Even though most of my inspiration and knowledge of makeup comes from endless hours online, I still love to collect and read various beauty and fashion related books. It’s just nice having something tangible in my hands that I can take over to my couch (I don’t use a laptop for blogging) and read with a nice cup of hot chocolate 🙂
I have a number of books, but for today I wanted to do a comparison between two brand specific ones. Bobbi Brown’s Makeup Manual and Napoleon Perdis’ Forever Flawless.
Bobbi Brown Makeup Manual
* Absolutely love that the first part of the book focuses on healthy eating and habits to achieve beauty. An essential and often neglected part of “beauty”.
* Gives a comprehensive guide on skin care.
* Each chapter focuses on a specific part of the face, eyes, lips, etc.
* Tutorials provide step by step images illustrating makeup application.
* Includes tutorials and tips regarding makeup for special occasions and various age groups.
* Provides advice and guidance for makeup artists wishing to become pro and break into the industry.
* Wish it talked more about Bobbi Brown products, when viewing some tutorials I would have liked some actual product recommendation.
Napoleon Perdis Forever Flawless: How to look your best at every age
* Very heavy product promotion, but does give comprehensive details on how each product should be used.
* Gives a solid coverage of tools and skin care options, easy to understand for beginners.
* Each chapter focuses on a specific part of the face, including a Napoleon Perdis product recommendations.
* The second half of the book gives very detailed information on techniques and products suitable for a wide range of age groups, including well crafted tutorials with before and after photos. Great start guide for budding makeup aritsts.
As you can see whilst both books are essentially guides on how to apply makeup, they also come from different angles and ultimately which book you select depends on your needs. Still I’ve glad to have purchased both books, if I had to choose one I might lean more towards the Bobbi Brown book just because I felt it had more content, and less product images / blank pages than the Napoleon Perdis book did and I enjoyed the step by step images. But keep in mind the Bobbi Brown book cost about double that of the Napoleon Perdis book.
I’m sorry, I’m not sure if both books are still available in store. I believe I paid about $50AU for Bobbi Brown and around $27ish for the Napoleon Perdis (which Sefie kindly had signed for me!!)
Thank you so much for doing this post, I don’t own any beauty books but would like to get a couple and have been so overwhelmed by how many are out there that I don’t know which books will useful to me – and since they can be quite expensive it’s great to read what your thoughts are.
My pleasure!! I never know how helpful my posts are, so it’s very reassuring to know that people find them useful 🙂
Thank you sooo much for this post! It’s very helpfull.
Now I know which one I should get first!
My pleasure! I’m glad you found it useful 😀
Did you know that Francois Nars has now put out a book too? 😀
http://pixiwoo.blogspot.com/2011/05/makeup-your-mind-express-yourself.html
😀 You hate my wallet, don’t you? *wants to read it*
I don’t hate it, I just don’t want you to stretch it too much by keeping too much money in there! 😛