When I initially opened the April Allure Beauty Box, I was pretty excited about the products. And then I really started looking at them and… I was considerably less impressed. You’ll see.
Price: $15.00/month
Box Type: Monthly beauty box featuring 6 high end beauty product samples (and sometimes full-sized products!).
Why you’ll love it: Top brands, great price, new products that you will love! A great way to sample expensive products without committing to the price tag. Each box comes with an Allure mini-magazine that showcases each product and is as quality as you’d expect from a magazine powerhouse like Allure.
So let’s see what we got this month!
Upon seeing everything, I am not super overwhelmed. As I investigate closer, I lean towards underwhelmed. You’ll see why.
Dr. Brandt PoreDermabrasion Pore Perfecting Exfoliator ($58): I’ve received this a few times in different subscription boxes and overall my opinion has always been… meh. It’s a good exfoliator but NOT worth $60! I promise you can get something very good at the drugstore (maybe I will work on trying to find a dupe for this and ExfoliKate for y’all…) Also, Dr. Brandt is famous for making a big deal about their samples and put them in all that fancy packaging and then there’s hardly any in the tube. I find that super annoying, not only with Dr. Brandt but with anything. I want the container size to represent how much product I’m getting. Like, I’d rather not have to read the fine print and try to figure out how many ounces are actually in the container versus how big the container is. It just seems tricky and it annoys me.
The BrowGal by Tonya Crooks Highlighter Pencil in 02 ($20): This is the product that I am most confused about in the box. So first of all, the Allure MiniMag describes the right end of the pencil as gold but it’s… not. You can see in the swatch below the lipliner pic, that it’s really more of a light, warm brown. And like, why would I want to put that in my brows. Like, my brows don’t need highlighting. Most people’s eyebrows are cool toned, and it’s confusing why BrowGal thinks we want to put a warm tone on top? So ridiculous! Like, we have a hard enough time getting our brows to look good for the day- we aren’t going to start highlighting them with a weird color. But THEN, Allure Editors said something crazy in MiniMag:
“And the gold side, well, where don’t we like to use it? A light swipe across our cheekbones and at the inner corners of our eyes makes us dewy and bright-eyed.”
And I am reading that and looking at the pencil swatch wondering which Allure editor has a weird brown color on her face and on the inner corners of her eyes. Like, are they smoking crack over there? This pencil is BROWN. As far as I can tell, there is not even a gold sheen! It looks like a matte brown color! WHAT IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING HERE?!
So in fairness, the nude side seems OK to highlight the brow bone so I guess that’s good. But I am still mad and confused about the other side so I might throw this in the trash. NO. LAUREN. SAVE THIS FOR YOUR MONTHLY REGRETS! Done. (You just experienced a few seconds of what my inner monologue is like.)
Laritzy Lip Pencil in Cabernet ($18): Weirdly, this might be the item I am most excited about in this month’s Allure Beauty Box. While I continue to buy eyeshadow over and over to the point of comedy, there are a few makeup categories that I don’t have much of, and one of those is lip liners. (Another is blush, if you were curious. Now looking to acquire more blush.) The Allure MiniMag said that you could wear it by itself like lipstick and top it with balm and blot it, for a 90’s Winona Ryder look and in my mind, that looks so pretty! This pencil was pretty creamy but not *too* creamy to the point of not doing the job of a lip liner, if you get what I’m saying?
Top: Laritzy Lip Pencil in Cabernet. Bottom: The BrowGal by Tonya Crooks Highlighter Pencil
Ahava Mineral Body Lotion ($21.75): This stuff smells like a dude’s Axe body wash. That is the best way I know how to describe it. It’s not a bad scent, but it’s just one of those things that just smells like all of those body washes to me! Like, I’ve picked out body wash for Matt before and they all just seem like variations of the same scent. So now I have a lotion that smells like that and I’m unsure what to do with it! Haha. Matt won’t use it so I’ll try to pawn it off on another dude. Have y’all used this stuff? Do you like it?
Skin & Co Roma Truffle Therapy Eye Concentrate ($66): So I obviously haven’t used this a lot yet but I’m interested to use it for a week or so at a time. This is a cream (versus a gel) so I really like that. It feels very rich and nice and while I hadn’t heard of the brand before, they do sell it at DermStore.com which makes me think it’s a reputable brand. There are some products that I google and I can’t find anything about them except for their presence in a subscription box which makes me think the company is a bit sketch. Luckily, that didn’t happen with this product so I’m genuinely happy to try it!
Final Grade: C+
The April Allure Beauty Box was mediocre at best. While I am excited about the lip liner and the eye cream, everything else is just so meh. The full-size “big ticket” item, the BrowGal pencil, was just a confusing mess I did not understand and I could do without everything else.
If you are interested in trying the Allure Beauty Box for yourself, click here!
Purchased; All opinions are my own
Post contains affiliate links
laurenelectro
A self-proclaimed beauty junkie/hoarder with a serious Sephora problem. This blog is a total rationalization of that problem. Everything is TOTALLY fine. Her free time is a mixed combination of making fun of reality TV with her husband, hanging out with cats and finally trying to figure out how to do her hair.
2 Comments on Allure Beauty Box: April 2017