Anti-Haul #2 | Shit I'm Not Gonna Buy
Another month, another anti-haul!
If you didn't read my last anti-haul post and/ or don't know what an anti-haul is, it's basically a list of things I'm not going to haul! Raving about beauty products is fun but shittalking beauty products ie even more fun 😆 The whole "anti-haul" trend was started by youtuber Kimberly Clark who I 100% recommend checking out 👍
I must have had a temporary memory lapse when I started writing this because I thought I would run out of things I didn't want to buy. In reality this list could have gone onto the triple digits, but since I don't have 29834 hours to spend shittalking beauty products I stuck to 10 (although I do wish I had 29834 hours to shittalk them. Shittalking is fun.)
Nars NARSissist Loaded Eyeshadow Palette
My feelings towards this Nars palette are the same as my feelings toward the other Nars palette I mentioned in my first anti-haul. I love Nars and they are hands down my makeup brand... but sometimes they're really late to the game. A warm, brown eyeshadow palette? Ground-breaking. If you love makeup, chances are you already have 1 or 5 similar eyeshadow palettes and don't need another one. I know I don't.
Lipsense anything
Lipsense is a pyramid scheme...need I say more?
Ofra x Nikki Tutorials Collab
I think Nikkie is insanely talented as a makeup artist... but let's just say our thoughts when it comes to the quality of makeup don't exactly align. After her whole Too Faced Power of Makeup debacle, I have no interest in buying any of her collabs. Even if her name wasn't slapped on this collection I still wouldn't be interested in it for a number of reasons.
First off I don't like how you have to buy them as a set. Whenever brands decide to group a bunch of products together and sell it exclusively in a set, it makes me think that there must be some items in the set that are unpopular so they need to piggyback off the more successful items.
Second off the price of the set is way too high-- there's no way I'm paying $80 for items I can't even swatch in person from a brand that is marketed as mid-range! I know the price breakdown is $20 per item but how many people are actually going to use all four products?
Third off the highlighter is made for 3 different skin tones. I appreciate how brands are starting to cater to a wider variety of skin tones by offering powders in darker colors... but do they have to do it all in one product? I would rather have 3 separate powders than 1 powder with 3 colors. Most people aren't going to end up using all 3 shades so one is going to be leftover. Also because the pan isn't that large, it could be hard to brush your fluffy brown around in it without picking up some of the other two colors.
Lastly the color selection of the lipsticks is so weird. If you have a medium-tan complexion or darker, you probably won't like the lightest shade-- I know I won't because I know that such light colors make me look like a ghost clown hybrid. The second shade is also really unwearable for many skintones-- a bright orange with pink reflect. The last shade looks like shiny poop, although I do admit I kinda want it. Like the highlighter I see these lipsticks appealing to 3 different people, so it's annoying how they're all grouped together in one set.
Too Faced Natural Love Palette
Tbh I was expecting this palette to suck from the get go because I don't have very high expectations for Too Faced. Imagine my surprise when positive reviews started rolling out! Even Temptalia gave it a somewhat, lukewarm positive review (a B- which is better than the C or D I was expecting)!
And while there are plenty of positive reviews, there have also been a few that make me question Too Faced's quality control. Youtuber LivLovesMakeup talks about it in a few of her videos-- she clearly got a dud but many youtubers she knows and trusts got completely different palettes quality wise. Their limited edition palettes are notoriously inconsistent so it makes sense.
The color selection also isn't very exciting and includes way too many light colors for my taste. At the end of the day it seemed like they were trying to make a Lorac Mega Pro type palette... except Lorac's formula and color selection are superior in my humble opinion.
Gerard Cosmetics Slay All Day Setting Spray
It's a bit unsettling to me how Gerard Cosmetics has made a quick and quite reemergence in the beauty world and is starting to be sold at mainstream retailers like Urban Outfitters, Dermstore, and even Forever 21!
I am by no means a fan of the gossip channels on Youtube, but I also do not want to support a brand that bullies its customers. If you've never heard of the scandal I'm talking about the tld;r version is that the owner of the brand was caught on video insulting a youtuber who negatively reviewed Gerard Cosmetics products.
Even though the scandal is from a few years ago, it was enough to turn me off the brand forever. In ways the brand owner reminds me of Donald Trump...
