Sunday, 14 November 2010

Paul & Joe Symphony Collection Haul

I was happily sleeping off my jet lag late in the afternoon when I received a text message from the Paul & Joe SA informing that the Symphony holiday makeup collection had just been released. So of course I hauled myself out of bed and zipped down to Isetan Scotts with my mom in tow.

The Face Color & Lip Gloss Sets and the Eye & Lip Color Sets all cost S$89 each while the five Nail Enamel C are S$22 each. The sets are more expensive in Singapore, compared to the UK where they are just £30 (about S$63) and the US where they are US$58 (about S$76). In Japan, the Face Color & Lip Gloss sets retail for 5775yen (about S$90) each while the Eye & Lip Color Sets are 6090yen (S$96) each. It's an oddity that the products are most expensive in Japan despite being manufactured there. You can find the Eye & Lip Color Sets on Asos.com and Beautyhabit.com. But Singapore usually has more attractive GWPs, so I held off from purchasing the sets during my London trip.

The sets are frankly not the best value for money given the scant number of products that are included and their tiny size. Compared to the holiday coffrets by other brands such as Lunasol and Magie Deco, you are getting much fewer products but I still find the Paul & Joe sets attractive because of the unique prints and design of the products.

I was initially intending to get only one each of the Eye & Lip Color Sets and the Face Color & Lip Gloss Sets, but Isetan was having a promotion for Citibank cardmembers who can receive a S$25 voucher with S$250 purchase. (Today is the last day of the Citibank promotion.) So I decided to get both the Face Color & Lip Gloss sets as I have a soft spot for the powder balls. The Face Colors are packaged in a sturdy metal tin and contain 15g of product, which is half the weight of Guerlain's Meteorites Perles D'Or. The lipglosses are quite sheer with visible gold glitter bits. The drawstring pouch is a soft satin that does not feel too thin or flimsy.

The satin purse in the Eye & Lip Color set has a bit of padding and also feels very well made. There is an inner side pocket.


I picked 002 Allegro as 001 Adagio had mainly brown and beige eye colours which I'm not fond of.

Most of the eye colors have a delicate shimmer when viewed up close.

The lip color looks pretty but I find it a tad inconvenient as you need to use a lip brush with this.

The gift with purchase of S$160 was this trio of notebooks and a plastic photo frame.


Love the clean lines of the photo frame! This may not be available anymore as the counter received very few pieces.

With this purchase, I think I'm pretty much done for the holiday collections as the Lunasol set looks quite boring in real life. My favourite P&J SA is Shirley at the Isetan Scotts counter. Do look for her if you're interested in P&J!

9 comments:

-joseen- said...

Great haul! The print this time is rather pretty. I was intrigued by the face colour balls since I saw them in the brochure, but the SA in London told me that they won't be getting it as it may be Asia exclusive :(

Anonymous said...

swatches pretty please!!

-zhenling

Haru said...

Sorry, these are too precious to swatch! I'll try to post some looks with them later this week but I won't be doing swatches.

Snow said...

Hi, what's the two white puffy cute lollipop with pink ribbon looking item? :) are the eyeshadow in paper base n plastic top packaging ?

Haru said...

hi snow,
the white cotton puff thingy is for applying the blush powder balls on the cheeks. The eyeshadows are pressed onto a sheet of paper and covered with a re-sealable plastic sheet on top.

Snow said...

Oh that is adorable! I wish I can just purchase the blush alone.
The eyeshadows are indeed precious cause they sound fragile and does look like it's very tiny?
Can't wait to check them out at the counter. Shirley is my favourite thou am not a very faithful p&j consumer. But most of the sa there are friendly and helpful :)

Sunflowers said...

i've been waiting for the Paul & Joe face color and lip gloss set!! but it's still not available here in US. I heard a rumor that it may be asia exclusive :( do you know anything about this? your haul looks AMAZING!!

Haru said...

Hi Snow,
The eyeshadows are supposed to be able to last 60 uses, but I'm not sure how true that is.

hi Sunflowers,
I haven't seen any info to indicate that the Face Color & Lipgloss sets are exclusive to Asia.

kas said...

Wowzaaa! I really like how the satin purse looks! and the gold lipgloss looks awesome! 60 uses for the eyeshadow - well, i'm a bit heavy handed so maybe if I used them, they'll probably last me 30 uses? hee heee :P