FINALLY! I've been waiting for months to find out when season 3 of Broad City will debut, and it's just been announced that our fearless heroines Abbi and Ilana will be back on February 17, 2016. In honor of this momentous event, I'm pleased to share a post I've been working for a while now in breathless anticipation: a fantasy Broad City makeup collection! I had a tough time selecting the company that would team up with them – contenders included ColourPop, Urban Decay and of course the ever-popular MAC – but I ended up with Ardency Inn since they are New York-based and I felt both they and Broad City capture the feel of NYC so well. Plus, one of my favorite scenes involves Abbi shopping at Whole Foods with Bingo Bronson, in which he requests that she purchase, among many other things, manuka honey ("So reasonably priced! Buy me that, Abbi!"), and Ardency Inn offers manuka-infused eye shadows, so I think that was a sign I made the right choice.
I raided my husband's Pantone swatch book and got to work on choosing colors. These aren't the exact shades I'd come up with, especially since they look so different on screen than in the book, but they give you an idea. All of the outer packaging would feature Mike Perry's illustrations from the show's opening credits.
First up, lipsticks and eye liner. I'd use this image for the packaging (both the boxes and tubes):
And here are swatches. Val About Town and Last Supper would be satin finishes, Vulvarine and Pegasoos would be matte, and Wanna Fook? and Working Girls would be glossy and sheer. Yas Queen would be an existing product – Ardency Inn's Punker ("the world's baddest eyeliner) – to help you achieve Ilana's killer eye makeup in the rooftop party scene in the "Fattest Asses" episode. I have pretty specific reasons as to why I chose the shades I did but frankly I'm too lazy to explain what went on in my head for every single color. Generally speaking, I tried to pick out colors that were both wearable and fun, and that were borrowed from a beauty look one of the girls wore at one point or at least had something to do with a particular episode or scene.
Now, I know Ardency Inn's current product lineup doesn't include nail polishes, but I have a feeling they'd simply have to formulate something for this collection – the girls enjoy polish and getting manicures. Shades would include Garol (sheer ivory beige, just like a spoonful of her beloved yogurt), Kirk Steele (dark silver) and Bingo Bronson (blue creme with orange and red glitter – unfortunately I couldn't figure out a way to represent the glitter in the swatch.) Packaging and swatches:
You can also sport Abbi's "Famous Favorites" food/celebrity matchups on your nails via these cool decals. I think Abbi would probably have a way to redesign them slightly to properly fit both the celebrity's name and food item on the decal – again, this is just to give you a rough idea. Of course, if these don't appeal to you you can always get this set of decals; however, I think my idea is way more creative. (I swear I didn't know Broad City nail decals were an actual thing you could buy until after I got the idea for mine…on a whim I googled and was floored to see someone else had thought of them.)
(images from famousfavorites.tumblr.com)
Next up, palettes. Adrenaline! is for the days you need an extra shot in the arm (or leg, as the case may be), full of bold, bright colors. Nature's Pocket consists of more, well, natural shades – neutrals for a range of skintones. Hopefully, anyway. It's very tough to do that with only 6 colors but I didn't want it to be some kind of ginormous palette as I didn't feel like it was in keeping with Abbi and Ilana's characters. And where would we be without the guys that also make us laugh? So I had to do a Boys of Broad City mini cream blush palette. I left out Trey because one of the nail polishes was named after him…or rather his, ahem, alter ego. ;) Outer packaging for each palette and their respective swatches are below.
There will also be makeup pouches to show off your fandom. One would use another Mike Perry illustration but the other would feature the map of NYC drawn by Abbi:
(images from mikeperrystudio.com and huffingtonpost.com)
I was originally going to do a brush set too, but, again, it didn't feel like it would be consistent with their characters. I can't see either Abbi or Ilana using brushes regularly. Abbi seems the type to use the applicators that come with the product, while, on an average day (i.e., not when she's going to a fancy birthday dinner or applying makeup to a nearly unconscious Abbi), Ilana would most likely just smear everything on with her fingers.
Broad City fans, what do you think? Does my imaginary collection reflect the essence of the show and its ever-hilarious characters? Would you buy any of the collection if it somehow became a reality?