Josie Maran – fivezero

I started using cleansing oil for the first time about a year and a half ago—definitely late to the party! Silly me, I didn’t start off with a Korean brand, but with Josie Maran.

As a 30-something, my formative years were mostly in the early to mid-90s, and as a result I am strongly partial to the supermodels of that period—Shalom Harlow, Cindy Crawford, Tyra Banks, and Niki Taylor are among my favorites—and few of the modern crop do much for me. (This is how I know I’m getting old.) One model I especially adored, who was often spotted in Maybelline advertisements, was Josie Maran.

I had no idea Josie was working for Maybelline even in 2003! Here she is, albeit looking heavily Photoshopped—peddling one of my favorite vintage polish lines, Wet Shine.

Anyway, I recognized the name straight away when I saw her line of argan oil-based skincare at Sephora—Josie Maran Cosmetics was launched in 2007—and after a little review-reading, I picked up a 3-piece Argan Skincare Ritual set that came with deluxe sizes of her cleansing oil, moisturizer, and argan oil.

Ohhh-kay. Way too much haulage this month, so I really have to slow down!

I’m gonna blame the lovely Ingrid of Curly.Spring.Blossom for half of my haul, and…um, my lack of self-control my love of lipstick for the second half. And my love of a deal for the whole damn haul.

I am not normally a huge consumer of Urban Decay products, though I did have mad love for their awesome nail polish and lipstick shades back in their earlier days. YES, I wore Bruise lipstick—the version that was purple and green and frosty! (Sadly, they’ve let their nail polish division slip by the wayside…probably ever since they started changing hands among various corporations; they’re now L’Oréal-owned.) But, recently they’ve been working on collaborations with popstar Gwen Stefani, whom I’ve long admired, and it wasn’t a hard sell when Ingrid told me that Sephora was running a sale on some of the UD × Gwen Stefani collection. This was right after the Sephora VIB sale, too, in which I didn’t partake, so I somehow felt it was all right for me to splurge a little!

The first part of my haul was from Sephora (Canada), and the second half was from Urban Decay (Canada)—huge rave for them, by the way. The order came super-fast and with three great samples!