As I hinted in an earlier post, there’s a new cosmetic brand available in Manila that had us in quite a tizzy because of its affordable products and oh-so-colorful make-up collections: BYS. I was lucky enough to have been invited to their event at the Seda Hotel in Bonifacio High Street few weeks ago, and I had fun experimenting with the numerous traincases of brightly hued liners, lipsticks and eyeshadows. You can imagine what happened—beauty bloggers immediately took to it like kids at Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory! Some of us were joking that we shouldn’t have bothered getting made up that day—we could’ve just gone straight to the event and put on a whole face from the array of BYS products, haha.

Kira trying on a pinkish lipstick

As for myself, my daily face is pretty basic and I usually just wear eye liner and lip/cheek tint. And of course, my eyebrow kit, as my eyebrows take up about 50% of my daily primping time. Not to say that I’m not game into trying really loud, outrageous looks—I would love to if I had to the ocassion or an outfit to match (and if I weren’t always in a hurry). So BYS’ line of neon colors really fascinated me, because I like splashes of color in my ensembles. I just never thought to try them on my eyelids before.

Because my face was so bare, it allowed me some room to play with the products laid out before us. I was first drawn to the matte red lipstick. It was love at first sight! The color instantly got my attention, but after wearing it a while, I was getting a lot of compliments about it and I found it quite long-wearing.

See how nicely matte and smooth the lip color looks like? I don’t normally wear red lippies with a cool undertone, but I thought this one looked pretty nice on me. I found BYS’ lipsticks to be a little hard, like a smooth crayon. It doesn’t look like the type to melt in its case (if you happen to leave your kikay kit in the car one blazing Manila afternoon). But what I liked about them is that you can build on the color. It went on smooth, even though I usually have dry lips (which is why I don’t wear lipstick everyday). Of course, that was with a thin coat of lip balm.

The next thing I played with was eyeliner. My everyday liner is a soft, dark brown from Prestige. I miss wearing black liner, so I tried out the one from BYS. I lined my upper lids, the outer corners and a little bit of underneath, extending from the corners (my attempt to make my eyes look bigger and rounder). Then I played around with the gold eyeliner, lining the inner corners of my eyes with it.

I also tried on the eyelash mascara. (Yes, I know, I am currently trying to grow out my eyebrows, so I only shape them with brow pencil and brow mascara.)

I was so absorbed playing with the make-up that Michelle found me amusing. No, I didn’t go overboard with the colors as much as I wanted to, because I was in a strictly nautical outfit that had a red, blue and white color scheme, so I wanted to keep it classic. Here’s what my face looked like after play time:

I really love that matte red lippie

Liz and Kira. POC girls reunited!

Ana and Ro

The AA’s–Aisa (Pax) and AnaGon

Angela and Michelle

The lovely Liz, summery Shen and…Kool Kira (hahaha pinilit??)

This look is gold. No, really. BYS for the whole face!

Another bold, beautiful BYS look

BYS was designed and formulated in Melbourne, Australia, but they are being imported worldwide in countries such as the United States, Singapore, India, Canada, Kenya, Morroco, United Kingdom, New Zealand, New Caledonia, South Africa, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Thailand and Myanmar. They have an especially large following in Japan—the fun fashion-loving country. Not too surprising when you consider how much the Japanese love loud, colorful and wildly experimental looks!

UV reacting nail polish, P229 a pop. I’m curious about this! Will try it on my next manicure/pedicure session.

I think BYS’ strength lies in their unique collections of nail polish. They have over 400 colors, and they come in amazing variants like Scented, Glow in The Dark, Magnetic, UV Reactive, Chrome, 3D Special Effects, Neon and Matte. I have in my posession right now, a BYS UV Reactive polish and a Graffiti kind. I’m quite excited to try them and I will try to get photos (I’m not sure how I can manage that with the UV reactive kind just yet).

Have you tried BYS yet?  They’re super affordable and the variety is fantastic.  They even have mineral make-up, which I am especially curious about.  I also scored an eyeshadow palette, a couple more lip colors (including gloss) that I’m road testing right now, an eyebrow pencil, a blush and a bronzer from BYS.  If you have experience with any of these BYS products, I’d love to hear about your recommendations as I’ve yet to try all of these.

BYS is available in Watsons.

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