Clarins Everlasting Foundation

My ongoing to battle to find the perfect foundation will seemingly never end.
First off, ninety-five percent of foundations are the wrong colour for me - as I was so kindly told by a MAC make up artist once, I'm ridiculously pale but I have warm undertones in my skin, so I'm not really warm or cool, just strange. Which was nice.

See? Pale but SO not strange.



But every so often, I find something that is amazing. The perfect shade. But of course, then it's the wrong coverage or consistency or it makes me break out or it wears off or it looks chalky and bad. I cannot win. For ages (three bottles!) I wore Bobbi Brown Oil Free foundation in Porcelain but then they changed the formulation and it just started to sit on top of my skin. Then it was Stila in 10 Watts, great but not enough coverage as winter came on. Occasionally I'd dip back into my BareMinerals but as much as I love it, it's really not portable. And then I thought I'd found a winner in Nars Sheer Glow in Siberia but after a few weeks of winter, it started to dry out my skin. Sob.



My last attempt as MAC's Studio Sculpt in NC15. At first it was too heavy and looked like a mask but I tried again and again, using different tools, different finishing powders, different amount of product and after much experimentation, I achieved a good finish with a tiny bit of foundation, a brush application and my Nars pressed powder on my nose and chin. And like so many of us do, I settled. It still went a little cakey in the afternoon and was heavier than I would like (I'm never satisfied) but it was good.

But then, my life was changed (thanks for bearing with me until now)... last night I was given a new foundation to test. Clarins Everlasting Foundation. Allegedly, this will last 15 hours without transferring, it won't cake, it won't fade and it has an SPF 15 included.

Well, that all sounds wonderful, I thought, but eight shades? There's no way they'll have one for my skin tone. I was wrong. Cream 104 = perfection. And there is actually an even lighter shade - AMAZEBALLS. So I promptly went home and tried a little, applied with a brush as recommended and BUGGER ME, it looked amazing. Polished and smooth but not caked and overdone. I gave it a couple of minutes to set and gave it a testing swipe with a tissue. Nothing. So this morning, I went for a full face application and it looks bloody brilliant.

Now, obviously, this is a very new relationship based entirely on lust and first impressions and I'm loathe to tell you how in love we are so early on but at the moment, the infatuation is strong. Promise to update you in a few weeks but I've got a funny feeling that this might be the one...

Check it out here for the US and here in the UK