Drugstore or high end?

Getting into cruelty free makeup doesn't mean that you need to spend a fortune on new products. There are a lot of good, cruelty free drugstore brands like e.l.f, Wet n Wild, Gosh, Physicians Formula, Milani, Nyx, Pixi, Ecotools, etc. The list goes on and on. However for some reasons 80% of things I own are high end. Why is it so?

I got into makeup about 3 years ago. I didn't really bother with makeup during my teenage years, because I had really bad acne and my dermatologist said that covering it with foundation only will make the whole situation worse (I guess I can argue this now). But anyway, I had no interest in makeup until 23 years. At that time, I read one blog article where one Russian girl living in Japan was compering Japanese women and foreigners. You know, in Japan women put a lot (and by 'a lot' I mean A LOT) of efforts into their looks, because there's very huge pressure from society and media that only woman who looks and acts feminine can be popular among men. That Russian girl said that all foreign women that she sees on the streets of Tokyo don't bother with their looks at all - no makeup, no fashionable clothes. She was asking - why most Western women don't care? While I can argue with this by saying that even in Japan there are a lot of people who don't use makeup or have interest in fashion and otherwise (well, look how many beauty/fashion bloggers or youtubers from US and UK out there), I asked myself: why I don't wear makeup? And suddenly I really, really wanted to try doing it.

While I don't think that expensive means better and cheap means bad quality, there are a lot of miss/hits among drugstore products. For example, you never go wrong with Urban Decay Naked palettes, but cheaper dupes might be quite disappointing. My whole makeup game has begun with Original Naked palette. It was my first eye shadow palette and I'm still in love with it. Yes, it was expensive - but if you divide 50 euro by 12, you'll get about 4 euro per 1 eye shadow of high quality. Personally, I think it's better to spend 50 euro on one Naked palette that you will love and use daily, rather than 50 euro on 5 different Sleek palettes (I'm sorry to all Sleek fans, but ugh, I had really bad experience with everything I tried from them).

Also packages of high end products are so well made. On the photo above e.l.f blush package looks almost identical to Nars blush, but not really. E.l.f's package is made of cheap plastic which is much more light weight than Nars. Nars package is more matte and it gives you an impression of expensive, elegant item. It's like wearing expensive underwear - using beautifully packaged high end products makes me feel very good and special (haha).

Also, marketing part. I know that a lot of people hate admitting that marketing has effect on them, but let's face the truth. How many times did you read someone's blog post and feel like you can't live with the item introduced by author? I have a feeling that there are much more bbloggers who writes about high end products, rather than drugstore ones.

Drugstore or high end, what do you think?