This week I was booked as a second to makeup artist Jamie Greenberg (whose awesome by the way) for an Avon shoot. I have to admit to confusion when I showed up to a chaotic set filled with bags upon bags of some brand called mark. I figured this chick Jamie must really love the brand. It quickly became clear, however, that the shoot was in fact for mark makeup. What?

I’ve been oblivious to the fact that Avon has carried a young, fashion-forward and fun line called mark for several years now. The quality of the product was really quite good actually and with Avon carrying 5.4% of the world’s cosmetics market, I wondered why I, and other artists and consumers I know, haven’t given this product line more attention. Talking with Jamie about it, she said she now swears by Avon skincare too.

I suppose it’s the ‘Avon lady calling ‘ stigma that had me presuming it, and other brands like Mary Kay, are just some sort of multi-level selling scam that makes most of it’s money off having reps buy a ton of stuff to unload on their friends only to find themselves desperately wondering what happened to their pink Cadillac dreams.

But as the long days progressed on a Miami Beach unpleasantly plagued by rain and cold winds, I started thinking about maybe trying to hock this stuff myself …The corporate peeps on set said all you do is pay $10 to set up an account. I called my local ‘office’ today and while it’s not quite that gloriously easy, it’s not a marketing pyramid either. You do have to purchase printed materials and samples separately and the availability of products changes every two weeks to keep you having to buy the newest ‘campaign’ materials. They also don’t allow you to buy any keywords for your website, to be sure to keep their web customers coming directly to the company itself. But other than that, it wasn’t scary at all.

The clothes are cute and the makeup extremely solid for the price so I’m thinking about it. My favorites were the cream shadows (must be coming out later, I don’t see them online), hook up sticks, and juice gems gloss. Here’s some behind the scenes shots of the shoot.

We had our own DJ!