Beauty Bohemia - Indie Goodness Emporium

Being a lover of indie cosmetics who happens to live in Australia can really suck. We have our own local superstars, the most well known being Femme Fatale Cosmetics. But there are SO MANY brands based in the US that we just can't access without paying a huge chunk of money on postage for every order.

But now there's a new player in town, who aims to bring all the shiny, geeky, cult goodies to us here in the antipodes. It's Beauty Bohemia to the rescue!



Beauty Bohemia is run by Omega, who has been blogging over at Fashion Adjacent for a good long while now. Before she was a blogger, Omega was heavily involved in the Goth scene, and if anyone knows quality makeup, it's a hardcore Goth. The range of brands Omega has collected in the one site is truly impressive, and as well as indie heavyweights like Concrete Minerals and Medusas Makeup, it also includes my personal favourites right now Hello Waffle and Shiro Cosmetics. But the brand that really jumped out and got a hold of my wallet is Victorian Disco Cosmetics. I've heard a lot of really great things about this brand, but unfortunately the owner has recently been struggling through a rather rough growth period. Orders have been rather significantly delayed, and I was absolutely delighted by the idea of being able to get my hands on Victorian Disco without having to spin the roulette wheel of waiting times on orders direct from the company.

To my excitement, my goodies were packaged up and sent out to me in mere days! I've gotten far too used to the extensive TAT's most smaller indie companies have, and I was absolutely blown away by the idea of ordering and having my package show up in under a week. Even better, my goodies arrived in an adorable little polka dot cosmetics bag!

As well as three shadows from Victorian Disco Cosmetics, I threw an Embalming Tube from Detrivore Cosmetics into my bundle. Detrivore Cosmetics went through a similar painful growth period to Victorian Disco Cosmetics a while back, and I haven't been able to get my hands on their incredible lip balm for far too long. However, the owner of Shiro Cosmetics picked up the Detrivore brand, so now I can get this luscious balm back on my lips where it belongs.

The Victorian Disco Cosmetics shadows I ordered are from left to right, Dobby's Socks, Neither Can Live While The Other Survives, and Ice Ice Baby. For once, I actually picked them all out based on the colours alone, since I'm not a huge Potterhead. My one quibble with Beauty Bohemia is that they currently only offer full sizes of eyeshadows. Hopefully this is something they'll be more flexible about in the future, because I've personally never used an entire full size eyeshadow, and I'd much prefer to be able to get more colours in mini sizes. I'm very happy with all the eyeshadows themselves though - the formula is nice and smooth, and they're nicely pigmented with minimal fallout.

Dobby's Socks in a lovely cool leaning brown, that goes on a bit darker than I was expecting from the swatch. These eye pictures are just Dobby's Socks all over the lid and lightly blended, so you can see how it looks on. Cool toned browns are a little unusual in the indie makeup world, so I'm excited to have such a nice one. It reminds me a lot of the base colour in Shiro's Nic Cage Raking Leaves, but without the outrageous amounts of sparkle.

 Neither Can Live While The Other Survives is listed as a duochrome, but I was a little skeptical when I did the swatches. There's KIND of a lighter purple sheen to it, but I really liked the grey base so I wasn't that fussed. But when I put it on, the duochrome jumped right out. I mean, it's not as duochrome as something like Femme Fatale, but there is a definite visible shift.

Ice Ice Baby is, rather suitably, very fun if a little trashy when overused. I wouldn't actually wear this out as a single colour look, because it's SO SPARKLY, but it would be a brilliant highlight colour. The white base is sheer enough that you could wash it over other colours or blend it over the browbone, and the sparkle has enough of a variation between silver, white, and blue to keep it interesting.

Overall, I'm super glad I got to get my hands on these pretties in a timely fashion. I'm sure eventually Victorian Disco will work out their distribution kinks, and my wallet will be ready and waiting. But in the meantime, I'll definitely be chilling over and Beauty Bohemia, building a never ending wishlist.

Beauty Bohemia carries AFK Cosmetics, Concrete Minerals, Detrivore Cosmetics, Espionage Cosmetics, Glamour Doll Eyes (who I reviewed here), Hello Waffle, Medusa's Makeup, Notoriously Morbid, Shiro Cosmetics, and many many more. They also offer free shipping within Australia for orders over $25, and free shipping for orders outside Australia for orders over $50.