Flashback Beauty Friday 12: Bourjois Eau de Gloss

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Flashback Beauty Friday is a nostalgic look back at old limited edition or discontinued beauty products and their packaging. Last week I posted YSL's limited edition Love Collection Powder and this week I picked Bourjois Eau De Gloss.

This was part of the regular line, but discontinued about 10 years ago and Bourjois pulled out of the UK a couple of years back anyway, so unfortunately you can't buy them here now.

I don't really remember much about this lipgloss, about using it I mean. Effet 3D, yes, I wore a lot, but this was a newer concept and I was surprised I even had 3 of them as they weren't something I recall being particularly interested in. I chose them this week for their rather weird packaging. I'm not sure what their inspiration was, but it feels a bit clinical to me with that long dropper style lid. Like old glass medicine bottles or syringes in the Dr Quinn days!  Inside is a wand with a very small brush applicator on the end, so with the outer 'handle' that lid/wand becomes really quite long and probably quite awkward for smaller makeup bags. I've seen some people refer to it as a soda pop inspired bottle...I can kinda see that, but the bubbles on the label as far as I know, were to represent that this gloss was made up of a certain percentage of water, to add to their non-sticky claim.

The middle one is 18 brun petillant and this was the regular formula, providing 4 hours of moisture, sheer colour and non-sticky. The others are Eau de Gloss Cosmic with the same claims, but in a shimmering finish. The gold one (23 beige rafraichissant) has loads of sparkles up the outer and inner wand, but 19 pamplemousse givre doesn't. The colour of each gloss is reflected in the little dome shape at the base of the lid. I tried these out today on my hand, but they've almost completely dried up, which is strange given I have much older glosses that are still feeling fresh. When trying to push the wand back in, it felt like sugar inside. I felt resistance pushing it back in and crunching it's way through dried up sugar, weird! 18 appeared to have the strongest colour (brown), 19 was bright orange (not sure why I'd buy that shade, maybe it's more of a sheer peach on the lips) with subtle shimmer. 23 is stunning, absolutely gorgeous.  It's a pale yellow with multi-coloured sparkle under the light. It was twinkling beautifully. They are definitely non-sticky, even with their grittier sugar texture (!), as they wiped clean off my hand in one sweep.  I doubt their 4 hours of moisture claims though given how easily it wipes off (it wouldn't be long-lasting on the lips) and the formula has issues with drying up, even if they are over 10 years old.  

Maybe this dried out sugar thing is the reason they were discontinued? I don't know. I just thought the packaging was so interesting I wanted to share it here.  I'm still on the tidy-up/sorting out my makeup stash.  I've been overdoing it, so need rest days in-between.  I'm unearthing things I'd forgotten about and even found some things I didn't know I had (tbh these glosses are one of those)!  I keep finding more blushers and that was the only drawer I'd properly sorted, so yeah, it's not going smoothly.  I keep stopping to admire weird things and then photograph them for blog purposes, so that's become an obstacle in throwing stuff away!