For many of us, we remember the joy of pocket money burning a hole in our pocket as we made our way into town as a teenager to find the latest products. Now we’re all grown-up we’re rather more savvy on what to spend our hard earned cash on.
In our gorgeous historic city of Norwich, we’re spoilt for choice when it comes to shopping. We have an impressive retail sector that is widely hailed as one of the best shopping destinations in the country. And it’s easy to see why. Norwich has an excellent range of fantastic independent shops and department stores, including our famous Jarrold department store, which was founded in 1770 and has a huge variety of different makeup brands in their cosmetics and perfume department.
Jarrold, on London Street, has a MAC counter where the staff are always very happy to help you with any queries about their products and how to apply them. They’ve also got Charlotte Tilsbury, Benefit, Bobbi Brown, Chanel, Clinique, Clarins, Dior, La Mer and a Laura Mercier counter to name a few of the brands available. All the staff on these counters will help you with information about their products, give you a makeover and free samples. These are all fantastically well-known brands with excellent reputations for quality, so if you’re looking for high-quality products then Jarrold’s should be at the top of your list when you next go shopping for cosmetics. Impressively, take a look around the store inside with google maps!
John Lewis also offers a huge array of cosmetics brands all under one roof. Their location on All Saints Green in Norwich’s city centre means that it’s easy to visit on any shopping trip. As with Jarrold’s, John Lewis stocks all the leading high-quality cosmetics brands, from Clinique to Clarins and many more, but with a few extra brands thrown in for good measure, such as Elemis and Liz Earle. Every single one of John Lewis’ staff is extremely helpful. They’re also very happy to give advice and style guidance, as well as demonstrating the products on you and showing you how to apply them yourself. Samples are also very willingly given if you need to mull over your choice a bit longer.
In the popular Intu Chapelfield shopping Centre, you’ll find Kiko, opened in Norwich in 2017, an Italian professional cosmetics brand that features a range of cutting-edge makeup and they say they are committed to a single objective: to allow all women to treat themselves to the most innovative cosmetics without having to sacrifice their budget. They feel they can rewrite the rules of cosmetics, that quality doesn’t necessarily mean high prices.
Boots, a ‘go to’ for most of us, features two large stores in Norwich – one each in the two major indoor shopping centres, Chapelfield and Castle Mall. Boots is the UK’s largest pharmacy-led health and beauty chain with around 2500 stores. Interestingly today at the time of writing today, (Monday 24th June), Boots has become the first national pharmacy, health and beauty retailer in the UK to move to unbleached (brown) paper carrier bags. Boots in Chapelfield features brands such as Clarins, Clinique, Estée Lauder, Lancôme, Liz Earle, Max Factor, NYX, No7, No7 Foundation Match Made Service, Sleek & Smashbox.
House of Fraser in the Merchants Hall of the Chapelfield Shopping Centre has an enormous range of cosmetics brands on offer. They have all the leading cosmetics brands, again the likes of like Bobbi Brown, Chanel, Clarins, Clinique, Dior and many, many more. They will happily give you samples of anything that they have in stock and, if they have the time, they will talk you through how to apply the products yourself. Makeovers are dependent on how busy the store is as well as the staff available on the day.
Debenhams, on Oxford Place, has a similar approach to makeovers as John Lewis in that it is dependent on their staff and how busy the store is at the time of your visit. They will, however, give samples of anything that they have in stock. They have a wide range of cosmetics brands in store from all the leading names. These are all high-quality brands with an excellent reputation in the industry and staff are happy to help offer a few words of wisdom.
Both Debenhams and House of Fraser have customer loyalty cards where you can accrue points on your purchases to put towards reducing the cost of later purchases.
At the other end of the pricing spectrum, there’s Superdrug on St Stephens Street as well as in the Merchants Hall of the Chapelfield Shopping Centre. In both their stores they have a fabulous Brow & Lash Bar as well as a Nail Bar and even offer ear piercing. They also have a range of vegan cosmetics, B by Superdrug, RevolutionPro, Solait by Superdrug, Gosh Cosmetics and Superdrug’s own brand are all vegan friendly. They also stock well-known high street brands like Barry M, L’Oréal Paris, Max Factor, MUA, NYX Professional Makeup, Revlon, Rimmel and Real Techniques. These are all brands with a good reputation, despite infrequent use by professional makeup artists, and they are reasonably priced, meaning you can afford to experiment with different colours and products more than you might in some of Norwich’s other shops. Staff at both stores in Norwich are very happy to help with samples and makeovers, time allowing, as the store as a whole seems to be undergoing a sea change at the moment. They’ve just launched their very own podcast called The Beauty Of It All, which is available on Acast, iTunes and Spotify. Their podcast sets out to give you all the beauty advice you could ever ask for and they handle a range of issues, from skincare and vegan beauty to fame and transitioning.
Many of the staff and managers in the beauty department of shops like Jarrold’s, John Lewis and Debenhams have trained with the Norwich School of Hair & Beauty and are qualified makeup artists who have completed our beauty courses. Some also work as makeup artists for private occasions such as weddings and proms outside their working hours. This makes them the perfect people to ask for any advice about issues relating to applying your own makeup.
Did you find this article useful? Why not take a look at our makeup courses available to train to become a makeup artist or browse all our courses from The Norwich School of Hair & Beauty.