Le Mer Cleansing Micellar Water
I could probably write off 75% of all La Mer products in one go but I don't want to run out of anti-haul material, so I'll feature one product at a time 😆.
First off... it's impossible to find ingredient lists for La Mer products online. How they expect people to pay hundreds of dollars on a singular product without providing an ingredient list is baffling to me.
While I am guilty of indulging in pricey beauty products, I can't see any reasoning behind paying $90 for this micellar water besides for brand recognition.
One of the selling points of this micellar water is that it contains "declustered water" which quite frankly, sounds like a load of hogwash. Apparently they do something to the water so that the molecules are separated from each other and are able to sink into your skin more easily. Anyone who has taken high school chemistry knows how polar of a molecule water is so the idea of separating water molecules, in a solution where "regular" water is the solvent, is laughable/ confusing. Through some googling I have found some sites which claim it can be done but there haven't been any documented benefits of doing this which makes sense since our cells have no issues with intaking water.
Clinique Fresh Pressed Daily Booster with 10% Vitamin C
Clinique is one of the first prestige brands I started using and I've always viewed them as a trustworthy, no-nonsense kinda brand. But this serum? It sounds all sorts of gimmicky. I do like the idea of "freshly pressed" vitamin c, as gimmicky as it sounds, because like I talked about in my post last week-- vitamin C has a tendency to oxidize quite quickly.
My first issue with this product is that there's no published ingredient list-- not on the Clinique site, Sephora, Ulta, or Nordstrom. While Clinique says it's a vitamin C serum, they don't disclose what form it is. Is it L-ascorbic acid, sodium ascorbate, ascrobyl palmitate, who the fuck knows???
My second issue with this is the price. I see Clinique as a mid-end brand so paying $80 for one month's supply of Vitamin C is nonsensical. For that price you could buy the Drunk Elephant C-firma serum which utilizes L-ascorbic acid and has a shelf life of at least a 6 months (I believe it says 24 months on the container but I'm not sure.)
Marc Jacobs Re(cover) Perfecting Coconut Setting Mist
I seem to be the only one unimpressed by this spray because everyone on the internet seems to be going crazy over it! I've sprayed 3 different tester bottles at different stores over the past few weeks, and every single time I'm stuck with white splotches all over my face. Not only does the spray come out in chunks (as in it isn't fine at all) it also doesn't dry down colorless.
Ingredient wise it's meh. I do like that it has both coconut water and squalene but then all the other "impressive" ingredients are listed after phenoxyethanol, which means they are present in very, very, teeny, tiny quantities.
Peter Thomas Roth Multi Masker
Ain't nobody got time for a $12 silicone scrubber that you can buy at the dollar store (and I say this as someone who believed in investing in a clarisonic and foreo luna mini.)
Tatcha One in a Million Limited Edition Collection
When I first saw this Tatcha collection I was in love. The packaging reeled me in and I was so close to making a purchase despite the fact that I have yet to use the mist that I already own and don't like the rice cleansing powder thingy. Then I started justifying my potential purchase by saying "oh, it's for a good cause!"
But the more I started reading, the more skeptical I became. Did you notice they don't disclose how much, if any of the money from this limited edition collection is going towards the charity? Because they didn't disclose any specifics I assume that it's the same as their permanent collection. According to their site, every full sized skincare purchase funds one day of school in partnership with Room to Read.
I.... have mixed feelings about that. Because the collection is celebrating the 1,000,000 days milestone, I wish they had put more of the proceeds towards the cause. It feels like false advertising. According to the Room to Read website, a $25 donation can keep a girl in school for a year. Dividing that by 365 it becomes $0.07 a day. So for every $68.00 limited edition rice enzyme powder sold $0.07 is donated to Room to Read-- at least that's the assumption I'm going to make since they don't specify the amount.
Of course they aren't obliged to donate anything, and it's wonderful that they are supporting such an amazing cause. But I wish a) they were more transparent about the amount of proceeds and b) donated a larger amount of the limited edition collection's proceeds.
___________________________________________________________
Aaaaand that's the end of my second ever anti-haul! Like I said in the beginning of the post-- there were so many more products I wanted to include in this post. To name a few: Urban Decay naked skin highlighting fluids, Too Faced love light prismatic highlighter, Sunday Riley CEO cleansing oil, Tatcha the water cream, and so many more.
