Sneak peek: Avon swag for September

One of the unwritten benefits of working in a call centre at any point in your life is that one of your coworkers will be an Avon lady.

(There are probably Avon men out there, but I’ve yet to encounter one.)

And since that first day many years ago when I discovered that someone would actually just hand me a brochure of pretty fairly-priced goods, then deliver them to my desk (or to my door, once the days of call centre work were blessedly behind me) I have been just slightly addicted.

Avon is not the highest-end brand you can buy.  Its makeup is not MAC quality, its jewellery is never sterling, its leather-look products have never been so much as near an actual cow.  The less said about the pretty horrific levels of cultural appropriation lurking in its “wellbeing” catalogue the better.

But it’s also comparatively well-priced, its sales can be damn good, and it gets delivered to your door.  And since I’m not a makeup-every-day kinda person, and my skin is ridiculously resilient to having crap thrown on it, I can deal with any difference in quality. So I’m not really complaining.

Visual example?  This is my swag of Avon booty for September:

That’s some body moisturizer (2 for 1), two lippies, two eyeshadows, a nail polish and a free makeup bag (because one of Avon’s driving principles is that no person can ever have too many makeup bags) for the princely sum of $80.40.  Plus a nice little carry bag advertising Fergie’s perfume, Outspoken, and the next brochure because that’s how they get you …

Individual product reviews to come as I get around to using them!

Wednesday Wanty: Muppet-themed OPI

No, your eyes do not deceive you.  Muppet.  Themed.  OPI.  Nail polish.  Three of which are named in honour of the queen icon of fatshion, Miss Piggy.

Need I really say more?

My first Outfit of the Day

Well, this is the first proper post here at A Large Pink Woman, so it seemed appropriate to start with an ensemble I think of as “my first outfit”.

Obviously not my first outfit ever, or anything.  Not even the first outfit of my working life post-university.  This is just the first outfit I ever really thought of as a nice, grown-up, pretty, actually-work-appropriate outfit.

(I spent a lot of my first full-time job still trying to stretch out the life of the slightly more professional-looking varsity clothes in my wardrobe; at some point after I left, I saw some former coworkers for lunch and they told me “I looked like a grown-up”.  Which I did.)

There was a shopping spree involved with three of my closest gal-pals, probably bankrolled by paid out annual leave from aforementioned First Job, and my portion of the spree took place entirely in the Jacqui E store on Lambton Quay, at which I nicely fit the 18s.

This little dress-and-top number was the result.

The photo is sadly a tad fuzzy as I was still getting used to this whole stealth-photo-in-work-bathroom thing that all the cool kids (who don’t have full-length mirrors at home) do.  The dress is a lovely floaty number which combines with the ruffles on the top to be twee but not childish, especially with flats.

Coral top and black dress: Jacqui E
Stockings: House of G
Shoes: Ecco

I am also tragically not wearing one of my nicer bras, so the girls are a little flatter than normal.  You should definitely expect a post about sodding bras in the future.

A Large Pink Woman and One Bit of Gauze: the beginning

“Art is greater than the sum of its mere mechanical components, corporal,” said the curator.  “Surely you hwould not say that Caravati’s Three Large Pink Women and One Piece of Gauze is just, ahem, ‘a lot of old pigment’?”

Terry Pratchett, Thud!  p44