Sephora is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of make-up, cosmetics and fragrances. Besides the physical stores, there is an online spot, which, in the Portuguese case, has been working since the year’s beginning. In addition to its own brand, which has a good quality-price ratio, and follows the sector’s latest trends, Sephora has the classic brands of perfumery, make-up and cosmetics to please the general public.
Yet, showing how aware they are of the current zeitgeist in cosmetics and make-up, Sephora has become a representative of niche brands, until now only available for true connoisseurs of this sort of trend and online stores where they are actually sold. Some are professional or semi-professional niche brands, others are organic and ecological brands, and there are also some Korean ones.
We can find on sale at Sephora brands like Nars, Origins, Boscia, This Works, Becca, Huda Beauty, Zoeva or Youth to the people. They also provide other brands that they have been selling for some time, which we cannot buy from other stores, like Benefit, Too Faced, Urban Decay or the professional make-up brand Make Up For Ever.
Umbigo is fortunate enough to be able to try out some of these branded products, launched in previous seasons or last September. In the cosmetics realm, we tried the Superberry Hydrate+Glow Oil of Youth to the People, a brand that uses naturally derived ingredients: antioxidants and nutrients from plants, combined to nourish the skin. This Superberry Hydrate+Glow Oil is an almost dry, light oil containing omega oils and vitamin C, perfect for skin nourishment, and act as anti-ageing antioxidants. This oil is good for both dry and oily skins, since it easily absorbed and has an outstanding fruity odour.
We also tried the Ginzing Energy-boosting Moisturizer gel of Origins, which, in addition to using natural ingredients from sustainable agriculture, does not rely on parabens, mineral oil, phthalates and opt to use packages produced with recycled materials. The cream Ginzing Energy-boosting has a consistency between the cream and the gel and has ginger and coffee beans as the main active ingredients. It is a good cream for all skin types, better for oily ones, but it’s great for the dry ones during summer. The only downside is the jar format, which means that it gets exposed daily to bacteria, not only from the environment but also from our fingers (which should always be washed when applying products to the face or body).
When it comes to make-up, we have tried some new Zoeva products, a niche brand with great quality and price, with very reasonable brushes. The Screen Queen Highlighter palette has three highly pigmented highlighters with unusual colours, proper for light and summer tanned skin, and even a lilac highlighter for the more daring personalities. The Screen Queen Eye Palette is a palette of eyeshadow powders, which, like all Zoeva’s shades, are quite pigmented and long lasting, with colours inspired by the movie actresses of the 50s, and always with names that may say little about colour, but say a lot about the attitude, like Hollywood Influenced, a light pink, good as foundation (first colour on which the others are applied), or Sensory Overload, a bright dry green.
Even though the possibility to buy online in Portuguese is wonderful, and we are grateful for what we can do in Portuguese Sephora, some products are difficult to buy online unless we have already used them and know exactly the right tone, such as foundations and correctors, or even the powders, and, for stuff like this, there is nothing like going to a physical store, try them and ask advice from experienced salespeople. Now we can do it, even if we want to buy those brands that our mothers are unaware of, but are the trending subject of all bloggers and Lisa Eldridge.
