Friday, March 8, 2013

Kikaymom Find: Makeup City in Tsimshatsui, Hongkong

One of the reasons why I wasn't able to blog much last month was because I took a week off to fulfill one of the things I said I will do before I got too old. This:
I finally got to go to Disneyland! And even better was that I got to share the experience with a fellow Mickey Mouse die-hard, whom I lovingly (and sometimes ironically) call the Wonder Boy. And as for Hongkong, well, the place is really a haven for beauty product junkies because they have beauty shops every few steps. Everywhere you turn, there's a Sasa, or a Bonjour, or a Watson's. The distribution of these shops were so crazy, it's not unusual to find them placed right across the street from each other.
But the great find that I'm talking about is none of these, but a shop called The Makeup City right in Cameron Street, Tsimshatsui.
It's that shop with the orange signs featuring Chinese writing. Ok, so here's where I slack up as a blogger: I don't have any pictures of the shop from inside (really sorry about that, truly) but this is the go-to place for authentic designer perfumes and makeup. They stock brands like Guerlain, Armani, and almost everything that you could think of.

It's not a fancy place, but their perfume inventory is impressive. The best part? You can buy your favorite scents for as much as 50% less than retail. Let me reiterate that these are authentic, department-store quality perfumes, and no knock-offs are allowed.

Towards the back of the store, they also carry some random cosmetic items. I only discovered this on our last day there when I had already spent my shopping budget elsewhere. I'm telling you this really bummed me out because I saw limited edition MAC lippies selling for roughly the equivalent of P800; there were a couple of Guerlain Rouge G lipsticks that were tagged for only P1300.

Guerlain.
Rouge Gs.
Selling for much less than the local price tag of P2500. You bet I was hurting.

We did get to buy some cool stuff from Makeup City though. Here's a small but pretty decent haul:

As you can see, it's mostly perfume. There are three bottles of Liz Arden Green Tea in there because it's crazy cheap in Hongkong for some reason. A 100 ml bottle is only about P650, and you know that it sells for about P1300-1500 locally. The cK one, is virtually free, because the price for that AND the Bvlgari is just equal to the local price for the latter. The hologrammed box is actually a violet-colored primer that I bought on an impulse at Bonjour, which I regretted when I found that it was heavily scented. I regretted it even more when I realized that for the same price ($168HK) I could have gotten a Guerlain lippie instead. Oh well.

See that pretty violet bottle? That's Covet Pink Bouquet by Sarah Jessica Parker, and if I'm not mistaken it's been discontinued already. Funny story about that: I don't usually go for celebrity fragrances but I just gotta have this one despite the many bottles that I still have to go through in my cabinet. I got the original Covet for a gift and I loved the scent so much that it got me curious enough to try the Pink Bouquet flanker when I saw it in Makeup City on the same day we arrived in HK. They smell different, actually. The flanker is more fruity floral than the original. I really tried to stop myself from buying it, for real. Not like the times when I say I'm not going to buy it but deep inside I knew I would anyway.

Except that whenever I was in the store (I was there like three times, on different days because I was helping buy perfume pasalubongs) I gravitated to it. I would spritz some on a paper swatch and just keep sniffing. Finally gave in (I swear I really didn't mean to) on our last day. This is the first bottle of perfume that I have ever bought; I'm lucky enough to be gifted so much perfume that I have a collection without any expense on my part so that's saying something about Pink Bouquet.

As I was telling fellow blogger Maica before the trip, I was on the lookout for some smudge-proof eye pencils that I could use for tightlining. I heard that Japanese brands were cheaper in HK, and we all know that the Japanese know what they are doing when it comes to makeup. I didn't manage to buy any though, because I was literally overwhelmed by the number of choices (and because it hurts my head to do math when I needed to convert HK dollars to pesos). I also realized that I would rather read some reviews first before buying anything. (The violet-colored primer purchase came at a moment of weakness: I was hungry, I was in a hurry, and I didn't know what I wanted to buy.)

So, if ever you're in HK looking to score some high-end makeup bargains, you now know where to look  :)


3 comments:

  1. :o The prices for the Guerlain and MAC are definitely tempting! Very smart to get the perfumes though as the markup here seems very high. Your post inspired me to look up Hong Kong shopping and I almost wish I hadn't :). Would love to see the rest of your shopping if you decide to share!

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  2. Bea!!!! Nice to see you here :) Hongkong can be awesome for shopping talaga-- don't even get me started on the 2nd hand designer bags like LV and Balenciaga...

    Aside from these perfumes, all I got were just a bunch of Guerlain Gwen and Guerlain Rose Barbare lipsticks and some tubes of lip butter. since you're interested, I'll work on a mini-review post by next week.

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  3. Love HK! I usually stock up on perfumes there because it's cheap. Just like you, I always drop by Sasa and Bonjour every night, hihi... Will check out Makeup City on my next visit.

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