What are you not gonna buy?
If you didn't read my last anti-haul post and/ or don't know what an anti-haul is, it's basically a list of things I'm not going to haul! Raving about beauty products is fun but shittalking beauty products ie even more fun 😆 The whole "anti-haul" trend was started by youtuber Kimberly Clark who I 100% recommend checking out 👍
I must have had a temporary memory lapse when I started writing this because I thought I would run out of things I didn't want to buy. In reality this list could have gone onto the triple digits, but since I don't have 29834 hours to spend shittalking beauty products I stuck to 10 (although I do wish I had 29834 hours to shittalk them. Shittalking is fun.)
Nars NARSissist Loaded Eyeshadow Palette
My feelings towards this Nars palette are the same as my feelings toward the other Nars palette I mentioned in my first anti-haul. I love Nars and they are hands down my makeup brand... but sometimes they're really late to the game. A warm, brown eyeshadow palette? Ground-breaking. If you love makeup, chances are you already have 1 or 5 similar eyeshadow palettes and don't need another one. I know I don't.
Lipsense anything
Lipsense is a pyramid scheme...need I say more?
Ofra x Nikki Tutorials Collab
I think Nikkie is insanely talented as a makeup artist... but let's just say our thoughts when it comes to the quality of makeup don't exactly align. After her whole Too Faced Power of Makeup debacle, I have no interest in buying any of her collabs. Even if her name wasn't slapped on this collection I still wouldn't be interested in it for a number of reasons.
First off I don't like how you have to buy them as a set. Whenever brands decide to group a bunch of products together and sell it exclusively in a set, it makes me think that there must be some items in the set that are unpopular so they need to piggyback off the more successful items.
Second off the price of the set is way too high-- there's no way I'm paying $80 for items I can't even swatch in person from a brand that is marketed as mid-range! I know the price breakdown is $20 per item but how many people are actually going to use all four products?
Third off the highlighter is made for 3 different skin tones. I appreciate how brands are starting to cater to a wider variety of skin tones by offering powders in darker colors... but do they have to do it all in one product? I would rather have 3 separate powders than 1 powder with 3 colors. Most people aren't going to end up using all 3 shades so one is going to be leftover. Also because the pan isn't that large, it could be hard to brush your fluffy brown around in it without picking up some of the other two colors.
Lastly the color selection of the lipsticks is so weird. If you have a medium-tan complexion or darker, you probably won't like the lightest shade-- I know I won't because I know that such light colors make me look like a ghost clown hybrid. The second shade is also really unwearable for many skintones-- a bright orange with pink reflect. The last shade looks like shiny poop, although I do admit I kinda want it. Like the highlighter I see these lipsticks appealing to 3 different people, so it's annoying how they're all grouped together in one set.
Too Faced Natural Love Palette
Tbh I was expecting this palette to suck from the get go because I don't have very high expectations for Too Faced. Imagine my surprise when positive reviews started rolling out! Even Temptalia gave it a somewhat, lukewarm positive review (a B- which is better than the C or D I was expecting)!
And while there are plenty of positive reviews, there have also been a few that make me question Too Faced's quality control. Youtuber LivLovesMakeup talks about it in a few of her videos-- she clearly got a dud but many youtubers she knows and trusts got completely different palettes quality wise. Their limited edition palettes are notoriously inconsistent so it makes sense.
The color selection also isn't very exciting and includes way too many light colors for my taste. At the end of the day it seemed like they were trying to make a Lorac Mega Pro type palette... except Lorac's formula and color selection are superior in my humble opinion.
Gerard Cosmetics Slay All Day Setting Spray
It's a bit unsettling to me how Gerard Cosmetics has made a quick and quite reemergence in the beauty world and is starting to be sold at mainstream retailers like Urban Outfitters, Dermstore, and even Forever 21!
I am by no means a fan of the gossip channels on Youtube, but I also do not want to support a brand that bullies its customers. If you've never heard of the scandal I'm talking about the tld;r version is that the owner of the brand was caught on video insulting a youtuber who negatively reviewed Gerard Cosmetics products.
Even though the scandal is from a few years ago, it was enough to turn me off the brand forever. In ways the brand owner reminds me of Donald Trump...
