Cosmetics a La Carte: An Introduction

Occasionally a brand comes along that gets me all excited; last year that brand was Etat Pur (remember how I banged on and on and on about their products? I still love them!) and this year, so far, my brand-specific obsession appears to be focused solely on the personalised beauty service and make-up brand, Cosmetics a La Carte (CALC), and I dare you to visit their online catalogue and not get excited too.

I was recently invited to visit the store to find out more about their products and services.  They are mostly a make-up line with a difference, and that difference is that they offer a bespoke service.  If you’ve ever fallen in love with a limited edition lipstick or found a match made in heaven with a now discontinued blush, CALC can recreate your beloved shade for you as long as you have a remnant for them to work with.  The initial service isn’t cheap at £220, but once it’s recreated, reordering costs £48, meaning the £220 is a one off expense.   They also offer an impressive array of make-up lessons designed to boot your make-up routine back to life; especially good for those of us who are stuck in a rut and don’t like to experiment too much.  Lastly, they offer a bespoke foundation service which allows you to find your exact skin match (either with the already formulated shades or a mix if needs be) which again you can reorder once created after taking away some samples to try.

The things that most excited me, however, were the make-up items due to the fact that there is such an amazing collection of high-quality products, shades and finishes.  I will confess to having heard of CALC previously, and being under the impression that they were incredibly small with just a few, well-made products to their name, so I was extremely shocked when I visited their shop to find such a mega selection.  Just to give you an idea, their Outliner (potted, gel-like eyeliner/eyeshadow dual-use products) is available in 26 shades and these range from several takes on black, to fiery reds and pale pinks and lilacs.

I had my foundation shade matched to Ivory – they’ll always try out a single shade first before trying the mixes as it’s cheaper for you to purchase a non-bespoke foundation, so if they can find a match in an already formulated shade then they will – and I was also matched to a beautiful pale pink blush (shade name Blush to confuse things!) and a bright pink lipgloss, shade name Fuchsia, which is quite possibly the best lipgloss I’ve tried to date. I’ve been having a play-around with a few of their products and I’ll be posting a FOTD post soon with a more thorough review of the products, but in the meantime, if you’re a make-up junkie and you haven’t already familiarised yourself with Cosmetics a La Carte then I strongly recommend you head on over to their site and see what you’re missing, although you might want to hide your credit card first.