Lipstick... and other things

In my previous post I talked about how, despite knowing that it is an insane promotion ploy, I was probably going to purchase something "Alice in Wonderland." I mean, how can you resist packaging like this. They even have names for the items that correspond to the story (don't they always) like "Jabberwocky" or "White Rabbit."

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

~Lewis Carroll

This post was again inspired by an e-mail from a friend of mine who was debating the issue of packaging in cosmetics. She found herself wanting certain products merely for the packaging. She wanted merely to pull out an item and subtly display it to her neighbor, to incite envy.

I am addicted to packaging and I don't think my friend and I are alone on this. My roommate was cleaning out her closet the other day and produced a pile of boxes and bags with various labels and rhetorically asked "why do I keep these?" My response was to show her the boxes I kept. Each Mac lipstick still in the box it came in. Yes, I use them, but there was something so appealing about the box that I couldn't part with it. And we know this about the entirety of the fashion/cosmetic industry, they pay a lot of money to design the packaging so that we, as consumers, want to keep those boxes and purchase items for their glorious packaging.

As an end note, to round this debate, I told my friend that lipstick, not lipgloss would make her peers envious. This is due to the stigma I feel that lipstick carries as far as fashionable envy is concerned.