Cohorted Beauty Box June 2017 Review

Hello and welcome!

This is my first ever post and I’m kicking my blog off with a review of a beauty box that I’ve been getting for a few months now, the Cohorted ‘Black Edition Beauty Box’.

Buckle up, get a snack and some water because I want to go into detail so this might be long.

I first stumbled across this beauty subscription box after being subscribed to Birchbox for a few months. Unfortunately, I didn’t find that Birchbox suited me very well and I was left mostly disappointed for a couple of months. After reading an article by The Independent which named Cohorted as their favourite box, you can read their article here, I was intrigued.

I decided to take the plunge and subscribe and have been loving it ever since. Now, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows; I wrote ‘take the plunge’ because this subscription box is £35 a month. Which is STEEP compared to other boxes on the market, Birchbox for example is £12.95 (including postage).

What I will say is you’re paying for the quality of the products you receive each month. A lot of the items in Cohorted are full-sized and high-end brands. The total cost of the products you receive is always over double than the £35 you paid for the box. Additionally if you don’t like something or wouldn’t use it then you can always sell it on eBay or a similar site (I did that last month) which will bring the cost of the box down.

Without further ado, let’s jump into what I thought of the June 2017 Cohorted ‘Black Edition Beauty Box’.

The above photos show what I received in this month’s edition of the box, from left to right, top to bottom I received:

• Bellápierre Cosmetics ‘Glowing Palette’. RRP £40.00.
• Kure Bazaar Nail Polish in the shade ‘Glam’. RRP £15.00.
• Bellápierre Cosmetics ‘Kiss Proof Lip Crème’ in the shade ‘Antique Pink’. RRP £20.00.
• Too Faced ‘Better Than Sex’ mascara (sample sized).

The RRPs detailed above are taken from the booklet that comes with the box which provides information about each product. This is not to say that you can’t get these products cheaper, I’ve seen the Bellápierre Cosmetics ‘Glowing Palette’ for £32 for example.

If you total the prices details in the Cohorted booklet the total content price for June’s box is £75, which for the £35 you paid, is pretty damn good. However, let’s see if these products are actually any good.

Bellápierre Cosmetics ‘Glowing Palette’ – £40.00.

First off the palette is absolutely beautiful it comes with six powder highlighting shades and a small mirror. The shades are reminiscent of the Anastasia Beverly Hills (ABH) ‘Sun Dipped’ Glow Kit, but you get six shades for around the same price with the Bellápierre palette, and only four in the ABH one.

From left to right, top to bottom, the shades are:

• Moonshine – Icy pink/purple.
• Stellar – Pink.
• Glimmer – Pale gold.
• Beam – Pale yellow/Off white.
• Amorous – Muted pink.
• Gilt – Golden brown.

Most of the colours swatch really well, especially Gilt, and are really creamy. However I did had some problems with getting Moonshine to show up in the arm swatch, I had to keep going back into the pan with my finger to get enough pay-off for it to show up. Furthermore, on the cheekbone it was much more of a natural glow compared to some of the others such as Beam, although I’m sure you could build it up.

Obviously not all of the shades will work for me, for example Gilt and Glimmer are too dark for my skin tone and golds don’t flatter me, but I’m sure I’ll still find a use for them. Alternatively, I might pop them out of the case and give them to a friend if anyone has a use for them. That’s another thing I love about this palette, they’re really easy to remove and could be put into a different magnetic palette if you wish, or removed and given to someone else.

Overall, I really love this palette and can’t wait to play with it, I am a LOVER of blinding highlight. If it doesn’t look like liquid metal on your cheekbone then I don’t want to know, so I’m glad that these are really pigmented and can make that blinding glow.

Kure Bazaar Nail Polish in the shade ‘Glam’ – £15.00

I’m not going to lie when I saw this colour I was concerned, I am not a pink person, let alone a Barbie style hot pink. In real life the colour does resemble a pink highlighter, it’s pretty darn bright. That being said, the longer I have it on my nails the more I like it, it is definitely growing on me.

However, I have two nitpick issues with this polish.

