Beauty

[TY]

Removed link included other retailers websites.

From Flare's website:

Sephora Is Re-Opening IRL Stores in Canada

British Columbia's Sephora stores re-open on May 29th, next week. I saw a cleaning crew in the nearest Sephora store to me day before yesterday. I wonder if people will be looking in there with all the testers gone. How will you pick out your shade of anything?

I noticed in the MAC concession ,in a local Hudson's Bay store that all of the testers were pulled from the displays so that there's no way to actually look at makeup. I suspect that this MAC concession will not re-open since there is a (still closed) MAC store in the mall.

Only one the beauty stores in the mall has re-opened -- Merle Norman; but Lush, Bath and Body Works, Kiehls, and the Body Shop are still closed.

[Shanus]

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@TY wrote:

From Flare's website:

Sephora Is Re-Opening IRL Stores in Canada

British Columbia's Sephora stores re-open on May 29th, next week. I saw a cleaning crew in the nearest Sephora store to me day before yesterday. I wonder if people will be looking in there with all the testers gone. How will you pick out your shade of anything?

I noticed in the MAC concession ,in a local Hudson's Bay store that all of the testers were pulled from the displays so that there's no way to actually look at makeup. I suspect that this MAC concession will not re-open since there is a (still closed) MAC store in the mall.

Only one the beauty stores in the mall has re-opened -- Merle Norman; but Lush, Bath and Body Works, Kiehls, and the Body Shop are still closed.

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@TY   One of the makeup bloggers I follow is in Paris. She  walked around the makeup areas in major dept. stores there, Sephora too. The displays there were covered w/ plastic wrap or hard clear plastic. You could see colors, but not sample or test or see texture of the products, which is so important with foundations. 

[TY]

@Alice-QVC 

Hi Alice,

"Flare" is not a retailer, it's actually a Canadian digital magazine website. "Flare" used to be a print magazine until social media killed the print edition. For those who don't know, "Flare" magazine was the re-incarnation of the "Miss Chatelaine" magazine which was the go-to print magazine for teens and young women back in the day.

[TY]

@Shanus 

I saw some department store type makeup displays like the Lise Watier one at London Drugs covered in saran wrap but other displays like the Clinique one had all the testers removed. The Kiehls store has re-opened in the mall but Sephora and MAC are still closed.

Winners stores (owned by TJX) have re-opened in B.C. but the lineup waiting outside to get in the store was more than 40 people long as the store can only hold 60 people maximum (including staff) due to social distancing rules.

I've seen lineups just to drop off recycled bottles and cans at a bottle depot (all grocery stores have stopped taking bottle and can returns). I've seen lineups outside to get into bicycle stores, the asian T&T Supermarket grocery store, the Apple store, H & M, and Sport Chek sporting good store. I've seen lineups to the street for Starbucks drive thrus which I would guess would be at least half an hour while nearby Starbucks that have mobile order and pickup you can get your drink in 5 minutes.

Restaurants are just starting to re-open here so we are going to to a Mister Mike's restaurant tonight to celebrate a family birthday. I don't know how it's going to look or be inside there, but I guess we are going to find out!

[TY]

So the Sephora store near me opened on Friday morning at 11 am PDT. There was a lineup outside the store in the mall but it wasn't very long and it moved quickly as I got there about 10:55 am. The store can hold 35 people at a time so I didn't have to wait very long to get in. The Sephora employee at the front squirted hand sanitizer into each customers hands before entering. I was only in there to redeem a Mother's Day e-gift card from my daughter and to get my birthday free gift. I was in and out of the store in 10 minutes. 

You couldn't use any of the testers or get free samples of anything like foundation though so I didn't look at any makeup. I looked at Sephora makeup brushes and bought a taklon nylon retractable powder brush.

The line to pay has been designed to social distance and the good thing about that is that I can look at all of the travel makeup and skincare items without anyone else beside me. Before the pandemic it was hard to look at any of those things because there were always too many people in the checkout line crowded together.

I got checked out very quickly and the only rewards they had were the 100 point ones so I asked for one of each that they had (5 different ones) and I picked the Briogeo shampoo and conditioner as my birthday gift. All in all it was a smooth visit for their first day of re-opening.