Ladies Night Out

It was a tiring but a fun-filled day as I experienced something rather different yesterday. Guess what it was? A FREE makeover! I'm not really sure why I'm excited as I wasn't really the one who received it.

Anyway, let me tell you what happened.

I was given a voucher of a free makeover session from a brand called Covo by a friend of mine. For some reason (which I know now), it was called ‘Flash Makeover’. So I called them up (I mean Covo) and arranged for an appointment. Once this was confirmed, I went to talk to my friends.

Ever faced difficulty in not getting everyone together when you are planning for an outing or an event? It’s nothing frustrating as everyone faces that too.

But miraculously this time when I called up my friends (Kim - a personal stylist, Deela – a marketing director for boutiques and Joyce – my editor), everybody said “Okay!” It was not the normal “Okay” because it came along with the sound of excitement and grinning faces from every one of them. But there was a catch! I've only got one voucher. So, who got it?

Well, this was how we narrowed it down to that one person. Since the objective of the free makeover was for our personal stylist friend, Kim, to learn more about applying make-up for other skin tones besides her own, so we crossed out Kim and Joyce out of the makeover list. Both of them had similar skin tone so it didn't hit our objective. While Deela and I were more on the darker skin tone, hence it came down to one of us. I was more interested in taking pictures and filming the whole makeover process. So after cutting me out of it, it was all on Deela’s shoulders. It sounded more like a burden but who wouldn't be excited to receive a free makeover, right?

It was all decided and we met up early at Sunway Pyramid (Georgetown White Coffee, to be exact) to grab our dinners. After a few snapshots while taking our meals (and posting it into Facebook), we headed for our mission.

Since only I knew the location to the place, I became the travel guide to Covo in Sunway Pyramid. With me confidently guiding the rest at the front, followed by Joyce and the two ladies still with their little chats, we finally arrived at the location.

Covo was not really a store or shop; it was more to a booth that you would see in the centre of shopping malls. They are in market for only six months now and their cosmetic products are a little different from other brands. Why? I’ll let you know later.

When I produced the voucher and hand it to the salesperson, we were told to wait a while as there were other customers to attend to first. Once the coast was clear, we were then approached by a make-up specialist, Vivian, who spoke something in Mandarin with Joyce. After a while listening to Vivian, with a perplexed look on her face, Joyce told Kim to take over as she was not so fluent with her Mandarin.

The conclusion of the conversation between Kim and Vivian - the makeover couldn't be done for Deela. Why??? It was because the products of the brand were not really suitable for those with a darker skin tone. So, Deela was practically rejected. Kind of sad, right? So what did we do? Head home? Cancel the appointment? Is there any other options at all?

Well, there is an option as long as we are looking for a solution. If we happen to only focus on the dilemma we were facing at that time, we wouldn't have thought of sending Kim for the makeover. Let’s look at it this way. We have all gathered together to have some fun (we don’t often get this opportunity) and we are already at the booth requesting for a makeover. So why not switch the person and enjoy the show?

That’s exactly what we did. Though, Kim was more to pushing it to Joyce who was saying, “I look horrible!” and Kim replied to that with, “I am here after work, you know!” For those who did not get Kim’s reply, what she meant was that her face looked tired and oily after a long day at work and for that reason; she didn't feel like having a makeover. But, guess who won the argument? Joyce, of course! Which placed Kim on the make-up seat with three paparazzi flashing their camera’s at her.

Vivian then took the lead and started the makeover by putting on the primer. It seems that the primer was used to brighten the skin as told by Kim, our translator for the day. Then Vivian moved on to applying the foundation, compact powder, blusher, eye liner and lipstick. And before we all know it, the makeover was complete! Good that I recorded the whole process of it.

Kim looked very pretty. I guess it was because she rarely puts on make-up so it was nice to see a different look of her. Especially with the eye-liner  her tiny eyes seem to pop and gave the illusion of bigger eyes.

The best thing about the makeover was that, you would get to choose either a lipstick or a shadow liner as a FREE gift, all totally of your own choice!

But, that was the drag. It took Kim so long to decide which one she wanted, the lipstick or the shadow liner. Added to that, she was also indecisive about getting the blusher that looked natural on her as well as the travel pack that was offered to her. 

In that mean time, I tried on a lipstick and a gloss. As the result, it was a failure. Like I mentioned earlier, the products doesn't really compliment dark skin tones because when I tried it on, it seemed more like a nude colour on my skin - something which I do not fancy.

But Kim seems to love it and after a long time contemplating, she finally took a natural coloured lipstick for her free gift and purchased the blusher which she fell in love with.

After a couple more snapshots of everyone and almost everything in the booth, we said our “Thank you’s” and “Good bye’s” and left the booth. Finally, our day out together came to an end. We parted our ways and as I was heading home with Joyce, we had a conversation on how I can write this incident better. And I thought, why not start with this?

“It was a tiring but a fun-filled day…”