My IMATS London 2014 experience and haul!
As I mentioned last week, this year for the first time, I went to see what all the excitement was about at IMATS London 2014. I really enjoyed every aspect of the day, and would certainly go again in the future - the shopping was brilliant, there was so much to see and experience and although I'm just a makeup lover and not working in the industry at all, I found everything really interesting and fascinating.
Shopping at IMATS was an amazing although slightly crazy experience! Some of the stands were so ridiculously busy that I didn't even get a good photo of them. I did still manage to do quite a bit of shopping, you just had to be patient, ignore the elbows and backpacks narrowly hitting your face and concentrate on extreme swatching! Some stands were busier than others - Nars had hoards of people at all times, and that queue you can see in the first photo was for NYX. It was incredibly long all day, so I didn't bother joining it. I like NYX, but I thought I could just order some stuff online rather than wasting time waiting.
Nars were offering 30% off although they weren't carrying their full range. They also had some gift sets for £15. Inglot also had 30% off, MAC had a 15% discount (but didn't have what I wanted!), plus more for Pro card holders and Make Up Forever had discounts which I think were somewhere between 20 and 30% off. Other stands such as Crown Brush, Bobbi Brown and OCC also had various discounts and special offers, and there were lots of independent makeup stockists there selling various brands - in the end I was just checking out the prices of the individual items I wanted to buy and decided if I thought it was a good deal.
Aside from shopping, I also really enjoyed checking out all of the amazing demonstrations going on around the stands. Some of the looks took hours of work and you might see the starting point on your way round and then later on bump into the model shopping on her break with the full look completed! I was fascinated with some of the amazing body art going on (particularly on the hot guys), as well as the film and theatrical transformations with makeup, masks and costumes - especially the really creepy and gruesome ones!
We took a break from looking around the show for an hour, to watch a talk and demonstration from Pablo Rodriguez, one of MAC's senior makeup artists. He was demonstrating catwalk and editorial shoot makeup looks - it's so different from every day and 'beauty' looks, and it was really interesting to see the different products and techniques he used. I picked up a few tips I might be able to try myself, and also noted down a couple of new MAC products I want to get.
I spent most of the day with my all too encouraging shopping buddy Kat from Tales of a Pale Face and also Jade from Beauty Butterfly who I met for the first time at IMATS.
And finally, the haul! Just a quick snap of all the products from when I got home last night - I bought a lot more than I thought I did! I'll do another post with all of the products I bought really soon.
Have you been to IMATS, or do you think you'll go next time?
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