Sitting pretty

Wearing sheer 1950s daisy-print dress from Reycle Boutique, rose gold Repetti mary jane heels from eBay via Ana, heart-shaped perspex purse from Etsy, Datter necklace and ring and misc opshopped belt, plus NARS Afghan Red lipstick.

My shoes sort of blend into my feet and my bag sort of blends into my dress... whoops. I got a new role at work and my boyfriend got a promotion so I wore this out to celebrate. My new thing involves starting at 7am and finishing at 3.30pm so it is actually still light after I finish work, so maybe I'll sort my shit out and start taking better outfit photos in the near future. Maybe not, though.

I don't know if you can really tell (I hope you can?) but I am wearing makeup in these photos. Woo! I am SO excited about beauty stuff lately and I have basically spent all my spare money from my last four paychecks on makeup and skincare stuff. The catalyst for this was my pal Morgan (who will have a beauty blog up and running pretty soon) who is essentially a beauty guru and amazingly inspirational and useful when it comes to me sending her random photos I've found around the internet and asking her to tell me all the products I would need to look exactly like that.

Morgan does these big beauty buys online and I've mooched off her international mail forwarding service to attempt to become more put-together and help towards my yo-pro aspirations. Pretty much everything I do now relates to my yo-pro aspirations tbh. The other day I went to Morgan's to pick up a haul of lipsticks and stuff that had just arrived for me, and got to pore through her impeccably organized makeup collection and damn, it has me inspired. But as this is sort of a new thing for me, I have been pretty lazy with my usual kind of harm minimization deal that I try to adhere to in my everyday consumption.

Because I don't really know a lot about makeup and my mum never really wore it, I've just been picking and mixing with a totally miscellaneous array of products that seem useful and/or fun, like undereye concealer to help with the 6am starts, and waterproof mascara because I am yet to learn that rubbing my eyes all the time = bad for makeup - but also glittery silver eyeliner because glitter. I do try to be as ethical as is possible and reasonable with my general consumption, through buying almost everything I own second hand, repairing my clothes and shoes and taking care of them, and buying local as much as possible - except makeup, because prices in NZ are insane. I am loath to pay $62 for anything, let alone for one lipstick.

However, I do not pretend to be completely consistent and there are always areas in which I could do better in terms of conscious consumption, and makeup is definitely one of them. As I learn more about beauty and how to optimize my face's cuteness, I want more and more to invest in really nice quality makeup that will last well. It is so easy and fun to buy cheap makeup to play around with and try to find out what looks good, but hopefully as time goes on I will be able to justify spending a little bit more to get a product which is quality, natural and not tested on animals, such as Tarte cosmetics’ great cruelty-free and natural products. I don't really want to support animal testing by voting with my dollar so I am going to try my hardest to be more consistent with my approach to makeup and invest in great quality products. I am really excited to conquer my fear of looking like a kid playing in their mum's makeup bag and start looking FIERCE.

NB: This post contains sponsored links but is 100% my own opinion and writing.