The Kit I Take to a Moroccan Wedding

Read this before you spend a dirham

Let's clear one thing up before you spend anything: there is no Sephora in Morocco. Not at Morocco Mall, not in Rabat, not in Marrakech — whatever your cousin's friend swears she saw. Anything sold here under that name arrived in somebody's suitcase. What we do have is Yan&One, Faces and Marionnaud if you want to swatch in person, and Zwine, Beauty Corner or Haytam if you want it at your door by Thursday.

There are four ways to buy good makeup in this country, and knowing which one you are in is the difference between a fair price and a luxury price for something made in a warehouse.

• Official brand stores. Only Dior runs a real Moroccan e-boutique — shop-beauty.dior.ma. If the brand you want has one, use it.
• Physical multi-brand. Yan&One at Morocco Mall is the largest beauty floor in the country; Faces has eight Moroccan branches; Marionnaud sits on Boulevard d'Anfa in Casablanca. Go in person when the shade match matters.
• Moroccan online. Zwine, Beauty Corner, Haytam Parfumerie, Palmarosa, Zin Beauty and ChikShop deliver nationwide, most of them with cash on delivery. This is where the majority of the brands on this list are realistically bought.
• Import. The artistry lines — Kryolan, Made By Mitchell, ONE/SIZE, most of Hourglass — have no reliable Moroccan stockist. Order from Europe or buy while travelling, and budget for customs.

Also in the kit

My kit is bigger than the twenty-one pages above. These brands work alongside them on every job — and each one earns its place for a specific reason I am happy to explain in person. Full pages for these are being added as I photograph them properly.

• e.l.f. Cosmetics — White round powder compact, visible in several frames. e.l.f. is widely available in Morocco through Zwine and Zin Beauty Shop.
• Golden Rose — The gold GR compact. A Turkish brand, very widely distributed in Morocco and one of the best value-for-money lines available locally.
• Makeup By Mario — The white BY MARIO palette that appears in almost every frame — Mario Dedivanovic's brand. Import only.
• Haus Labs by Lady Gaga — Rose-gold compact, lower right of several frames.
• The Ordinary — White dropper bottles in the prep section of the table. Widely available in Morocco through Zwine and the parapharmacy channel.
• Embryolisse — The French pharmacy classic — Lait-Crème Concentré. Sold through Moroccan parapharmacies and Beauty Corner.
• NARS — Liquid foundation bottles with the black NARS cap, beyond the Laguna cream documented above.
• Charlotte Tilbury — A second, oval rose-gold floral compact appears alongside the sunburst bronzer.
• Yves Saint Laurent — A pink octagonal YSL compact, separate from the two Make Me Blush compacts documented above.
• Beautyblender-style sponges — Multiple nude and pink sponges throughout — the actual application tools behind every base product on this list.

Why this isn’t a wishlist

Every one of these has already failed on somebody’s face — or replaced something that did. The bronzer that went orange on olive skin. The setting spray that gave up by midnight. The foundation that looked perfect in the room and white in every photograph.

So you get the shade I actually carry, the finish that survives Casablanca in August, and the price in dirhams — not a euro figure you have to convert. And when something genuinely is not sold here, I say so, instead of sending you round Anfa looking for it.

Building your own kit? Take the list. Would you rather someone turned up on the morning with all of it? That is the other thing I do.