Today I attended the Glamour Beauty Festival that took place this weekend at the Saatchi Gallery in London. This is not my first time attending. In fact, I have been attending every single year since it started being organised.
The Glamour Beauty Festival is an annual event organised by Glamour Magazine. At the event you can experience beauty treatments from the variety of brands invited as well as get some goodies from them during your treatments. This is not guaranteed. However, what it is certain is that you get one goody bag per ticket and the value of the bag is typically over 100 GBP. This year’s bag is perhaps the most valuable one thus far and the content is valued at over 180 GBP, if I am not mistaken.
On top of this, you also get access to one talk per ticket if you got a half a day ticket and I believe two talks for those who possess a day pass.
Now, I am going to answer a few questions for those curious about the festival.
How did the Glamour Beauty Festival compare to previous editions?
Well, the festival was pretty nice and many great brands ranging from Caudalie, Elizabeth Arden to even Huda Beauty had a stand at the event. It was definitely nice to see new brands making an appearance as it was getting pretty repetitive.
I loved that GHD and OGX or Redken were replaced by Maui Moisture and Batiste, just to give an example. I have seen the previously mentioned three brands every single year so far and as such, having new brands invited was definitely the way to go. There is nothing wrong with the previous invitees, but one wants to try new treatments.
Is the goody bag worth it?
Yeah, definitely. The goody bag has a value that is several times the cost of a half a day ticket. From this point of view, the gift is more than worth it.
Am I happy with the goody bag?
I am pretty happy with my goody bag. I got some goodies from Ole Henriksen in the form of a deluxe sample of the Truth Serum. I have been meaning to buy this one on my current trip so it worked out pretty fine.
There were also two products from Gold Collagen. there was a sample bottle for the liquid collagen product, but they also included the lip product which I was actually interested in buying.
From Elizabeth Arden I got another lip product which I am very happy about as I got her 8 hour hand creams in previous years. Also a great change!
From Fresh Beauty I got their Lotus face cream in a deluxe sample size. This is one of the products that I do not have from them, so yay!
Batiste kindly provided one of their apparently newly formulated dry shampoos. I am looking forward to see whether this new version does indeed not leave a white shadow on dark hair such as mine.
There was also the Coral Obsessions palette from Huda Beauty included. Coral is not exactly the colour I wanted from the collection, but I do look forward to trying it anyway. I have the burgundy palette and I want to see how the two compare when it comes to blendability.
Pixi By Petra kindly provided a travel size version of their new Retinol toner. I really wanted this one as lately I have been adding quite a bit of retinol in my routine.
There were a few other products included as well as a copy of the latest edition of the Glamour Magazine.
Don’t worry as I plan on reviewing them in time.
What about the talks?
Well, I did not attend one this year. It seems that one year I attend and the next I don’t.
I was booked on a talk with Beauty Bosses, but cannot recall all the speakers so I won’t mention any. However, they are well known influencers.
The problem with the talks is that the speakers are announced late in the registration process. By the time the speakers were announced, I already had my non refundable ticket so could only choose from the talks that were taking place on Sunday morning. The talks I wanted to attend took place on different days or sessions.
In my first year attending I was lucky to get to the one talk I really wanted as I found out about the event pretty late, but ever since I kinda got tickets early when the speakers were still unknown.
Today’s talk wouldn’t have been the worst, but I just wasn’t in the mood for it. I know that sounds bad, but I have been feeling pretty bad lately so I just went to pick up my goody bag since I had purchases a ticket. I did stay a bit, but still left quite some time before my booked talk was meant to start.
Conclusion and suggestions for improvement
Overall, it was a nice event and the queues were shorter. I am not sure whether this was because it was a Sunday morning compared to my usual Saturday morning or whether people are not as interacted in attending anymore, but I found it nice. It was easier to talk to the stand representatives and move about.
The one suggestion I have moving forward is to maybe continue improving the goody bag. Yes, I am happy with it and yes, it is more valuable. However, to me it lacked that wow factor. Things stop being so shiny and new when you get exposed to the same things over and over again and when others are going overboard.
I would definitely attend again though.
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