Finally Sephora

Recently and finally, the beauty giant Sephora has opened its doors in the Western-most Canada.

After years of hunting down Sephora stores while traveling or endlessly waiting for online orders to arrive (Sephora can take as long as three weeks), I have the option of simply walking in and choosing from a number of cult favourites and otherwise hard to come by products. Hooray!! Two stores have opened in Lower Mainland, one in Coquitlam Centre and one in Pacific Centre on July 10^th. Metrotown will be opening one in the fall. All who know me also know of my addiction to the store.

They would be surprised that I was not standing in the line up downtown Vancouver at 9 am, July 10^th; you know the one that snaked out of the mall's doors and around the corner of the building. The one, beautiful Vancouverites--girls and boys alike-- braved for two hours just to get into Sephora's door. I waited until the next day, Saturday, so that I may experience this historic moment with my best friend. Fully worth it, we were third in line, half an hour before the store opened. Three hours later, spent and happily carrying bags full of new goodies, we exited the store.

Sephora offers plethora of brands such as Ole Henriksen, Ojon, Fresh, my personal favourite Korres, and many others. The beauty experts, fully trained, are waiting to help you choose the right product or offer a makeover. Many of the brands they carry were previously available to us only online. Keep in mind that the stores still only carry a small percentage of what is available through their website www.sephora.com . Sephora' conveniently located stores now offer me quick access to my favourite things, without the travel or wait. Have you checked it out yet?

As local beauty junkies fully know, Sephora is not the first beauty shop in Vancouver to carry some these lines. Beauty Mark in Yaletown has been operating for years and is still worth the gander. Aside from carrying almost the full line of Ole Henriksen, John Masters and Stila--which has recently been pulled from the Holt Renfrew shelves-- among others, they offer an array of funky jewellery, under things, bags, etc. Another store, Beauty Bar, similarly operates in Kits on West 4^th. Both of these have been my haunts for the unusual and the effective for many years. But I live outside of Vancouver and so in order to shop there I had to travel of over an hour each way. With two and a half kids, a husband and school work, some days that was an impossible task.

With Coquitlam Sephora, new age has dawned.