Fenty Beauty Foundation and Highlighter Duo Review

Fenty Beauty has caused quite the stir in the beauty community, it’s the launch that in 2017 that seemed to come out of no where, the promotion for this line was huge around Harvey Nichols in London. The tube station was over taken with promotional posters and signs, every window on the ground floor featured at least one group of Fenty Beauty products. My friend Lora and I went when we headed down to London for the day and despite being at Harvey Nic’s not long after opening we still found ourselves in a queue for 90 minutes, waiting to even see the counter.

For those who aren’t aware Fenty Beauty comes from Rihanna and arrived with a crash bang onto the scene. With a massive forty ‘all inclusive’ colour range for foundations and has done a pretty good job of having a mix of undertones from the palest to the darkest, with plans to one expand that range further it’s setting out pretty well. One thing I’ve noticed is how much of a success they clearly anticipated the line would be, the queues for this at Harvey Nichols were huge, yet I’ve not seen them sell out of anything either online or at the store – this is clearly a launch which has been in the making for quite some time as the amount of stock on tap has seemed to be incredibly well planned.

When I looked into this more, the brand is part of the Kendo group, responsible for Kat Von D & Marc Jacob’s beauty lines, as well as Ole Henriksen and Bite Beauty. As a portfolio of brands they’re responsible for some key name players for quality makeup and skincare products.

I’ll start by saying I had no plans of jumping on board with this launch any time soon – I’m not a Rihanna fan in the slightest, in fact my whole family (apart from weirdly my Dad), have quite the dislike for her music (I currently hate listening to anything that isn’t a true crime podcast though, so I’m maybe not the best judge). But on hearing that the foundation was supposedly fantastic for oily skin I had to give it a try pronto.

When I think of Rihanna’s clothing style I think of loud colours and a very fashion forward approach so on initial look over the line I was pretty surprised that it was “all about that base”. Primer, Foundation, Match Stix (which is cream highlights, contours and blushes), Highlighters, Pressed Powder and one universal gloss. There’s no eyeshadows, mascara, liners, lipstick, and for the most part the line is pretty neutral and not as wild as I was expecting.

In terms of price point I think the line is pretty reasonably priced, it falls in line with prices such as MAC and I think that in all honesty with an incredibly loyal fanbase she had enough room to exploit her fame more, and it feels refreshing to see a line come in at that low high-end price point. The last stand we queued past was Giorgio Armani and picking up one of their foundations priced at over £40, which was immediately put back down before I had chance to fall in love with it – it’s definitely at the affordable end of the spectrum for the majority of people.

I have mixed feelings about the packaging of the line over all, but it doesn’t feel very cohesive, some of the line is in white packaging whilst others is in a light blush colour, others are in a golden beige. The highlighter packaging has a slight iridescence to the white, whilst the foundation is plain white, some of the writing is holographic on some products – others it’s plain.

To me it would have been more striking as a line if all their core permanent products were in one colour – probably white, which then deviated off with limited edition collections (already rumoured for Christmas!). The packaging of makeup is mostly hexagonal, which feels pretty unique with the exception of H&M, whilst the foundation and primer can only be described as a squashed tube. The packaging quality of itself is nice, albeit it a little plasticy feeling. The items come boxed in a graffiti black and white which is quite different to the actual packaging of the products.

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Pro Filter Foundation – 200 (Cool)

I’m really glad that I got myself colour matched, as if I’d been going on the bottle of this it would have been way too pale for me. It’s worth noting that this is still slightly too dark and I do have to blend down my neck to get it to the right shade. I wouldn’t normally class myself in the cool spectrum for foundation at all, but the other colours fell very pink on my skin tone and out of the neutral, warm peach and cool selection – cool was definitely the best matching tone. This is another reason I recommend buying in person rather in store as I’d have been inclined to go for neutral, and cool is actually pretty warm in my opinion.

I’ve been using this mainly so far with my new Magnitone Blend Up brush, whilst I have tried it a few times with a sponge, I do prefer it most with a brush. This is a medium coverage foundation that easily builds up to full with extra coverage on some areas, this looks semi-matte on the skin as it promises, whilst feeling very matte thanks to it’s cream to powder formula.

