It’s time for another weekly International Beauty Report! This week, I did some field work in Italy! While I rang in the New Year in Rome, I scoped out the beauty scene. Just in observation, I noticed that many young (20s) Italian women don’t wear very much makeup and seem to prefer a natural look. Older women (40s and on), however, were far more made up, sometimes with ridiculously thick eyeliner and outrageous colors! The big beauty item in Italy seems to be perfume, as there are perfume shops everywhere that carry most of the typical European brands like Chanel, D&G and Dior (see awesome Chanel No. 5 Graffiti found in Florence above). I did also find a few fun cosmetics lines in my quest for Italian beauty!

First up are these Fred Farrugia makeup palette sets, sold at Sephora stores in Europe. You buy the pieces separately for 20€ (roughly $30 USD with the terrible exchange rate right now!), and then snap them into the palette (15€), which has the cover and a mirror. There are concealers, eyeshadows and lip colors, so you can have an entire makeup kit in a compact that you can customize each day depending on what you need! I thought that it was a great idea, because I know that I don’t always use the same colors every day, so it would be helpful to carry around just those that I need for touch ups! Unfortunately, Sephora stores in the U.S. don’t carry the line. Bummer.

Next, in Florence, I stumbled into Kiko Cosmetics, an Italian cosmetics company that has tons of skincare and makeup items for reasonable prices! The store had a really trendy vibe, and a lot of the products were 5€ or under! Totally within my budget. I picked up two lip gloss pencils (remember how much I love those Lipstick Queen ones?) for about eight bucks a piece, and now I’m afraid that my mom is going to steal the pink one because it is so sheer, glossy and pretty! I also tried out a cool eyeshadow that comes crammed into the end of the tube so that it coats the brush when you close it. I bought a shimmery light pink color that works great under my brow! Again, this line isn’t carried in the U.S., but if you’ll be visiting Italy, Spain or Germany (or if you live there!), be sure to stop in for a little beauty indulgence.