The Look Bag: My February box The Look Bag is from the folks from The Look Store and it was founded by the founder of E! Entertainment. Just like other beauty box companies this is a month-to-month subscription service where you get "
5 different luxury product samples from high-end brands every month". It only costs $10 a month which is on par with Birchbox and MyGlam. They do have a yearly option as well but I always recommend to people to try it for at least three months and see if you like it then switch to a yearly subscription if you end up liking the products sent. Nothing worse than to spend $110 (or more) for a yearly subscription that you end up hating.
My box from The Look Bag came sometime during the last week of February, I don't recall off hand the date but I do recall I didn't get a tracking number for it which I thought was odd. I did make a Youtube video (see below) and posted that on February 25 which is why I forgot to do my blog entry. lol
The box came and it was tiny, well smaller than most of my other beauty boxes with the exception of Beauty Box 5 which is also pretty small. In fact I think my Look Bag came at the same time as BB5 or within a day of each other. I know I'm scheduled to be charged in less than a week for March and should get that box near the end of March.
All of the products came in a mesh bag which was wrapped in the brown paper (seen in the image above) and I have to admit I was hoping it would be more like MyGlam where you're sent a reusable cosmetic bag. The mesh bag is practical - I used it for my jewelry when I traveled to California - but at the same time I just wish it was a cosmetic bag instead.
Unlike other companies that send out one card with all the samples sent written on the card The Look Store sends out multiple cards explaining each item in detail. The cards are inside a white envelope with The Look Bag logo on it. Come to think of it they have their logo sticker on the outside of the shipping box, inside the shipping box and on the brown paper wrapping the bag. Guess they don't want you to forget the products are coming from The Look Store. lol
So inside the mesh bag were a couple of nice size products and several duds. I'll start off with what I considered as the duds.
Dud #1: Tela Beauty Organics Body Moisturizer
Retail price: $28 8.95 oz (?)
Member price: $22.40
I guess they really meant it when they wrote that the products are hand-picked because this item was sketchy to me. What company sends out product hand squeezed into a container and hand writes on the container what it is. No ingredients listed on the packaging at all, the container wasn't safety sealed. On top of it because it was packaged by someone that causes the shelf life of the product to be shorter than if it was filled by a machine. Personally I'm not going to use this at all since it's just so sketchy!
Dud #2: Jus D'Amour perfume sample
Retail price: $44 (0.125 oz); $108 (0.50 oz)
Member price: $35.20 (0.125 oz); $86.40 (0.50 oz)
I'm use to vials of perfume and while this perfume smells okay the fact it came in a plastic baggy instead of some type of professional packaging (like the samples you get in Birchbox) just makes it sketchy. I don't mind that the perfume might have been pulled like perfume samples at Sephora, I go to Sephora all the time to get perfume samples but the vials I get there are bigger. Wish it wasn't packaged in the plastic baggy because it just makes the product come off as being cheap and tacky.
Dud #3: S.S. Soap Co. Handmade Natural Bath & Body Products Gingerbread Caffeinated Soap
Retail price: $6.00 4 oz bar
Member price: $5.40 4 oz bar
I actually love the smell of this soap BUT the reason I think this sample was a dud was simply because it's listed right on the package as a sample, not for resell. I don't mind when companies send out those types of samples but at the same time I feel like I'm being gypped out of a better product. I look at
Javagirl87's picture on Makeup Talk and would have preferred Suki sensitive cleansing bar over this soap.
Dud #4: Obliphica Hairkop Treatment Shampoo
Retail price: $33.00 17.7 fl. oz. / 525 ml
Member price: $26.40 17.7 fl. oz. / 525 ml
The product was an "eh" product for me. It wasn't the worst hair treatment I've tried but it certainly wasn't the best one either. It's not something I'd buy in the future.
Useful #1 but a dud #5: Shadow Shields
Retail price: $9.99
Member price: $7.99
I do find these to be useful but I wouldn't buy these when a simple (and less expensive) Post-It would work just as well. I can go to my local Dollar Tree and but a package of 100 Post-It for $1. So for me while it's a useful products it's also a dud because I'm cheap and wouldn't spend $8 (plus shipping) on 30 shields.
LOVE IT #1: Cailyn Gel Eyeliner
Retail price: $21.00
Member price: $16.80
I haven't tried this yet and while I may list it as a "love it" product for now I might end up disliking it. What I love about this sample is that it's full size (and basically pays for the box) but you get bonus shadows with it!
I LOVE the square shadows that stack - I have several others from a different company - and love that you can mix the liner in with the shadow to create a totally different color liner. It's a great tip to use with any gel liner and most any other eyeshadow out there.
The nice thing about this gel liner is that the brush is built into the packaging! How cute and innovative is that?! The downside to the brush is that it's a bit on the wide side so if you're not use to using a brush to line your eyes this brush might be a little clumsy to use.
If I end up loving this liner I know I'll buy another one. I have to say I really am on the fence with this company and am not sure if I'll continue past April (which will be my third month). The products aren't too bad but they didn't exactly wow me either. The only item that really wowed me was the gel eyeliner but that was it.
Would I recommend any of the products that I got? Most likely not. I can't recommend the liner until I've tried it but if it works out well than it'd be the only product I'd recommend.
I posted the link on their new Facebook page for The Look Bag and got this response on my blog tonight.
The product that you're talking about is Tela Beauty Organics (
http://www.telanyc.com/), and that's how they sent us the product. Tela is an extremely high quality and expensive line created by world renown hair stylist, Philip Pelusi. In fact, their headquarters are in the upscale Meat Packing district of New York City. When we receive products packaged like this, we have to make a decision, do we use it or not? In this case, and after consulting with our Look Bag expert, Damone Roberts, we decided that it would be better to send out a Tela product packaged like that rather than not send a quality product like Tela to our members. So it's actually the contrary, it's far from sketchy, it's an amazing and expensive product that until now, Tela hasn't given out in sample size to anybody. Secondly, the perfume is also a very good product, I personally made the decision to put them in little plastic bags because as good as you can possibly package perfume, it still gives off a scent and could have contaminated the other products in the bag. A lot of thought and care goes into our bags, and if you ever "hate" a product in the bag, let us know and we'll try to make it right and make you happy. We're actually the ONLY beauty sample program that puts as much care and scrutiny into the products that we do.
Thanks, and I hope you're happy with the March bag.
Alan Mruvka
The Look Store
Founder, Chairman and CEO
/emoticons/
