You’re not a British girl unless you owned all of these beauty products in the 2000s

Being a British girl in the mid ’00s was a never-ending hunt for the perfect shade of eyeshadow and Zoella was our cult leader. Every time she dropped a new haul or get ready with me, you could hear the rumblings of hundreds of thousands of teenage girls dragging their mums to Superdrug for the new Sleek palette. It was an absolutely unhinged era.

So, in honour of the products still congealing in the back of our Muji storage and polka-dotted makeup bags almost a decade later, here are the top ten products which have 2000s British girl written all over them:

1. Collection lasting perfection concealer

Credit where credits due, this stuff stuck like cement. Just what we needed for our teenage acne. Probably used two tubes a year for my entire early adult life. God bless Zoella for bringing this Mac creamy concealer dupe into the lives of a nation.

2. Maybelline dream matte mousse

There was absolutely nothing dreamy about this product. This foundation clung to every pore, spot, crease and crevice it could find. It was so unflattering and did the exact opposite of what foundation should do and yet we all bought it over and over again, in many different orange shades. Horror.

3. Rimmel stay matte pressed powder

 

Why the actual hell-on-earth fuck did/does this have a plastic lid?? Every time you took it anywhere (and we took it everywhere) it wound up smashed to smithereens at the bottom of your bag. Blackberry keys, school diary, lunch-break apple— nothing was safe from the powdery smear and broken plastic. A real daily struggle.

4. Boujois Chocolate Bronzer

I can smell the sweet stench of this just from looking at the picture. WHY did we want our faces to smell like Cadburys?! This is how you really know brands started marketing to children. Something very sassy about the magnetised snap of the book-style cover, though.

5. Maybelline baby lips

No notes. These were vibey as fuck and still are.

6. Rimmel Kate Moss lipstick in 107

Potentially Zoella’s most iconic product recommendation of. all.time. was the Rimmel Kate Moss lipstick in 107. They might have made it in collaboration with Britain’s most famous supermodel but it became a die hard fan fav because of Zoella. This and a winged-eyeliner look? Most popular girl in the common room. End of.

7. Nars laguna bronzer

A Tanya Burr go to, Nars laguna bronzer is – let’s get real – still a staple. Also had us laughing our 14-year-old head off that their blushers were called deep throat, orgasm and bumpy ride. A product which terrified parents everywhere x

8. Maybelline 24 hour colour tattoo in on and on bronze

A Mac woodwinked dupe that had the consistency of mortar. Seriously, you put this stuff on at 8AM and you could fall asleep on your end of A-levels exams holiday to Ayia Napa in the pool the following morning and it still wouldn’t have budged. Creasing? Never heard of her.

9. Sleek eyeshadow palette in au naturel

You had to put Sleek eyeshadows on before your foundation so you could wipe the endless overspill off your cheeks before doing your skin. Lest you looked like a clown. I have no idea where we actually thought we were going but the smokey eye phenomenon escaped no one.

10. Theeeee Zoella makeup bag

One day this will be framed in a museum as anthropologists try and understand what civilisation was like in 2014 Britain. Academics will be baffled for generations to come.

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Featured image credit via Zoella Beauty