this brand...
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    https://www.facebook.com/NewYorkParigiMilano
    http://instagram.com/manualloro

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