This Wednesday night just gone, I was invited by the lovely people at Illamasqua to attend the launch of their AW12 collection - Generation Q.

The last collection if you remember (here) was about an explosion of your alter ego and reversing traditional beauty.

This season's collection stems from the Beauty Before Age campaign earlier on this year where they scouted for real people of all ages to use in this campaign (as opposed to models). The collection is about beauty having no age limits, or prejudice of gender or colour.. and about lots of shimmer!

I have to say it got me thinking about how I view makeup now and how much I love colour and probably always will.. I definitely don't agree with the industry norm of sticking to "safe/matte" colours once you reach a certain age and have never told clients/customers to steer clear of brighter colours/glitter. In fact I've loved applying a bit of glitter or colour on an older lady, there's something about the sparkle that makes you feel happy and why should more maturer ladies not feel that?

At the launch of the collection we were able to have a play around with the products and get a feel for them whilst everyone filtered in. My first impressions were: omg lots of purple, LOVE!

In true Illamasqua style there were cocktails in mismatched teacups and iced tea in cocktail glasses.. which was a fantastic idea!

We sat down next to a few of the products from the range (and glittery popcorn fitting with the cinema theme) whilst David Horne and Alex Box (my most favourite makeup artist!) explained further about the new collection and what it means to them, explaining that more maturer ladies are made to feel like they should hide under a sea of beige when in fact it's these women who hold the wisdom and confidence to pull off whatever they like. I couldn't agree more, I'm not afraid of getting older but that's because I believe you're only as old as you feel and it showed in the lovely Evelyn (72) who was one of the chosen models for the campaign and who attended the event too.

The collection is actually amazing, not only because of the purpley-ness but also because it's very wearable by pretty much anyone. 

I managed to get swatches of a few of my favourites, such as the gorgeous powder blushers (Sophie & Allure) and the unique Opulent lipgloss described as a "rainbow beige". I found Allure to be more pigmented than Sophie although both have great colour payoff. Sophie is aimed more at lighter skintones so anything too pigmented would have to be used very lightly anyway. The Opulent lipgloss had me mesmerised with its purple tones standing out more to my eye!

My personal favourites; the Opulent lipgloss reminds me of pretty fish scales/shells!

Other favourites of mine include the Wisdom Precision Ink liner (olive/antiqued gold), Magnetism lipstick (above) and the matching wine-coloured nail polish Charisma (below). Creator nail polish was being sported by the lovely Evelyn too who rocked it beautifully!

The other Intense lipgloss Boost (a metallic blueberry violet colour) and Underworld lipstick (blueberry violet shimmer) were lovely colours but not something that I think would suit my full lips.. it'd be more suited to going out or used in a photoshoot.

The rest of the range includes two new palettes (Complement and Empower) and their Gleam highlighter in Aurora (a light champagne pearly finish).

 

I managed to get a pic with Alex Box too who I also managed to meet at the IMATS last year (here):

All in all I have to say I'll be looking forward to the release of this collection in September (yes it's that far away!) but hopefully will be able to review in full closer to the time!

What are your favourites from this collection? Do you worry about getting into a rut with makeup once you're past a certain age? Would love to hear your thoughts!

 

TOWIB February 2012

First of all apologies for the lack of FFF this Friday, I'm working on a pictorial request for this Friday though, so I hope you look forward to it!

On to the TOWIB post then! For those who don't know, TOWIB (the only way is blogging) is the blogger event organised by the lovely Hayley aka London Beauty Queen. 

Me with the LBQ

I missed the last TOWIB meetup and was glad it was being held in a hotel this time (being Muslim, the idea of bars makes me uncomfortable) so it was exciting for me to go to a larger scale blogger meetup and see who I could find!

My name badge <3

This TOWIB consisted of a blogger bonding session, PR panel, Ebuzzing, Annabelle's Wigs and Blogger Q&A's all at The Montague Hotel near Russell Square.

Unfortunately I missed most of the blogger bonding session as I ran late, but I did get to meet some lovely bloggers and found some fans too including the lovely Epiphannie! Of course my lovely blogger friends from the last blogger meetup(s) where there too:

L-R: Numera, SamRam, Abeer, Me!

There were definitely some useful tips noted particularly from the PR panel, such as how brands see bloggers and how to get noticed.. 

PR panel with LBQ Hayley

The Ebuzzing session was a bit longwinded though.. I think it would have been more interesting if the bloggers were fed just before as most of us seemed to lose concentration there and for those of you on Twitter, you may have noticed a bunch of very hungry tweets!


I did have to leave after that unfortunately due to a dinner at the inlaws, but would have loved to stay for the Blogger Q&A with bloggers such as Get Lippie and A Model Recommends which was the last part. I wasn't too fussed about the Annabelle Wigs to be honest.. it would have been fun taking pics but for a hijabi (scarf wearing person) like me it would have been plain weird haha!
Here's two more pics at the Montague:

Aneesa & Saman of weareveryday with Numera

Me & Numera messing about!

All in all, it was great to meet up with my blogger friends and meet new ones too and I managed to pick up on a couple tips that I hope will help with my blog!
Next time however, I do plan to work the room a lot more so I can talk a bit more longer with bloggers as I only managed to get a flying hi and bye with some of them, particularly Aysha & Annabella of Skinscrubs!

<3