Rediscovering Nordstrom and New Fall Trends

Thank you Nordstrom for the invitation to your Encore Fall Trends event.
#encorewlafall

I lived on the westside of Los Angeles from 1987 through 1997 when I got married and we moved to the San Fernando Valley. For 10 years I called West LA home and loved living there. It was central to most areas of Los Angeles (there was much less traffic back them) and was filled with great retail and restaurants. My mall of choice was Westside Pavilion and I was probably there at least once a week. One of my go-to stores was Nordstrom. They had great clothes, great sales, and great employees. I knew that when all else failed, I could always find something I needed at Nordstrom. Plus, they had a pretty awesome cafe and coffee bar… before everybody had coffee bars.

When we moved to Santa Clarita in 1999, I didn’t realize that the lack of shopping choices would be such a bone of contention with me. While I had baby after baby, it didn’t matter much because I was basically living in sweatpants and I found myself not being able to travel beyond the Santa Clarita borders all that often. Our one mall was limited and I made due with what we had. Over the years we added a few more stores to the mix, but we never managed to get a Nordstrom here.

It had been years since I shopped at a Nordstrom… yep, years… and when I was invited to attend the Encore Event a few weeks ago, I thought it would be a great time to get re-acquainted with the store. Encore is Nordstrom’s plus-size department. While I’m not plus-size, it was a good excuse to see what new styles were available. Plus, the event was offering free mini-facials and makeovers in the cosmetic department. I signed up and off I went on a Sunday morning, with Temera (my 15 year old daughter) in tow.

From the moment I entered the store, I was surrounded by the most fabulous women. I’m not talking about the other women who were there for the event (although they are fabulous as well), I’m talking about the saleswomen. It was almost like getting together with a bunch of great girlfriends. They not only took me under their wing, they took my teenage daughter as well… and we had the BEST time!

Evelyn gave me a mini-facial using several of the products sold in the cosmetics and skin-care department. I’ve had facials before, but no one really ever explained what the difference was in products and which ones are good for my skin type… and why. I was introduced to the Arcona products - had never heard of them before - and found they did amazing things to my skin. What I loved best about this experience at Nordstrom was that Evelyn wasn’t simply a sales rep for one line. She introduced me to several different brands and shared her own skin care experiences with me. At the end of my facial, my skin was looking so great that she wanted me to also have a makeup application so I could see how different makeup looks on skin that is fresh and primed for it. So… on to the makeup counter.

Now, I have tried tons of different types of makeup before, and I really don’t have a lot of brands that I can say I truly love, so I was pretty open to anything. I discovered that my skin works really well with Trish McEvoy products… and I finally learned how to do my eyes so that it doesn’t take an hour and they actually look natural (without them actually being natural). I think I looked pretty good.

What had me even more excited was that the lovely women of Nordstrom took my daughter and gave her a teenage makeup application as well. My daughter has always had pretty bad skin and they completely understood and made sure they shared products with her that wouldn’t ignite her acne. In fact, she looked so fabulous that we both almost cried.

Needles to say, we purchased some things. (My bank account will forgive me, but not sure my husband will.) I love ALL the products we bought and we’re so happy with how they work for our skin types. Of course, we couldn’t purchase everything we tried (even though I wanted to) so we were sent home with many samples of the products we were introduced to. Thank you Nordstrom… we had so much fun!

After the facial and makeup application, we were running behind and didn’t have a lot of extra time to shop. We did go upstairs to check out the Encore Department, however, and I was super surprised to find that Nordstrom wasn’t quite as expensive as I always thought it was. They had some amazing deals… and really beautiful clothes. They have a way of selling really classic styles that have some pizzaz to them.