The Price of Beauty

{Perfect match: my new cardigan from Gap, and OPI's "Red Lights Ahead... Where?"}

A good friend of mine, Sthephany (who lived in Sweden for almost two years and has since returned to Canada), recently wrote a post on her blog about the price of beauty which I completely related to, after having shopped around Hong Kong for beauty products. When I used to work as a public servant, I got comments from my female co-workers all of the time on my nails since I took very good care of them, mostly with the help of my extensive OPI nail polish collection. I took doing my nails very seriously, so much so that I used to often tell my fiancé that I couldn't spend time with him because I had a date with my nail polish. When I moved to Hong Kong, I was able to pack a small fraction of my nail polish collection but the inner, obsessive me was itching for more. So, off I went to search for new colours that I could purchase to appease my need to have pretty, glossy nails. Finding OPI was not a problem, at all, but the price, on the other hand, was less than ideal (for me). 

{Pictured: Essie's "Mint Candy Apple" looking very much like Tiffany blue. Essie is a brand of nail polish that I have yet to find in Hong Kong}

One thing about me is that although I love to shop, I also love deals (I always first make a beeline towards the sale section in stores). Back home, I took advantage of Trade Secrets and their offer to subtract 15% from your purchase should you buy two or more OPI products. The only deal that I could find on OPI products in Hong Kong, which cost $132 HKD each (this translates to $16.92 CDN at the current exchange rate), was Mannings' offer to "Buy 2, Get 1 Free". With this, I would have had to buy three products for the price of $264 HKD which, after being divided by three ($88 HKD/product), and then divided by 7.8 (every $1 CDN = ~$7.8 HKD) still meant that I was paying $11.28 CDN for each bottle of polish when the original MRP at Trade Secrets is only $9.95 CDN. Although it's only a couple of dollars' difference, with the amount of nail polish that I buy, those couple of dollars will eventually add up. As my friend Sthephany suggested, I will just have to stock up when I am home in Canada (or have a care package of beauty products sent to me in Hong Kong).