In celebration of Too Faced’s 20th Anniversary, I am posting my old Too Faced goodies. This should give you that nostalgic feeling if you were browsing Sephora in the early 2000s! I am cleaning out my house and I found some of my “vintage”* Too Faced products. There are definitely more lipsticks, glosses and eyeshadows that I owned, but I can’t find them, so I will be linking to photos I’ve found online.
Too Faced has been around since 1998, and this year they released a 20th Anniversary collection with an eyeshadow palette and 8 lipsticks inspired by their original colors. The Then and Now Eyeshadow Palette has 10 shades from the past in the new formula (believe me, the modern formula is superior!) and 10 additional shades inspired by the old ones. The outside of the palette has the classic Too Faced eyes, which I love they brought back! I don’t have the eye shadow palette, but it’s on the list. For now I would like to share my old products that I fished out of moving boxes.
The Quickie Chronicles is a palette of three eyeshadows, one blush and four lip glosses with a double-sided sponge tip applicator and a double-sided lip brush. Yes, a sponge tip applicator! No one uses those anymore, we’ve upgraded to brushes!
Each of the palettes features vintage artwork on their covers. I’m sure every semester, a History of Illustration teacher has to moderate a controversial discussion about over-sexualized women depicted in art. There definitely was one in my class. I am unbothered. But this blog isn’t about that. The art for The Summer Lover is called Tempted by the artist, Fred Rodewald in 1949. The Beach Bunny is called Surfside Sex by an unknown artist, but was painted in 1966.
I had Googled The Quickies Chronicles to see how many different palettes Too Faced produced. Originally, I had linked to a huge collection on Poshmark. Reading the comments, the user didn’t seem to be selling them because there were so many interested buyers with no reply from the seller. Well as it turns out, the image comes from the blog Makeup Museum, whom I follow on Instagram. She has GREAT content and is really nice! So if you wanted to see what the other Quickie Chronicles palettes were and learn a lot more information about the palettes, please go visit the Curator, Hillary, she has an extensive collection and her posts are top notch!
This is an edit a couple days after the original post.
I didn’t even see the 4 part series The Makeup Museum had on the artwork of The Quickie Chronicles! She conducted her research (as a good curator does) and did a way more extensive background of the pin-up artwork!
If you are interested in pin-up art or the history of illustration, this is a must-read! (And I’d think my friends reading this would be interested considering many of my friends are professional artists as well!)
Makeup Museum: Too-Faced Quickie Chronicles artwork, solved (part 1)
Too-Faced Quickie Chronicles artwork, solved (part 2)
Too-Faced Quickie Chronicles artwork, solved (part 3)
Too-Faced Quickie Chronicles artwork, solved (part 4)
I wore these palettes pretty much every day when I was in college. I can tell you my looks were weak and there might not have been much blending going on. (I didn’t own brushes for years!) I don’t remember if I even used a brow bone highlight or a transition shade. Since these palettes don’t have them, probably not. I definitely didn’t wear any bronzer because these palettes don’t have one.
Right now, I like a lot more variety and more importantly have all of my everyday basics… which these don’t have. They only have three eyeshadows, and they’re all shimmers. Looks like I barely touched the glosses. I think I preferred bullet lipsticks. The blushes got a lot of love. The blush in The Beach Bunny is similar to Nars Orgasm. The Summer Lover blush is more of a mauve. Those were pretty much the only blushes I used, one warm, one cool. I think I could actually use the powders today, but I am still hesitant. I can spray them with alcohol first, they don’t seem to smell bad and there’s no mold or off-ness going on. But I also have new blushes that I know won’t give me a rash so you know I’ll go for those…
I left these untouched just to show how these palettes held up over the years. Yeah, they’re a mess, they probably got a little banged up during the move and of course with my daily use. Companies seem to know better than to have powders and lip glosses in the same section now.
The classic lipsticks had black and silver striped packaging. I covered Celebrity Meltdown is this post. I also wore Marcia, Marica, Marcia and I just found Mauvie Star. Wow did it get old and change color! It’s completely gold just like my Nars Christina lipstick. It was a reddish color before, and now looks like a gold pickle. I have lipsticks that have gone fuzzy, and I had never seen a complete color change. I’m sure it tastes rancid, you couldn’t pay me to put this on my mouth. Which is why I am glad Too Faced came out with newer versions of the old lipsticks!
