Hello everyone! Welcome to the first entry of BBA 2016 and to kick things off, I’m starting the new year and direction of the site with Currently Obsessed, a series of entries where I present a makeup product(s) or company that I’ve come to love at this point in time. And right now, I am lovin’ Kiko Milano cosmetics.

And by lovin’, I mean repeated trips to the store and just grabbing at every product that I had to have. Did I mention that Kiko Milano is currently having a 50% off sale on their site? Clickety-click here (the link is US-based so be sure to select your country at the bottom of the page, as Europe seems to have access to more goodies than the US > . >).

If you haven’t heard of Kiko Milano, you most likely live outside Europe because it’s a cult-favorite cosmetic brand there and they’ve recently hit the US in a bid to expand their reach (and hopefully give Sephora a run for their money).

Kiko Milano is an Italian-based cosmetic company that’s been around since 1999 (according to their website) and according to an article I once read, the company’s products are given away as goodies during Fashion Week in Milan. And people hoard them like crazy. But that wasn’t what got me interested in Kiko Milano – in fact, I stumbled across the company by accident.

You see, I was searching for a lip exfoliator to finally do something about my cracked, dry, chapped lips. Teeth and saliva aren’t exactly ideal for that task and seeing deep grooves dug into my lipstick finally convinced me to do something. So I consulted Google for lip exfoliators. At first, I was considering getting an E.L.F. lip exfoliator, but after reading angry reviews about its quality, I had to keep digging for one that fit my preference: it had to be in a tube. I wasn’t into the whole in-a-jar casing because I wanted to be able to exfoliate my lips on the fly and I felt like having a jar of lip exfoliator rather than a lipstick tube of it would be a pain in the ass.

That’s when I came across Kiko Milano’s Lip Scrub lip exfoliator. I was a little hesitant because I’ve never heard of the brand or the company so I figured it was one of those cheap, sketchy companies that are on the prowl for suckering women into buying counterfeit or bad cosmetics. But what prompted me to try was the fact that it was the only alternative I could find to E.L.F’s and that, surprisingly, they had a store set up at a resurrected shopping center close to where I live.

Now THAT got me interested – rather than be forced to take a chance and buy the product online, I could check out the product in the store. Kiko Milano had to be one helluva company to choose the revived shopping center (it was frequented by ratchets and dumb high school kids) as a location to set up shop. I picked a day to take a bus ride to the mall after work and I couldn’t help but get excited as it drew near.

To feel more confident about my decision, I decided to check out Kiko Milano’s US website. Turns out they have shops set up in other counties and states and that they’ve been there for some time! Not only that, some beauty blogs and vids praised their visit(s) to Kiko Milano stores.

I couldn’t help but wonder: What could Kiko Milano possibly offer me that Sephora couldn’t?

My answer came when I took the long bus ride and made my way to the store.