Buying Beauty Abroad: Kiko Milano is Cheap, Cheerful and Very Colourful

Kiko Milano store at Westfield, London

With prices for shadows starting at just £3 in Kiko Milano's London branch in Westfield Shepherds Bush, it's a pricepoint that's absolutely designed to sucker you in and keep you browsing the hundreds of shades, finishes and textures on offer across what's a massive makeup, skincare and beauty tools range.  I did try to get a few iPhone shots of the displays, which are gorgeously colourful and really inspiring to browse, but was stopped by the assistants - gah.

It's not all super-cheap by any means - powders are £15, foundations around the same - but there is enough at very accessible rates to make this brand worth a big rummage if you happen to be in a country where there's a stockist.

It first caught my eye in Rome a good few years ago now but I didn't buy then - dang! - and since then have seen loads of raves for its polishes on tons of European blogs. As an Italian company, it's got a foothold there and you can also find it in Germany, Spain and Portugal, apparently. The Westfield store is the only UK branch as far as I know, and this Inglot-meets-Catrice-with-a-dash-of-NYX would do extremely well here too if someone was to open a store, I'm reckoning.

So, what did I pick up? Two of the £3 shadows made it into my basket as did a coral blusher and a orange/red lipstick. Yeah, I have about 56,000 other comparable products but when I'm exploring a new-to-me brand I tend to buy comfort zone products as they provide a real point of comparison for critiques.

Eyeshadows in 117 and 165

For the money, these are really decent. Nice strong pigmentation and big 3g pan sizes on the shadows plus absolutely tons of choice in shade and finish makes this a total no-brainer if you're near a branch; definitely a great place to stock up on a few new colours at a very pocket-friendly price. The lack of shade names on the pans will irk some (though they seem to be named on the Kiko website) and packaging isn't the nicest, no, but hey, for the money I won't quibble.  If I was to be really pernickity I'd say they're a little powdery and kick up a bit but that's where judicious tapping of the excess product off your brush comes in before you apply to your eyes.

The lipstick I chose was a Mat Lipstick in 288, £5.90. There are loads of different lipstick types available but I wanted to give a full coverage, opaque one a go. Blusher is Soft Touch Blush in 103, cost £9.90, and is er, quite hard actually. Not as pigmented as the shadows - but that's fine - this is another of those very flattering peachy shades that has extremely subtle, finely milled amounts of rose gold shimmer but it's not screamingly gleamy on the cheeks - just enlivening and nice. 5g of product is included, so I'll get a good while out of this one.

And the requisite swatches. Shadow in 117 is one of those lovely antiqued shimmer shades that's lovely on its own or worked into a smokey eye, I'm always a sucker for a navy, so 165 was a safe bet. Next up is the blusher, and you can see the subtle rose gold shimmer here. Last is the lipstick - a nice bright creme shade I'll get wear out of.

My purchases came to £21.80 or about €26.50. What do you reckon: worth it or leave it?  And would you be interested in checking out this brand for yourself?