Last time on Currently Obsessed:

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 don’t go often to Queens Center Mall because getting there takes fooooooooooreeeeeeeveeeeeeeer (even though my sis says it doesn’t take THAT long) by subway and I’d have to pay parking by the hour if I drove and didn’t get to park curbside. But after finding out that there was now a Kiko Milano store there, I had to suck up the grumbling about the long subway commute, for the sake of getting ahold of the 511 Luscious Cream Lipsticks there.

I called the store during my lunch break and asked them to put a hold on 10 pieces of 511 for me. Excessive? Hardly. I wasn’t gonna make the same mistake I did with the 510.

After work, I made the long journey to Queens Center Mall. The length of time it took to get there from my workplace felt like I was on my way to Mount Doom to get rid of The One Ring. But that was just the first obstacle I had to deal with. The second one? The long walk from the subway into the mall itself in below-freezing temperature.

I made a beeline for the closest mall entrance to me, dodging cars along the way. And then I had to map out Kiko’s location inside the mall – turns out I ended up on the wrong side of the mall. And Friday nights meant Queens Center would be packed with shoppers. LOTS of shoppers.

Thankfully, Queens Center Mall had a crosswalk that made sure I didn’t have to play Frogger (it’s an old videogame. See here) and duke it out with the cold weather at the same time. I passed by poor husbands and boyfriends who had to sit while waiting for their wives and/or girlfriends to finish shopping and, on occasion, watch their kids screaming at the top of their lungs and run all over the place. The sight made me a little grateful about being single again.

Eventually, I found Kiko’s spot in the mall. What I wasn’t expecting was that they had situated themselves right across from Sephora. Holy cow, I thought to myself. Kiko Milano’s really trying to challenge Sephora!

Like the store in Kings Plaza, Kiko Milano was fairly empty, which would have surprised me if it weren’t for the fact that Sephora was right across. But it meant that I could talk to a sales associate with more ease. So I asked to see the 511s that I requested to be put on hold.

The sales associate behind the counter looked puzzled. I explained that I had called the store earlier and asked to reserve 10 tubes of the 511, so she checked behind the counter and the back room. Nope. Turns out that there were no 511s on hold. At all.

Outside, I was disappointed. Inside, I was screaming:

ಥ_ಥ

So I made a beeline for the Luscious Cream Lipstick section, hoping that they weren’t out of stock on the 511. Thankfully, they weren’t, so my long commute wasn’t in vain. I grabbed them all (they only have 5 available at a time) and went around the store looking for more stuff to buy. They replenished the 511s and I grabbed those as well, determined to walk away with the 10 pieces that I had asked to be placed on hold. I also took more of the Temptress Lip Kits since they were there – they were limited edition so at some point, Kiko was gonna stop making them.

By the time I rang up my items, more people decided to check out Kiko Milano, which I saw as a good sign. With cosmetics, people are so used to the whole you-get-what-you-pay-for and expensive = better quality.

Hopefully, Kiko Milano will destroy that misconception.

On the next entry, I’m going to display ALL of my Kiko Milano purchases to end the Currently Obsessed segment on Kiko Milano. Trust me, I could go on and on and on about my other trips to other Kiko Milano stores, but I think I already demonstrated my obsession with the company enough lol.