Scenes From The Mall

Unable to contain my curiosity and not entirely satisfied with the swatches I've seen online so far, I headed to Nordstrom to check out the new Burberry makeup collection. It meant going to the Garden State Plaza, a place I try to avoid at all costs, but the promise of fabulous lipsticks and gorgeous packaging was too much to resist. Since the Paramus store is one of the few locations that actually carry Burberry, I went there full of Jersey pride. Except that the launch date has been pushed back to August 10th. They're doing a pre-sale but there are no testers or any information about the makeup other than a handful of items in one of those display cubes you can't open.

Since the place was cheerful and abuzz with brand reps, makeup artists and the general anniversary sale fun I stayed for a while to see what's new and pretty. I'm glad to report that the Dior counter still has the Nordsrom exclusive palette, so if it's already sold out at your location you might want to give this store a call. At the Armani counter, a young SA whose misfortune was to have me as a customer tried to convince me the summer collection was actually the new stuff for fall. I didn't even bother to argue.

I decided to head towards Neiman Marcus. The place was eerily empty and silent. The fashion floor was in that limbo stage between seasons, when there's absolutely nothing interesting and/or in my size. The beauty department was equally ghostly (to be fair it was still early-ish, about 11:30 am), and most counters were empty of SAs. A couple of employees and the floor manager were running from counter to counter just behind the handful of customers who walked around.

The good news is that the Le Metier de Beaute counter already has a tester of  the fall Kaleidoscope eye Kit (no other fall testers, though, and the products only go on sale September 10th), so if you're in the area that alone is worth the visit. At the Guerlain counter I was assisted by the Lancome specialist who was awesome, helped me play with the testers and rang my purchase:

These are two of the gorgeous eye shadow palettes for fall. Review and swatches are coming as soon, of course.

The previous scene from Armani was repeated at the Nars counter. An overly made up SA tried to insist that the dirty and abused testers of the summer collection were of the newest items. I know that several locations, including some Sephora stores, already have all the fall items, but apparently Paramus isn't one of them (our Sephora didn't have them, either, but I wasn't surprised. This store is always behind).

A quick stroll through the mall made it clear it was time to run for my life. The crowd has thickened and the nasty aroma of the food court reminded me why I haven't set foot in the Plaza in the last 10 months or so. I went home and did some highly satisfying online shopping.

Top photo of the Garden State Plaza in its previous 1960s incarnation from mallsofamerica.blogspot.com
Guerlain palettes: photograph by me.