Le Mer Cleansing Micellar Water
I could probably write off 75% of all La Mer products in one go but I don't want to run out of anti-haul material, so I'll feature one product at a time 😆.
First off... it's impossible to find ingredient lists for La Mer products online. How they expect people to pay hundreds of dollars on a singular product without providing an ingredient list is baffling to me.
While I am guilty of indulging in pricey beauty products, I can't see any reasoning behind paying $90 for this micellar water besides for brand recognition.
One of the selling points of this micellar water is that it contains "declustered water" which quite frankly, sounds like a load of hogwash. Apparently they do something to the water so that the molecules are separated from each other and are able to sink into your skin more easily. Anyone who has taken high school chemistry knows how polar of a molecule water is so the idea of separating water molecules, in a solution where "regular" water is the solvent, is laughable/ confusing. Through some googling I have found some sites which claim it can be done but there haven't been any documented benefits of doing this which makes sense since our cells have no issues with intaking water.
Clinique Fresh Pressed Daily Booster with 10% Vitamin C
Clinique is one of the first prestige brands I started using and I've always viewed them as a trustworthy, no-nonsense kinda brand. But this serum? It sounds all sorts of gimmicky. I do like the idea of "freshly pressed" vitamin c, as gimmicky as it sounds, because like I talked about in my post last week-- vitamin C has a tendency to oxidize quite quickly.
My first issue with this product is that there's no published ingredient list-- not on the Clinique site, Sephora, Ulta, or Nordstrom. While Clinique says it's a vitamin C serum, they don't disclose what form it is. Is it L-ascorbic acid, sodium ascorbate, ascrobyl palmitate, who the fuck knows???
My second issue with this is the price. I see Clinique as a mid-end brand so paying $80 for one month's supply of Vitamin C is nonsensical. For that price you could buy the Drunk Elephant C-firma serum which utilizes L-ascorbic acid and has a shelf life of at least a 6 months (I believe it says 24 months on the container but I'm not sure.)
Marc Jacobs Re(cover) Perfecting Coconut Setting Mist
I seem to be the only one unimpressed by this spray because everyone on the internet seems to be going crazy over it! I've sprayed 3 different tester bottles at different stores over the past few weeks, and every single time I'm stuck with white splotches all over my face. Not only does the spray come out in chunks (as in it isn't fine at all) it also doesn't dry down colorless.
Ingredient wise it's meh. I do like that it has both coconut water and squalene but then all the other "impressive" ingredients are listed after phenoxyethanol, which means they are present in very, very, teeny, tiny quantities.
Peter Thomas Roth Multi Masker
Ain't nobody got time for a $12 silicone scrubber that you can buy at the dollar store (and I say this as someone who believed in investing in a clarisonic and foreo luna mini.)
Tatcha One in a Million Limited Edition Collection
When I first saw this Tatcha collection I was in love. The packaging reeled me in and I was so close to making a purchase despite the fact that I have yet to use the mist that I already own and don't like the rice cleansing powder thingy. Then I started justifying my potential purchase by saying "oh, it's for a good cause!"
But the more I started reading, the more skeptical I became. Did you notice they don't disclose how much, if any of the money from this limited edition collection is going towards the charity? Because they didn't disclose any specifics I assume that it's the same as their permanent collection. According to their site, every full sized skincare purchase funds one day of school in partnership with Room to Read.
I.... have mixed feelings about that. Because the collection is celebrating the 1,000,000 days milestone, I wish they had put more of the proceeds towards the cause. It feels like false advertising. According to the Room to Read website, a $25 donation can keep a girl in school for a year. Dividing that by 365 it becomes $0.07 a day. So for every $68.00 limited edition rice enzyme powder sold $0.07 is donated to Room to Read-- at least that's the assumption I'm going to make since they don't specify the amount.
Of course they aren't obliged to donate anything, and it's wonderful that they are supporting such an amazing cause. But I wish a) they were more transparent about the amount of proceeds and b) donated a larger amount of the limited edition collection's proceeds.
___________________________________________________________
Aaaaand that's the end of my second ever anti-haul! Like I said in the beginning of the post-- there were so many more products I wanted to include in this post. To name a few: Urban Decay naked skin highlighting fluids, Too Faced love light prismatic highlighter, Sunday Riley CEO cleansing oil, Tatcha the water cream, and so many more.
What are you not gonna buy?