It was on April the 19th when I decided that I will participate in the new Jeffree Star Magic Concealer launch so I scavenged all the sites to figure out, where will I order from. Beauty Bay is always my safe bet when it comes to ordering new launches so I started by preparing my shopping basket with some more goodies.
One thing that I stumbled upon was The Ordinary brand as a whole. I mean, I am a big skincare fan but at the moment I don't really need any new products in this department. However, their foundations have been around for some time and the reviews seemed pretty awesome.
Being the foundation hoarder I am, I couldn't decide which one to get. They have one called Coverage Foundation and one called Serum Foundation. According to the reviews, they both probably will solve any of your problems and cure any disease you have. So I ordered both of them.
The Packaging
I am not a big packaging snob, I don't really mind anything. But since I shattered one of my glass bottle foundations (R.I.P. Gabriella Salvete Perfect Skin), I tend to go more for plastic bottles. You get 30ml of foundation which I like to consider a standard for very decent price. I paid 6.95 Euro for one which makes it one of my cheapest foundations.
Both of there foundations have the same plastic bottle, matte and quite soft feel, nice pump, which doesn't have a lid, which drives me crazy a bit and that's about it.
I could use a lid because even when it has that click-thing where you can lock the pump, I don't believe that it's gonna work that well in a fully packed cosmetic bag. And also there's no arrow with lock/unlock sign so I am a little confused everytime I try to open it.
Well maybe that's just me...
The Claims
Since this foundation is from a "skincare brand" I would expect some benefits.
There's a LOT OF CLAIMS on The Ordinary website. To be honest I don't really feel like reading it all but the most important things are that it's alcohol-free, oil-free, nut-free, vegan, gluten-free and cruelty-free. Those are some nice claims. That means that the foundation does contain silicones.
Both of the foundations actually seem pretty similar in the description. They both have these claims I stated above, they both have SPF 15, which I am happy about.
I was a little curious about the descriptions so I threw them into a diffchecker and to be honest they are mostly the same. The only differences are in the first paragraph, where they're describing the formulation, and also in the last, where the ingredients are.
The Shades
About the shades...I think that the shade range makes sense and is well distributed across the spectrum. Of course, there's always room for improvement, but I feel like there's always room for that in foundations and concealers.
However the shade matching was a nightmare. Swatches of both of these look very different in their website, on other photos online and in videos online. At the end I was VERY confused by everything and watched one video of a person pretty much as pale as me so I just grabbed the lightest neutral shade from both formulations and prayed for the best.
I haven't worn this foundation yet because I've been testing another one but from the swatching, I feel like it's gonna be a bit too light. And I am bot sure about the undertone, because I feel like it's going to be a little too yellow. Looking at my swatches and The Ordinary swatches at the same time, the shades are actually quite accurate.
Still, I am not sure about the color since it hasn't been on my face yet, but I hope that my pale face won't let me down and it will fit me at the end of the day.
I grabbed the shades 1.0N in serum foundation and 1.0NS in coverage foundation. I didn't feel like there's much difference in the shades with highlights and the other shades available were far too dark for me, so I just took a shot at it.
Here are swatches of both foundations and some other ones in my collection just to give the colours a little context.
The swatches on their website are a little confusing as I said. It's just very hard to match yourself with just internet on hand.
Anyway, so far I am pretty excited to try both of them and I will be making a wear test blog post very soon, so stay tuned for that.
Thanks for reading and see you at the wear test!