Selfridges The Beauty Workshop

When in London, Selfridges is where I do most of my beauty purchases as RMK and Suqqu are exclusively available here. It has just introduced a new space called the Beauty Workshop featuring a slew of brands that are new to the store. Suqqu has been moved out to the main beauty floor, near Jo Malone and Kiehls. The open concept of the Beauty Workshop encourages customers to try out different brands without over-pushy counter staff hovering over them. It's excellent for browsing at leisure, and help is there if you need it.

Brands available at the Beauty Workshop include: Paul & Joe, Stila, Ellis Faas, Bite, Bourjois, Eyeko, Topshop, RMK, Percy & Reed, Beauty Blender, Youngblood, Violent Lips, Louise Young brushes (below).

The nail bar was brimming with customers. It offers Nails Inc, Ciate and Butter London polishes.


The RMK counter is much more spacious than before. The Deep Iridescence collection is already in stock. The Deep Iridescent Eyes duos have a gorgeous complexity, and good color payoff.

Bite is renowned for their wonderfully pigmented lipsticks which contain the super antioxidant resveratrol.

With the Beauty Workshop, Selfridges is truly THE one-stop beauty destination for London. There are still a handful of makeup brands not available there like Dolce & Gabbana, Burberry (available at Harrods), Chantecaille, By Terry and Urban Decay but I much prefer the atmosphere of Selfridges to the other major stores here.

Louise Young Brushes and Ruby & Millie Beauty Tools

At Boots in London, I found the Ruby & Millie line of beauty tools were all going for under £3, as the line is being discontinued.

The Lip Brush was the most amazing deal ever, as it was originally priced at £7.66 and was marked down to £1.91. When I got to the till, it rang up at just 47pence! The cashier was just as surprised as I was, and declared it a great bargain. The synthetic bristles feel nicely firm and smooth. After discovering this, I stocked up several more at other Boots stores.

The i-Lash Curler is designed without any side bars so as to avoid pinching the eyelids, much like Urban Decay's new Revolution Curler. This was just £2.17, down from the original price of £8.68. Unlike the Revolution Curler, it does not have a spring mechanism.


The curler definitely takes some getting used to. The black plastic makes it hard to see one's lashes against the curler, unlike with, say, Shu Uemura's silver metal curler. The lack of side bars doesn't really help that much because I found it hard to get the curler to grip the lashes at the inner and outer corners of my lids. It did curl my lashes but not as well as my trusty MAC eyelash curler.


I also picked up a pack of foundation sponges. Again, this was very affordable at £1.53, down from £6.13.

Over at Harvey Nichols, I came across the Louise Young line of brushes. I've never heard of the brand but was immediately impressed by how incredibly soft the brushes felt. The prices weren't too exorbitant, thanks to the low pound. Anyway, good brushes are always worth investing in as they last many years with proper care.

I picked up the Super Fan Brush (£26.50), Super Blusher Brush (£26.50), Tapered Shadow Brush (£17.50) and Mini Socket Brush (£11.50). Both the Super Fan Brush and Super Blusher Brush feel wonderfully plush and luxurious.


The Tapered Shadow Brush (right in pic below) reminds me of the MAC #226 Small Tapered Blending Brush. The MAC #226 brush was a very popular limited edition brush released previously as part of the Brunette, Blonde, Redhead and Colour Craft Collections. It will be re-appearing again in the upcoming MAC Me Over collection for fall.