The consistency of this is very runny and fluid, it sets into the skin pretty quickly and you do have to move fast to blend this into the skin.

On one hand I didn’t try the foundation for the first week at the best time, I had a full blown cold and was blowing my nose constantly for the first few days. The foundation wore off around my nose pretty quickly, but so would anything. It did however towards the end of the week turn out to have not been a bad choice as the skin on my nose became more dehydrated and dry so it was good to see how it performed on drier skins.

I would definitely as a result of that say it’s a foundation for oily to normal skins only, it clung to dry patches pretty badly and ended up looking pretty cakey around the nose area. After a few weeks of loyal use I feel like I’m running through the bottle pretty quickly, I think I’m about a quarter way through the bottle already which feels pretty quick, I think because I like to do one full layer, and touch up my nose and areas of high oil with a second I’m using almost 8 pumps at a time. It is however very long lasting and I stay matte with this foundation for a long day, it does break down a little around the 8-10 hour mark but overall it wears well paired with my MAC Oil Control Lotion.

The big problem I had with the Fenty Beauty foundation, after a few weeks it started breaking me out, it took me a week or so to clock on to the fact it was this foundation that had done it after hearing a Youtuber say that it broke her out too. I thought it was a new product from the Ordinary but have since eliminated that and definitely know that it’s this. The spots it caused were incredibly painful and are taking a long time to heal up. It’s a huge shame as I’m such a big fan of this finish of it and it was close to being declared as an all time favourite – I seem to be able to get away with using this one of twice a week but using it every day is a definite no go. If you do want to try it, I wouldn’t rule it out it’s a beautiful foundation and may not be a problem that every one has, I’d just proceed with a bit of caution.

Fenty Beauty Killawatt Freestyle Highlighter Duo – Lightning Dust Fire Crystal

All of the highlighters, whether they’re one large pan or the duos are known as the Kilawatt highlighters. When it comes to the duos the annoying thing for me is that each duo highlighter doesn’t have an individual name or number to refer to, instead the name of this is named after both the shades. This one is the palest colourway and was a complete impulse purchase.

I had no plans on getting this but whilst I was waiting to see how much my foundation shades were oxidising, she bought me a selection of products which were the ones most suited for my skin tone. I’ve gone back and forth as to whether this product has been a regret purchase for me over the past few weeks or not.

The shade Lightning Dust is a lovely soft ‘lit from within’ highlighter, reminiscent of the Ambient Lighting powders from Hourglass, and the knock offs I own from Makeup Revolution, it’s just a subtle natural sheen in a natural skin tone shade that provides a soft glow to the skin.

Fire Crystal is more of a stand out shade for me, you catch this in the right light and this a bam shade, this one out of the two which was the convincer for me to buy, swatched in the store lighting I could see subtle flecks of holographic sparkle – on the face that doesn’t seem to translate, at least obviously.

Both of these shades have great pigmentation and have a very buttery almost cream to powder type feeling to them which makes blending them beautiful. My potential regret really lies with I already have many shades like lightning dust and I don’t find it particularly unique – that being said  Fire Crystal has been my go to since I purchased it and I love it. So far the Killawatt Highlighters have the full size whole pans, and the half and half duo shades like this, and there’s no cross over with the shades on either side, if I could have bought a full size shade of Fire Crystal I’d definitely have picked that up instead of the duo.

One thing to note, if you like to pay attention to such things is that this has a pretty short shelf life for a powder at just 9 months it seems incredibly short. I’ve used the side Fire Crystal almost every day for about 4 weeks and Ive only just scuffed past the Fenty Beauty logo indent in the powder, even if I used this on body parts I think I’d struggle to get through this all in 9 months!

For reference: The Fenty Beauty line is Cruelty Free, The Foundation is Made in Italy, whilst the Highlighter is Made in Canada. A large chunk of the products are vegan but some do contain beeswax and carmine for example, the following items are considered Vegan; Pro Filt’r Soft Matte Longwear Foundation, Match Stix Matte Skinsticks, Invisimatte Blotting Powder, Gloss Bomb Universal Lip Luminizer, and our Brushes & Tools.

Have you tried Fenty Beauty Yet? I’m tempted my some of the new eyeliners in the Christmas Collection.

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