Til Monday, I hadn't been to a Bath & Body Works (which always comes out as Bed, Bath & Beyond when I say it) in a long while. Why would I when I was living in NY and there was so much better to choose from?
But I am back in the 'burbs, in a different state, where Sephora offerings and other luxe department store beauty bath lines require snail mail or a drive to the not-so-nearby megamall...so mom (my new BFF) and I kept it closer to home and decided to go to the nearest non-megamall. We went to Target first. Then went to Heaven's Bakery for my obligatory 4 buttery, sugary, cinnamony (?) Snickerdoodles cookies with the crispy edges (the buttery goodness greased up the bottom of the bag. YES!). Then we walked past some ghetto no-name clothing stores (and the still-overpriced-and-yet-somehow-still-surviving Sam Goody's) to get to B&BW.
Truthfully, B&BW and "the" Target keep this "mall" from being straight up janky. Literally and figuratively, this is a tired mall. Put another way: what the poor black people get cuz they live on this side of town sort of mall. There's not even a bookstore! The Walden folded. Actually, since I've been away it's clear they've been trying to klass (that's not a spelling mistake) it up (hence the Target which used to be a decaying K-mart). I guess Target and B&BW were kind enough (smart enough? brave enough?) to open up here and they seem to be doing well despite the declasse (accent over both e's) company they keep.
Anyways, mom (and me) especially love all manner of bath and shower gels. This is the first time in a long time I've had to really pay for them. Usually I'd get them from my old job as freebies or during annual beauty sales in which the beauty department at the media property where I worked sold overflow beauty items for $1. I'd rack up and divvy stuff up later between friends and family, mostly myself though. But the high life is winding down and mom and I have recently used up all the good stuff and I am now properly appalled at paying $50 for some sugary bath salts no matter how attractive the packaging is (well, mostly, I am), so we're keeping it real middle class now. I went with her to B&BW head held high.
So APM I hadn't been in one in years (well, okay, the last time I ventured into one was at the beginning of grad school. I was glad to see it too, as it was a little bit of the suburbs in the middle of Manhattan's madness and I was quite fearful of the city then) and I'd come to think of their stuff as the epitome of "fast-food" bath products (like how Old Navy is the poor people's Gap - only everyone still shops there, including myself). Except B&BW quickly became off limits. I mean, after awhile I couldn't imagine anyone actively choosing to shop there, first? With that farm-y decor. And their employees trying to trick me into buying more of their plastic-y goods with cute lil names like Sweetpea and fill-in-the-blank Vanilla and fill-in-the-blank Berry, all of which I was to gather in a pseudo-rustic, faux apple-picking wooden basket. And those irritating aprons the employees wore. Aprons!! Like they were early 20th-century farm wives about to go churn butter or call the fam to sit down for supper (the bison Pa killed!), not that there's anything wrong with that). So I opted out. Living in the city made me a snob about how my soap should really smell.
But at the B&BW we visited, it's clear they have kicked it up so many notches for Middle America with all the new/-er/-ish product lines. 'Cept all the stuff I'm excited about is probably actually old to the company, just new to me given my self-styled beauty myopia.
Inside, it still felt familiar. It reminded me of high school, thinking I was cute shopping there (finally able to escape the tyranny of garden-variety grocery store soap). Then in college I found out everyone thought they were cute because they had products from Victoria's Secret, walking around smelling and bathing in strawberry champagne or whatever other sweet smelling artificial scents. Then, after college, everyone (me) walked around thinking they were cute and boho because they had "discovered" Carol's Daughter (their web site did not look as good back in the day) or because they were shopping at The Body Shop, keeping it fair-trade-real for the indigenous women collecting Kola nuts around the world.
Then I started working at magazines and was flung deeper into the global world of beauty bath (bath beauty?) products that cost into the triple digits. WTH!! Just mix some stuff, make it pretty, make it smell good, give it a great name, slap a high price on it then sell it to women! SOLD!! And I was in trouble with a Sephora on every freaking corner in Manhattan, (I quickly gulped the sparkling Rockadile Red Kool-Aid myself and became a beauty product junkie). And when Sephora was too packed, there was Origins (which is, what?, a "classier," more "organic" B&BW with deceptively fresher modern packaging? And there was L'Occitane, (I love boutiques but it's clear from reading this that I have a thing for retail chains too!) Origins' chi chi French cousin who gets over because anything foreign (which means Western European in this case) gets an automatic it's-gotta-be-classy pass? When all else failed there was anything to be had at Macy's when not overrun by the in and out-of-state populace.
Anyways, I said all that to say I now must pay tribute to B&BW because I (and this is the point of this post really) came across their Tutti Dolci Amaretti moisturizing souffle!! WTH!!! This stuff is out of this world! It looks delish! Like whipped frosting or something. I want to taste it, it looks so good: rich and creamy and buttery. I want to get a small dull knife and spread it all over all manner of warm pastries, like the used-to-be-tasty-and-baked-all-the-way-through Cinnabons with extra frosting circa 1996. And the scent....mmmm. Wowee! I shoulda bought two. And the jar it comes in feels heavy, which makes it seem expensive, so it's good for faux snobs like myself. Thanks B&BW!
Not-so-side-note: Really, I shouldn't talk like my Ladies Room is overflowing with all things supremely expensive (thing is I thought anything was better than B&BW (well, I also hated grocery store/drug store-bought stuff). I don't know why they became the object of scorn since I was basically primarily visiting (and shopping) at B&BW's older siblings and at their cousins. I'd admit to venturing to places (that shall remain nameless) where I bought outrageously expensive stuff. But that was a short (albeit exceedingly fun) phase I went through early on.
Today, my daily beauty regimen is likely best described as a veritable mishmash of Irish Spring, B&BW, The Body Shop, Fresh, Benefit, Aesop, L'Occitane, La Mer, Origins, H20+, Shiseido, Ole Henriksen, Bliss, Philosophy, Molton Brown, and whatever else floats my boat.
Really.
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