Previously on Currently Obsessed:

Kiko Milano proved itself to be worthy of dethroning Sephora as my go-to store for lipstick. Their Luscious Cream Lipstick’s selling price was enough for me to quit blowing $26 for every NARS Lip Crayon in Cruella in almost every Sephora I come across.

A second trip to Kiko Milano in Kings Plaza was needed. This time, my grandma and my sister tagged along – my grandma was curious to see the lipstick line that got me to babble on and on and on about it to her and my sister wanted to shop for new shoes in the Vans store in the mall.

My excitement from the first visit to Kiko Milano had doubled. I couldn’t wait to do a lipstick haul on the 510!

Instead of taking the bus, the three of us went by car. It was cheaper than having to take the bus and our grandma couldn’t walk straight without a cane. Not to mention the fact that if we took the bus, it would be rush hour and courtesy was not on commuters’ minds. And I had the mentality of a kid going to a candy store: I just wanted to go to Kiko’s already and snag MY lipsticks.

Surprisingly, Kiko Milano was empty once again. I couldn’t help but think that the shoppers who frequented Kings Plaza were more familiar with the MAC store on the 2nd floor than Kiko. Was the sign for 50% off not enough to pique people’s curiosity?

I shrugged the thought off as I went straight for my Luscious Cream 510. Except it was gone – it was like the store never had it in stock. The only thing that was left was the next shade, 511. I asked one of the sales associates in the hopes that they would have more in their stock room. They just had to! ಠxಠ

Then the sales associate told me that they were out of stock. Even worse: they were no longer getting any shipments to replenish the lost 510. She offered to clean the tester for 511, but I initially refused – I had read the article about tester makeup having fecal matter in them and I wasn’t going to chance it with the lipstick. Not even Kiko’s.

Internally, I was screaming at the news. Externally, my face was showing adorable disappointment. But the vibe I was giving screamed this:

ಥ_ಥ

I regretted not snagging more 510 tubes. The only comfort I could find in that regret was the fact that I wasn’t sure if I was going to be allergic to Kiko’s formula. But it wasn’t enough. My sister could see the disappointment all over my face so she looked around for a substitute to my eternally lost 510 shade. She ended up with swatches of various lipstick shades on her forearms as I tried to adjust to the idea of snagging the 511 as a dupe for the 510.

I couldn’t remember the shade for 510 because I hadn’t considered taking a picture at the time – I wasn’t sure if I wanted to revamp BBA, since it was the only time I took pictures of cosmetics in the box and out in full swing.

I figured I’d give 511 a try. There was already a tester for it and I thought, it’s only 1 number away from the 510. What’s the worst that could happen? Fecal matter in tester makeup be damned, SOMEONE ran off with MY LIPSTICK!

So I asked the sales associate to sanitize the 511 tube for me. I started to get nervous: what if the shade ended up badly on me? Will I end up regretting buying the 510 since I never tried it before buying it?

When I got the cleaned 511 tube, it was the moment of truth: I walked to a nearby mirror set behind the store’s 50% off advertisement (when you visit a Kiko Milano store, you’ll know what I mean) and applied the lipstick.

HO.LY. SHIT. Cue clip.

My buyer’s regret was blown to bits, along with my concern that the shade I picked was going to be unflattering. The only lipstick I had ever worn up to that point was the Revlon Colorburst Lip Butter because I wanted a lipstick that hydrated my lips and my cousin had recommended it to me. As often as I used it, my lips continued to remain cracked and kept digging grooves into the lipstick itself.

But it couldn’t compare to Kiko’s Luscious Cream Lipstick. Nope. The moment the tube touched my lips, it felt like I just rubbed silk against it. When I finished applying, my lips looked SO MUCH better than it had ever done with other lipsticks that I’ve tried – Motives and Revlon (from what I can remember).

Refusing to make the same mistake that I had done with the 510, I snagged all the 511 boxes that were on display. At that point, my sister showed me her swatched arm and I found myself leaning towards 2 shades that were similar to the 511. Unfortunately, she couldn’t remember which lip product it was. So we had to go from counter to counter, trying to match the swatch to the product and one of them was the Kiko Milano Temptress Lip Set in Passionately Red 04 (on sale for $8.90 as of this entry).

The only thing that I knew about lip sets at the time was that Kylie Jenner made a lip kit with her name on it and it was all the rage. And I didn’t know what lip liners were supposed to do, but if it was similar to my 510 and 511, I was going to buy it. So I snapped up all the Temptress Lip sets in 04 that they had and looked for the other shade on my sister’s arm that caught my eye.

Kiko has a 50% off sales section similar to the ones that serve as an outline to Sephora’s registers, enticing last-minute purchases before the customer reaches the finish line. Except they were two islands and they were just smacked right before the register, so it was kind of easy to miss if you’re tunnel visioned to pay for your items.

And it was there that my sister and I found the other shade: Intensely Lavish Lipstick 03 (I was going to look up the price point but it’s no longer available on Kiko’s US website) for $4.90 each. I snagged as many as I was willing to pay for.

My grandma (bless her heart) thought that the price point for Kiko’s lipsticks were pretty good too, so she kept asking me which shade would fit her daughter-in-law and swatched the lipsticks on her fingers, much to my annoyance. My main concern was that my aunt might have an allergic reaction to the lipsticks and since she lived overseas, there was no way to return the item if she didn’t like it.

But the finger swatching… ಥ_ಥ

I finished my haul, surprising the sales associate at the counter with the amount of lipsticks I was purchasing. The price that I paid for was in the $100-150 range and in Sephora, I would have gotten only 5 items.

You’d think that that was the end of my story with Kiko, right?

Nope.

You see, Kiko had a branch in Queens Center Mall. Cue reaction here.

(I couldn’t find the HTML version that’ll work on the site, so bear with me X _ X)