I’m always wary of celebrity makeup lines. Are they just a route to a quick buck, and will the sleb in question actually care about what’s being touted in their name?
But if anyone knows about the power of makeup, it’s the Kardashian sisters – who hasn’t watched Kim’s transformative contouring routine with utter fascination? And now that cloud10beauty is stocking the line, curiosity got the better of me; are the products actually any cop?
I’ve tried the mascaras in the past and of the four in the quartet, I really liked Whip Lash – it sounds gimmicky, going on as it does about eyelash health and the like, but it delivers amazing long lashes and a fanned out flutter. The others I could take or leave.
This time I was given some lip products – the Beauty Joystick Lipstick Pen in Retro Red, and the Beauty Au Naturel Lip Set in Kim’s shade, Ultra Nude.
The Beauty Joysticks are slender lip crayons, with a pointed nib which makes it easy
to line lips before filling them in. There's a fairly strong vanilla scent but the product itself is lovely: it’s soft, creamy, pigmented and the colour, an orangey red, is really gorgeous.
This could easily rival any high end beauty brand lip product – but at €13.95 it’s a few quid cheaper than the likes of MAC or Bobbi Brown.
Eight colours are available and I'm interested in trying out a couple more: the punchy Shocking Pink, perhaps, or the softer, peachy Sea Coral.
With a double-sided lip pencil / lipstick and a nude gloss, the Ultra Nude set (€18.95) is a three-step ticket to the trademark Kardashian pout. The products here have quite a distinctive, strong, sweet honey scent and I'm not wholly convinced by the lip pencil - it's quite 'draggy' and dry, and hard (for me) to achieve a clean, sharp line.
The lipstick is lovely though, with a similar winning formula to the Beauty Joystick, and the gloss is nice - the packaging looks more expensive than either the Joystick or the pencil/lipstick combo.
The colour is a very pale, beige nude which is quite tricky to carry off - in the wrong light it edged towards that unflattering 'concealer lips' look - but I kinda liked it anyway. With a really strong eye, I think it'll be a winner. I'll let you know!
What do you think, have you tried anything from the Kardashian Beauty range, or would you like to?
