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I can’t remember the last time I entered Sephora without a fairy blogger on my shoulder. Usually, I rely quite heavily on the #ad-iness of my Instagram feed. That bookmark feature? A godsend. My fleet of imaginary blogger besties has yet to let me down, but I started to grow curious of a shopping experience sans #spon. No screengrabs or bookmarked YouTube tutorials, just me zig-zagging through the store like a kid in a candy store, reading labels and swatching until my hand looked like a chocolate version of van Gogh’s Starry Night.
I’d like to think I made my foremothers proud by attempting to shop without any outside influence(r). How hard could it be to find an oil-free, fragrance-free, non-comedogenic, dry-skin friendly, medium-to-full coverage foundation on my own?
Right before I felt the striped walls begin to cave in on me, I found the Clinique Beyond Perfecting Foundation + Concealer in a bevy of brown shades. (Truth be told, any shelf lined with more than one is a bevy in my eyes.) How the hell had I not heard of this? Where were the #ads? The #inpartnershipwiths? The #spons? Why is no one talking about this foundation? Why hasn’t a Samantha Jones-in-training sent me a press release? Where are my freebies and my personalized note?
This foundation checked all my boxes, and the oversized doe foot applicator is just too damn cute. You only need about a dime-sized amount of product to cover your whole face, and if you like to get super precise around your brows, you can without needing to use an angled brush.
The formula isn’t too matte or too dry; it’s a very IRL finish. It brags that it can double as a concealer (not for my dark undereye circles, which absolutely must have a color corrector, but for you, maybe. It does cover acne scars and hyper-pigmentation like a G, though.)
It does take a while to dry, but according to Sephora, that’s just so you have more time to blend before it sets into your skin — a pretty nice feature, and a kind gesture on Clinique’s part.
The shade range is pretty lit. I rotate between three foundations to get a perfect match for my pale days, normal days, and tan days, and was able to find all three in the Beyond Perfecting shade range. On fancy occasions, I use all three foundations in different areas of my face to cover, highlight, and contour — a tip I picked up on IG via Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s makeup artist, Mali Thomas.
I’ve Googled “Clinique Beyond Perfecting Foundation + Concealer” a half-dozen times while whipping up this little rant and still haven’t been hit with any ads. Clearly Clinique is too busy facilitating my glow-up to worry about my cookies. Crazy, right?
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