Thursday, March 07, 2002

Grand Central Beauty Terminal

It was a site unlike you may've ever seen before. Grand Central's Terminal's Vanderbuilt Hall was fully lined with rows upon rows of tables with thousands of women pushing their wares on you. Even more thousands of women wandered the aisles picking up beauty, cosmetic and skin care samples from the vendors. It was the Cosmetic Executive Women (http://www.cew.org/index.cfm)'s Beauty Awards Exhibition & Demonstration Cocktail Party held on March 7th. Bags and bags of products I'd never even heard of or knew existed were available for the taking. It was like Halloween and everything was a treat! Now I have more products than I know what to do with. If my eyes don't look visibly firmer the next time you see me, let me know and we'll write-up the offending product!

Among the cyber-relevance, I learned that while the online stores of many of these vendors are not bringing in significant sales, women who visit the websites of cosmetic and beauty lines spend 40% more at the shops than women who don't. And, there's a new perfume out there by Valeria Mazza called "CyberSt@r!" My two other favorites were GeoMer's shark cartilage Anti-wrinkle firming cream and Franche's revolutionary, patented antioxidant moisturizer that uses "topical chirally correct liquid crystals," which related to the "right" and "left" handedness of a molecule that forms a glove to fit over our hand to make the most effective product with the fewest side effects. How's that for science and technology coming together to benefit culture!?

Stay tuned for this budding cosmetics-reporter's report on the CEW Beauty Awards 2002 Luncheon where the best products are recognized.