PREPARE TO LAUNCH: Benefit Roller Lash

Back in December, we got the MOST exciting email inviting us to a press launch by Benefit and Elle UK, all about an amazing new product that launches TODAY. We were sent the world’s most beautiful invitations and directed, a bit incongruously, to a big van in Marble Arch.

Well, if anyone can do up a big van, it’s Benefit and Elle. The first thing we saw was an enormous fluffy dog with a pink bow on his head (his name was MOOMIN), so it was off to a pretty great start, but then we got inside and I’m pretty sure I nearly wet myself. They’d done it up in the style of a 50s beauty salon, with little tables full of gorgeous little cakes, the most amazing big lights shaped like old dome-style hairdryers, and pink champagne everywhere. I wanted to move in.

We ran into some very exciting people we’d met (/seen from afar) before, including Elle UK’s editor Lorraine Candy and the lovely Lisa from Benefit, who recognised Poppy’s hair (it’s super useful like that), and also got to meet a few others who’d been invited to the launch. Then, when the wonderful Elle people had finally managed to make us shut up, it started.

Maggie and Annie Ford Danielson are the daughters of Jean Ford, one of the founders of Benefit. They are so tall and beautiful it kind of hurts to look at them. Their legs are longer than my whole body. They work as the brand’s Global Beauty Authorities, and there they were, standing in front of us. In Marble Arch. In a van. With a dog outside.

It was a bit surreal. We had some more pink champagne to help us cope.

Maggie and Annie started by explaining a bit about the process for developing a new product at Benefit – it’s pretty long haul, with years and years of testing between the concept and the launch of the product itself (which – are you taking notes? – is TODAY). They explained that after the huge success that has been the lovely They’re Real!, they wanted to create a new mascara, but
one that offers something new and mad and different.

Benefit Roller Lash: a mascara that curls your eyelashes.

They took us through the different design changes – a LOT of design changes – to the brush (they had a very large replica for us to look at, that looked a teensy bit like an, ahem, personal massage device), and formula changes that they went through. I was most interested in the level of detail Benefit go into in their product development – everything has a reasoning behind it; everything about the product is designed to fit in with the overall impression they want it to make. It’s very clever, and very intimidating, and very cool.

As Benefit and Elle UK are very kindly sending us some of these mascaras to review properly, I won’t speak too much about the product itself here, but what I will say is this: Benefit can sure back their shit up. I was sure it would be a good mascara, because Benefit know how to make a mascara, but as they were describing what the product would do I couldn’t help but feel sceptical, because it sounded like WITCHCRAFT.

And it probably is witchcraft, but it’s excellent, scientific witchcraft and I was so, so impressed.

Are you keen to get your hands on Benefit’s new offering? Keep an eye out for our full review, coming this Tuesday!

N xx

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