My Beautycon NYC 2018 Experience
Imagine this: three giant rooms full of everything beauty related. Each room features displays from all of your favorite brands—and all you have to do in order to get free beauty products is to take a simple photo at the displays. At the end of the day, you end up walking out with $1,000+ of makeup. Just for taking a few selfies.
Sounds like a beauty lovers heaven, right?
Well, that heaven is a reality. And it’s called Beautycon.
Two weeks ago I attended Beautycon in New York. It was my first time ever going, and I only have one regret—but we’ll get to that at the end. For now, let me share some thoughts from my piece of paradise that is called Beautycon.
Beautycon, for those of you who might not know what it is, is a 2-day festival that brings together influencers, content creators, brands, beauty lovers, and celebrities together to honor individuality, beauty, wellness, self-expression, and “staying true to oneself.” In my opinion, Beautycon is the number one festival that really celebrates the beauty community and inspires creators all over the world. Beautycon usually has 3 festivals per year. In 2018, the festivals are held in Los Angeles, New York, and London.
For more information about Beautycon and its mission, visit their website. They explain it much better than I can.
If you ever attend Beautycon, the number one thing you need to look at is the different ticket options. The tickets range from $35 to $1,999.99—and no, that’s not a typo. You can literally buy a ticket/package that costs nearly $2,000. I know that might sound outrageous, but some of the more expensive tickets usually include the hotel stay.
Personally, the ticket I got was the Hauler Package. It was $200, but included admission for both days, early entry, VIP check-in, and a “swag bag” that has over $200 worth of makeup inside.
If you’ve never gone to Beautycon before, I highly recommend that you go ahead and just purchase the Hauler Package. It was nice to get into the festival 2 hours before the general public—shorter lines, less crowded, and first dips on the freebies.
The best part about the Hauler Package is the “swag bag.” If I had to guess, I would say that the swag bag had at least $1,000 worth of products inside. And the best part? All of the products were full size. Some of the full-sized favorites in my bag were Urban Decay’s All Nighter setting spray, Olay’s Whipped moisturizer, lashes by Eyelure, Becca Cosmetic’s Ocean Jewels Eye Palette, and so much more.
Beautycon itself, as I mentioned earlier, was set up in a three-room convention center. There were displays and interactive activities from brands such as Inglot, Olay, Target Beauty, Bumble, Ponds, Anastasia Beverly Hills, MAC Cosmetics, Urban Decay, Covergirl, and tons more. At each brand’s display, there were always things like photo-ops, discounted products, samples, stations to sample makeup, and even games. It was the most Instagram-able festival I’ve ever been to—even more so than Coachella—which makes sense because the beauty industry and social media world are very dependent on each other.
In order to get the free products from brands, usually all you had to do was follow each brand on social media, take a photo at their display, and post it to Instagram or Snapchat. After you did that, you were handed your *full size* product and were on your merry way.
Tip: If you like to edit your photos beautifully before just posting to the gram, I recommend posting them on your Instagram story and taking them down afterwards. You can always repost them later on once they’re all pretty and ready to go.
While selfies were a big part of getting makeup, at some of the booths, games were involved.
My favorite game was a ring toss game at the Anastasia Beverly Hills display. Each person that played—whether they won or not—got a free product. However, there were different sized poles to toss the ring on. If you got the ring on a higher pole, you won a bigger prize. I got the ring on a medium-sized pole and was given a full-size blush trio, which would easily cost $30 in any makeup store.
If you decide to go to Beautycon (which by now, I’m guessing you want to more than you did before), and want to take a break from walking around with 30 pounds of makeup, there are panels you can watch. They had several throughout the day that included hearing from the Glam Masters talk about the show to listening to Paris Hilton explain her new beauty items. There was always something interesting to watch and learn from. I definitely learned a lot.
All and all, I highly recommend attending Beautycon. Personally, after just going one time, I can confidently say that I want to make it a tradition to go each year. As for the regret I mentioned earlier, it’s this: I wish I had gone to Beautycon years ago. I feel like I just discovered a hidden gem in the beauty industry, even though it’s one of the biggest festivals in the industry. It’s basically the beauty industry’s version of Coachella. So yeah, it’s big.
I hope you enjoyed hearing about my Beautycon experience. If you have any questions at all, please let me know. I respond quickest to DM’s on Instagram, so feel free to follow me there and start a conversation!
