One Month of Fenty Foundation | Dry Skin Review

Today is October 10^th; it’s been a full month since I sat eagerly awaiting Nigel from DPD to knock at my door with my Fenty Beauty order. For those of you who saw that post, you’ll know my first impressions were less than wonderful.

Since that day I’ve been wearing that foundation a lot to see if it could work at all for people with dry skin. Given the time of year that task got increasingly harder as the days went by as my skin has slowly transitioned from skin to sandpaper over the last month.

Never wanting to be defeated I have tried this foundation in every single way possible, using just about every method of application I could think of in order to give a full detailed review.

Here’s how I got on:

Methods of application

This is going to be a long one so I’ll keep this short and simple; do not use a brush. No matter what I mixed this foundation with as soon as I touched my skin with any kind of brush it dragged and my skin started to flake off.

If you have dry skin, use a sponge. If you do not like sponges, do not buy this foundation.

Mixers

I realised very quickly that there was no way I could use this on bare skin, no amounts of oil or moisturiser or hydrating serums pre application made this look good, most of the time it actually made it more patchy.

Oil

The first thing I tried was mixing it with oil, and it works really well, if you’re prepared to go through a lot of product at an alarming rate. Now this foundation is medium coverage to begin with but obviously if you’re mixing it with an oil then it’s going to reduce the coverage. To make this work, and get medium coverage, I had to use two full pumps of foundation with four drops of oil.

Yes, you read that correctly, four drops of oil. F-O-U-R drops of oil. Even with four drops of oil this still gave me a soft matte finish, which is what the product claims to be to begin with. There was not even the faintest hint of glow on my face and there was absolutely no need to set it, it wasn’t moving. At all.

Serum

I mixed this with my beloved Sarah Chapman Intense Hydrating Booster and I thought I’d hit the jackpot; my skin looked beautiful. It reduced the coverage still but less than mixing it with an oil so I was still using two pumps but was getting slightly more coverage. My skin was still matte but not flat and dead, it had a soft hydrated appearance and my face still had dimension. Great, this is it; it’s going to work for me.

Fast forward about three hours and the products clearly did not mix well because it was separating all over my face. It still looked hydrated, but it was starting to resemble a jigsaw with small lines all over it where it was breaking up. I had to remove my makeup before I left the house, I did not try this method again.

Hydrating mist

This sort of happened accidentally, I was getting ready one day and I was too lazy to go to my makeup collection to get products out so I just used what I had in front of me on my desk. I picked up the Fenty foundation bottle and a beauty blender and started to apply. Half way through I realised I hadn’t mixed it with anything and had made a terrible mistake.

To rectify the situation I picked up my Clinique Moisture Surge Hydrating Mist. This mist is my go to if I’ve been wearing matte foundation all day and my skin needs a little pick me up so I thought this might work.

This did not work. I think this may have been the worst my foundation has ever looked in my entire life, including my teenage years. It broke apart instantly all over my face, instantly became cakey and patchy and just generally hideous. I finished my eye makeup and removed it and settled for just concealer that day.

Other Foundations

I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner, take a really dewy foundation with a good amount of oil in it, the Fenty will become less dry and at the same time won’t lose coverage from being watered down.

Genius, Sophie, it only took you three and a half weeks and a lot of makeup remover to reach this very basic conclusion.

I reached for my Bobbi Brown Moisture Rich. I usually don’t like this foundation for many reasons, it’s too oily even for me (making it perfect for this foundation), it has lavender in which I don’t like in any product and the lack of pump generally winds me up.

You’re probably wondering why I still have it if I don’t like it that much. It’s reserved in my collection for a few weeks in winter when my skin gets so dry none of the foundations I actually like look good on my face.

So here it goes, my final attempt, I mix them roughly 50/50 on the back of hand, approximately a pump each and hope for the best. I start dotting it around my face and the stuff on the back of my hand hasn’t set already so that’s a good start. As I’m spreading the product around my face with my beauty blender I’m very pleasantly surprised; it’s blending beautifully and there’s a nice soft matte finish with a solid medium coverage.

This is it, my perfect combination; it’s a foundation that doesn’t usually get much love so I’m not sad about having to use it as a mixer. Bobbi Brown foundations overall are the cheaper end of high end so this foundation is far cheaper than most skincare products I’ve been mixing this with and I’m getting better coverage.

I’m praying for myself that this doesn’t end the way Sarah Chapman did.

The end of the evening comes and it’s still looking pretty good, still a soft matte finish though a tiny bit of the oil from the foundation has started to peek through. It hasn’t broken up or gone patchy at all, the coverage is still the same as it was earlier other than a tiny patch on my chin where I’d been resting my hand for half of the day.

This is it, my perfect combination.

Overall if you have dry skin this foundation probably isn’t for you. There are plenty of better options on the market. However, if you want to use this foundation because of the shade range or you just really love Rihanna, you can make it work if you’re willing to put a little bit more effort in.

If you happen to have really oily skin and you’ve somehow managed to make it this far, buy it. For the price point this truly is a wonderful foundation.

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