London’s International Make-Up Artist Trade Show (IMATS) is over for another year and we bloggers are feeling the exhaustion and excitement from the two day extravaganza.
This was my second IMATS but the first time for Helen, who, bless her, began her journey to London at a ridiculous hour when I was still tucked up in bed.
I first went to IMATS in 2006 when it was held at the small Islington Business Centre in erm, Islington, North London. It was such a tiny affair with only Crown brushes and MAC Pro hogging the main areas with the rest devoted to prosthetic make-up.
This year the place was heaving with multiple stalls for brushes and cosmetics. For the last three years IMATS has been hosted at North London’s Alexandra Palace (or ‘Ally Pally’ as it’s commonly known by Londoners), which was a big bonus for me as I live about 15-20 minutes drive from this historical venue.
On this freezing day, Helen and I arrived at Ally Pally an hour after the doors had opened for the first day of IMATS and frowned at the long queue snaking around the Palm Court entrance for ticket collection. Organisers have been proud to advertise a record-breaking 3000 advance ticket sales but they’d not given a lot of thought into ensuring visitors got their tickets quickly. Some had to wait at least 20 minutes to pick up their tickets, which isn’t surprising if there are only 2 counters open.
Once inside, we scoped the grand hall and headed straight for Illamasqua, whose team were squeezed into possibly the smallest stall at IMATS. I’m personally still new to Illamasqua, having only purchased those mo-fo Swarovski encrusted false eyelashes on their first year anniversary so I was keen to pick up a few things especially as they had such a generous discount. I bought three eye shadows in matte finish (Virus, Puzzle, Trollop), one pigment (Incite) and one lipgloss (Enchant – a gorgeous rosey pink shimmer). All my eyeshadows are shimmery or glittery so I am very keen to move into matte eyeshadows, which also appear better in photos plus they always look amazing on the Illamasqua boys and girls!
Unfortunately they only had a restricted number of products on sale but no nail polishes, which was a shame. With their new pastel range due to be launched in spring, it would have been great to be teased with some of those at IMATS. Never mind, Helen and I were thrilled with our purchases plus we had Alex Box’s talk to look forward to later in the afternoon.
It was a tight squeeze to get to stalls and even harder to get a look in as I found out at Guru Makeup Emporium’s stall for Make Up Forever when one girl proceeded to hog the entire eyeshadow stand, writing down the code for every colour before buying them all.
I really didn’t understand the point of the notepad, sweetheart other than you restricting my view and as a result, wasting my time and patience. I walked away empty-handed, Guru Makeup and also thought it was a bit silly to not bring substantial stock to last beyond 10.30am. Helen and I keeled over one of your Star Powders and are waiting with baited breath to place an order.
The same applies to Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics who ran out of of their Lip Tars. What happened for the Sunday visitors or was it a cunning marketing ploy to keep some stock back for the next day? I really wanted the red Lip Tar (‘NSFW’).
We were also deeply disappointed to see nail lacquers shunned at a make-up trade fair. Nail blogs are extremely popular (and addictive, we might add) and we can’t help but think the likes OPI and China Glaze would have cleaned up at IMATS, or any other US brand aiming to crack the international market, as did so many cosmetic brands from across the Atlantic that we saw this weekend.
My absolute favourite part of the day was watching the breath-taking work of artists working on their models on the theme of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland but I can’t ignore the efforts of the artist whose model face’s was done up like a cracked Cadbury’s creme egg either. Mmm, I must buy some Creme eggs tomorrow…
We stayed long enough to hear Illasmasqua’s Alex Box be cross-examined on stage by the editor of Make-Up Artist Magazine (and wince at his interviewing technique). With the PA system blaring out cheesy music as if we were on the set of a game show, Alex was brought on stage and thankfully reclaimed credability for herself by eloquently speaking about her passion for art and make-up and how we come to know her today. I feel inspired to give the turquoise eye pencil a shaving and colour in my lips like she had yesterday. Awesome.
If I haven’t already made it abundantly clear, IMATS was busy and almost suffocating with people stripping the stalls off their merchanise and the somewhat difficult task of trying to push your way through. We didn’t even get close enough to MAC Pro so we shrugged our shoulders and ventured back to marvel at the crew from Alice in Wonderland.
Some visitors just barged in front of us at stalls, clearly not aware of the etiquette of first come, first served. I’m sorry if that sounds petty but seriously, it’s not a good feeling to be shoved out of the way when you’re browsing and hoping to buy things with your hard earned money. It was, however, great to bump into our fellow bloggers and interrogate them on their wild shopping sprees.
Come 4 o’clock, we’d decided our feet could take no more and called it a day. IMATS 2010 was certainly a resounding success in monetary terms and it made our hearts beat increasingly faster than normal but if we can come back next year, we hope the few creases we came across will be ironed out.
To see more photos I took from IMATS, click here.
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