Time and time again I hear – I don’t use cheap make up – it has to be MAC or Urban Decay or some other such brand of the moment. Wake up people – it’s marketing. Yes premium brand cosmetics may be very good quality, but a huge chunk of what you are paying for is the branding, the advertising and PR.

There are brands out there that don’t get the same exposure, PR or branding, but that does not mean to say that you compromise on quality by investing some of your money in a cheaper brand.

I have various brands in my make- up box. Taking a look I see:

Lancome

Clinic

Laura Geller

YBF

Natural Collection

Collection 2000

Max Factor

No 7

Body Shop

Revlon

Bare Minerals

Lord and Berry

Shu Uemura

Fran Wison

I can assure you there are more, but I am going to stop the list there. Some of the cosmetic brands you may recognise, some you may not as I am a big fan of QVC (and their return policy with make- up) and they often bring over American brands of make- up that cannot be found elsewhere in the UK.

Having said not to be a snob about make-up brands, I will also add a caveat. Be careful about some lesser known make up brands.

We should all be careful about unbranded or unrecognisable brands from China and the Far East. A lot of make products are made in China under license by EU and American companies. The USA and the EU have strict guidance about what ingredients can and cannot appear in make- up, and as long as the the companies making their products in China have very strict quality control policies, all should be fine.

However, it is very easy to obtain cosmetics which may not meet EU standards on sites like Global Sources. Here you can buy pallets full of cosmetics, and unless you have a chemist test the formulation, it is impossible to know what the cosmetic ingredients may contain. So beware about buying makeup on sites like ebay or on market stalls. If big companies like Fisher Price, (who had problems with lead paint in children’s toys a few years back) have quality control issues, then how on earth are we supposed to know what is in that highly pigmented make up, bought from a market stall.

So the message is beware, but don’t be a makeup snob. (Although, I was very guilty of it myself in my twenties. Nothing but Estee Launder!) But do try out other lesser known brands. You never know, they might just surprise you, and you will save yourself some money.

PS. If some well known make-up artist has produced a video demo using lots of expensive brands, remember that PR companies send out cosmetics FREE for them to use.