I purchased Marcia, Marcia, Marcia from the 20th anniversary collection. While I cannot find my original, I know that it’s very different from the old one. Even if I could find the 2000 version of the lipstick, it would probably be completely gold or something cause it’s 18 years old. I think it’s appropriate for the modern color to not be exactly the same. They would want to update it for a fit the modern aesthetic. This seems to be brighter and pinker than the old version. I think the old version had a shot of gold, while this one obviously has a blue shift. I was into frosty pinky brown shades with gold shimmer back then.
This Celebrity Meltdown is a little more recent, I had the silver banded ones back in the day. But I’m sure if I did still have one, it would have gone bad and changed color. I covered this color in a previous post.
I definitely remember making my very first Too Faced purchase at Sephora in 1999 when it was at 1 Stockton St in San Francisco. It was this very nail polish:
The nail polish had really cool packaging with the classic Too Faced eyes in a vintage inspired bottle. They don’t make nail polishes anymore. This was a color I wouldn’t typically wear then or even now, which is why I chose it. I’ve owned a load of nail polishes since jr high, and this sparkly color wasn’t something I had in my collection.
As for products I cannot find, therefore don’t have photos of….
I used to have the single eyeshadow in Heiress, a sparkly pink. I was obsessed with buying color and kept looking at it while in Sephora. Then one day, I finally bought it. I was a poor student and I couldn’t just spend $16 on single eyeshadows. And yes, the packaging looks like boobs. They eventually changed the packaging to have a clear window. (Makes it way easier to find in your stash if you have multiple colors.)
I can’t find this in my stash to save my life! I remember looking for a particular color in Sephora that I ended up buying on Amazon. I believe one side was a shimmery pink/gold mix and the other a glossy hot pink. I also remember it being scented like fruit punch.
These Natural Eyes palettes aren’t as old as the previous items I’ve shown. I consider them a different generation. But as of now, they are also considered old. They have since repackaged this twice and changed two of the colors.
I started wearing the Naturals in 2009. Yeah to me, that isn’t that long ago, even though it was 9 years ago. I hit pan of 4 of the colors and re-purchased the palette. That’s pretty hard to do nowadays now that we own like 500 eyeshadow palettes! But back then, I was a lot more frugal and the internet wasn’t shoving new stuff down my throat.
I also have The Naked Eyes palette, but also cannot find it. I guess I haven’t seen it since I moved because I’m pretty sure all of my palettes are organized! But I have linked you a photo of the inside to jog your memory. It’s a cooler toned neutral palette and I remember doing a lot of cut creases with this.
Just for fun I took a collective photo of every Too Faced palette I own (er, minus the Naked Eyes Palette). I neglected to get the holiday fairy ones and I regret that because they are so pretty! I don’t know what the quality of the makeup was like, but I love fairy art. The Chocolate Gold palette and Gingerbread palette are both on my to-get list. Now that I see my flat lay, I remember that I have the White Chocolate Chip in my travel case. That one is no good though, I’d rather pack my larger and better pigmented palettes for a trip.
Out of all the palettes I own, my favorite one is the Semi Sweet Chocolate Bar palette. Looking at how I pretty much emptied the Natural Eyes palette, that may qualify as a favorite too!
My least favorite is Joy To The Girls. It was on clearance and I thought I was buying the larger palette from the same holiday collection. So not only did I buy the wrong one (it was cheap though) it is also not impressive with pigmentation. It’s just disappointing in quality, not up to par with their permanent palettes, and takes up a lot of space.
I would absolutely love it if Too Faced brought back a revamped Quickie Chronicles collection. Definitely with some sort of protector if they choose to include lip glosses or any cream product because nobody wants eyeshadow dust all over their lip gloss! It would definitely be cool to have an all-in-one travel palette. I am constantly on the lookout for the perfect one. But for now I guess packing 8 palettes will have to do…
Now if we could only convince Too Faced to have better booths and freebies at conventions. At BeautyCon LA and Gen Beauty SF they gave us a tiny little sample of their Hangover Spray and no freebie at the booth. You can read my rant on my Instagram. 30% off their products is great, but it would have been cooler to have previews of their upcoming collection for us to swatch at the booth, even if they weren’t ready to sell it. It’s a little something to give us bloggers and influencers to hype about. As you can tell by the photo, no one lined up for their booth after finding out they didn’t give out a free gift.
*I know the year 2000 shouldn’t be associated with the word “vintage”. But I don’t own cosmetics from decades I wasn’t alive in. Besides, it’s a search term interested readers will use.
Disclaimer:
Too Faced wasn’t exactly giving away PR palettes to beauty bloggers for free 15-20 years ago. I bought everything here myself. Too Faced definitely is not paying me to make this post.