Firstly, as you can see in the original image of all the items on the box, that square plastic (shown in the first photo above) is supposed to be on the bottle. I don’t know whether I just got a bad bottle, or if all of them are like this, but I could not for the life of me unscrew the bottle with that square plastic on. It just spun around for an eternity and did nothing to help with the opening of the bottle. Naturally I took it off to open the bottle, and I’ll be binning that bit as it literally has no purpose for me other than to make the top of the bottle square, which I don’t care about.

Secondly, this polish is thin as hell and needs loads of coats to build it to be opaque. Now I always do very thin coats, so I don’t know whether that contributed. However, with other nail polishes it still usually only takes two (or three max) to create an opaque nail colour. I lost count with the amount of coats I did with this one, at least four, if not five.

So do I think this is worth it for £15? No absolutely not. I have polishes from Rimmel (the ‘Super Gel’ ones) that are opaque in two layers, last ages, and are only £5.99. I can’t comment on the staying power of this Kure Bazaar polish but still I wouldn’t buy it. That being said I will use it now that I own it, it’s definitely a very summery colour and it’s making my nail polish collection more diverse.

Bellápierre Cosmetics ‘Kiss Proof Lip Crème’ in the shade ‘Antique Pink’ – £20.00

Right let’s say something nice to begin with… I LOVE the colour of this lipstick, but this is where my love begins and ends. In case you can’t tell from how fed up my face looks, this lipstick irritated me.

When I saw the colour I was excited, this is the exact shade I like, pink nudes are my jam, also the texture of it is light weight and it glides on well.  BUT this lipstick made my lips stick together, I’m talking as if you’ve put glue on your lips. If you press your lips together with this lipstick on you have to PEEL them apart, it’s hideous to watch and really uncomfortable. Not only that but it then becomes patchy and leaves spots of your lips without any product on at all. It’s horrible to say the least. I had this problem with Lime Crime liquid lipsticks recently but found that, weirdly, if you put one thick layer on instead of multiple thin layers then the stickiness reduced, don’t ask me why as I have no idea. With this lipstick on the other hand the more you put on, the worse it gets. At this point I’m not sure how to make it work, I will give it a couple more goes but if it still happens then it will go in my pile of other unused lipsticks.

Currently this product is not impressing me at all, but as I said, I’ll give it a few more goes to see if I can get it to work.

Too Faced ‘Better Than Sex’ mascara (sample sized)

I, and pretty much every other person on the planet, have already owned this mascara. I’ve had it in both a sample size (like this one) and full size and honestly I absolutely love it when I first open it. It does everything I want in a mascara, it lengthens, separates, and gives me volume; it just makes my eyelashes look amazing. However, I find it dries out pretty quickly and I can’t get through a full-sized one before it starts drying out and getting clumpy.  Although that’s a downside of the mascara, I’m quite pleased that the one in this box as a sample, as opposed to a full-sized one, as I should be able to use it all before it dries out.

There were a few options detailed in the booklet that could have been in the box instead of the ‘Better Than Sex’ mascara and I can’t help feeling disappointed that I didn’t get one of those instead. The other possibilities were: NARS ‘Pure Sheer SPF Lip Treatment’, Living Proof ‘Flex Shaping Hairspray’, or Living Proof ‘Living Proof Restore Mask’. I would have definitely liked to give the NARS product or the Living Proof mask a go instead of getting something I already have, but the mascara will definitely get used.

If you’re still reading thank you so much for sticking around and I’m so sorry that it’s been so long, I didn’t intend it to be. My overall thoughts are that if want to try high-end products that you may, or may not, have tried before, and you can afford to put your complete trust in a company for £35 a month then I would definitely recommend Cohorted. For the products that you get in the box it’s definitely good value for money and I’m so happy with the Bellápierre Cosmetics ‘Glowing Palette’ in this month’s box. Additionally, as I said at the beginning, if you aren’t going to use something then you can always sell it and make some (or all) of your money back whilst still having other products to use.

I hope you enjoyed this review of June’s Cohorted ‘Black Edition Beauty Box’, if you did enjoy it then please give this review a like to let me know that this is something you would want to see in the future.

If you want to check out Cohorted yourself then you can take a look at their website here.

Love,

Charlotte (Multibendystraw)

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