Givenchy Teint Couture Balm Review, Swatches Ingredients Analysis and FOTD

Givenchy Teint Couture Balm (aka Givenchy Teint Couture Blurring Foundation Balm) SPF15 is the latest base product for skin to come from Givenchy. Givenchy has some really gorgeous face makeup - their Prisme Libre loose powders, as well as their little squares of pressed finishing/brightening powders are some of my favourites (and I recently hauled yet more of their stuff, as this IG photo shows), and make up some of the brands best known products. So I had high expectations for the Teint Couture Balm.

Givenchy Teint Couture Balm SPF15: The latest lightweight foundation/BB cream-type product from Givenchy

The Teint Couture Balm is advertised as being a "an invisible, ultralightweight, skin-fusion foundation for a flawless, bare-skin effect, and it's a lighter foundation/base product addition to Givenchy's range. I'm pretty late to the party - these were launched a couple of months ago, but I'm only reviewing them now, but on the bright side, a thorough review is always good, right? And I'm glad to say, the Teint Couture Balm performs very nicely!


Givenchy Teint Couture Balm SPF15: Also known as Teint Couture Blurring Foundation Balm in some countries
And by thorough, I do mean thorough - I've got swatches, ingredients analysis, and a photo of the Teint Couture Balm on my face! Of course, we'll start with my favourite part - the ingredients analysis of the product.

Etude House Disney Princess Happy Ending Swatches and Review!

Etude House's Disney Princess Collection, Princess Happy Ending, recently launched in stores. If you've been following me on Instagram, you'll know how much I love this collection - I feel like the Disney Princess theme really fits in very well with Etude House's girly, innocent, princess-like aesthetic. So this is definitely bound to be a match made in heaven! I mean, just look at all that gorgeous boxes and packaging!

Etude House Disney Princess Happy Ending Collection: That's a big collection this time round!

There are a lot of products in this range - three glitter eyeshadows, two blushes, two lipsticks, one mascara, four nail sets, and two BB creams. The colours in the collection are inspired by some of the Disney Princesses - there are colours after Jasmine, Belle, Cinderella, and Snow White. What you see above in the photo is the entire collection - which I will review in stages, but I thought, since I've been getting requests for swatches and reviews, I thought I'd do some swatches of the makeup items in one post first, so that the post will be just in time as you guys contemplate what to buy from the collection.

As usual, packaging is Etude House's strong point. I can't quite think of a brand that has packaging quite as girly and as cute as this, without venturing into girly-overdose territory. For the Etude House X Disney Princess Collection, the packaging has been made to look like story books - the nail sets. Everything except the eyeshadows and lipsticks have these super cute boxes. Just take a look below!


Etude House Disney Princess Happy Ending Collection: The packaging looks like cute little fairytale books.
But I know that this is supposed to be a swatch post, not an ogling-over-the-packaging post (again, if you've been following me on Instagram, you'd have seen that already), so without further ado, here are some swatches of the makeup items in the Etude Disney Princess Collection!

BB/CC Cushion vs BB/CC Cream: What's the Difference?

BB cushion and CC cushion products have been all the rage among Asian (primarily Korean) makeup brands in the past few months, sometimes referred to collectively as "air cushions" by some blogs I read. If this sounds like a BB cream or CC cream (not that there is very much difference between the two - in a previous post I had done an ingredients analysis of BB and CC creams and found virtually no difference between them. And later on I had also done an ingredients analysis on a DD cream, and again found no difference), it's because BB and CC cushions are like BB/CC creams: the formula is the same, but instead of packaging it in a tube, it is now in compact form. Inside the compact is a sponge soaked with BB or CC cream, which forms a "reservoir" of product. To apply the product, you can use a polyurethane puff that comes with the compact. And off you go - a brand new product to sell to the masses who otherwise wouldn't buy another BB cream because they have 8 tubes from different brands sitting around at home. You may have seen the ads for products like the Laneige Snow BB Soothing Cushion and the Etude House Precious Mineral Any Cushion. These are two of the most popular examples, but there are many others out there, as my home-cooked graphic illustrates:

Now, I recognize that a change in packaging and application sometimes may be appealing enough to the consumer to warrant a purchase, and I'll get into that later. But given all the advertising hype, I wanted to ask the question: from a formulation standpoint, is there really any difference between BB cushions and plain ol' BB creams?

Julep DD Creme Ingredients Review and Analysis: Is It Really Different?

So Julep has decided that BB creams are so old hat, and consumers aren't going to raise an eyebrow at a CC cream either. So what's a marketing team to do? That's right - move to the next letter of the alphabet and double it! Hence, the DD cream was born. And as you might expect, every blogger and emagazine laps it up, and Julep gets a lot of press even before the product is launched. All bodes well, so the marketing team thinks, "Ha! Gotcha suckers! Fall for a change in two letters in the product name! We'll all be getting great bonuses this year! Muahahaha!"


Not even launched, and all the hype already...(Image source from Julep website)
Okay, I kid. The above is just my "artist's impression", as they call it, of how the Julep DD Creme (note the tres posh spelling - the English word for "cream" apparently isn't enough to justify a high price tag, so "creme" it is). But I came to the conclusion that Julep's DD Creme is probably more a marketing-driven effort than any technological breakthrough because there is fundamentally no big difference between the ingredients in Julep's DD Creme, and the existing products already out in the market. It really is the same old stuff, just rebranded.

I'm Making My Own BB Cream!

Now, recall back when I wrote my post a few months ago, comparing BB creams ingredients versus their actual skin benefit? I was pilloried for that post, as I might have guessed. Nevermind that in my original post, I had caveated, "I'm not saying ALL BB creams suck, and I'm not saying ALL BB creams will aggravate sensitive skin. Some brands have better formulation than others, and some brands have more restrained marketing than others, so like any other beauty product, you will find those that live up to the hype, and those that just plain suck." A lot of people thought I was unfairly criticizing their beloved product. After all, I sometimes see a very cult-like following for BB creams. You can't really tell from the comments on the original blogpost of course, as I felt even the ones that disagreed with me posted respectful comments. So it's not like everyone who disagreed was a childish troll, and yes, I do appreciate constructive criticism, and respectful debate (hey, what do you think I spent my time doing at University?). But elsewhere on the web, there were critical posts full of sarcasm, and people just dissing me as stupid or gullible. (Because a gullible consumer looks past the marketing and hype and reads the ingredients list and does her own research - yep!)

(Image source. Text by me.)
So anyway. I figured, as the adage goes, if you can't beat them, join them! So, based on all the really crappy but popular BB cream formulations there are out there, I plan to launch my very own BB cream, have it made in a standard private label cosmetics manufacturer, put some Korean celeb on the ads, and voila - make LOTZ OF MONEEYY! Because, after all, that's what the BB cream companies are doing. As another ex-industry beauty blogger put it, "Can you really imagine MAC [having] its own brush factory or Shu Uemura [having] its own curlash making machine? They don’t. In fact, no cosmetic company does. We all source from brush manufacturers, [who] offer no exclusivity, except of course that they will not stamp the MAC brand to another brush customer." She was talking about brushes specifically in her post, but a similar principle applies to cosmetics as a whole, too - anyone recall Napoleon Perdis?