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They end pushing either orangey or too-dark foundations on me.
This tragedy can strike you even if you listen to all those MUA gurus in Youtube, who advises us on picking the right color foundation for our skin tone.
Note: This is probably a post for women of color like me, especially of South Asian origin or descent ( i.e. India etc).
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| Courtesy: Pixabay.com |
Not saying everyone faced this problem. Not saying anything against orangey or dark foundation, if that is what you want and like. And lastly I am not trying to come off as 'pro-whitening' that is so vogue in Asian countries.
All am saying is - my face is a mosaic of skin tones and usually I find that most Sales Assistants in Sephora and other beauty department stores end up pushing foundations in the darkest of my skin tones at me, making my face, neck and decollete all in different colors. This has happened so many times. I try telling the SA that what I want is probably something that would not just match my chin or one small area of my face, but my entire face and neck and possibly lower, but they never seem to get it.
The last straw for me, was the nice lady at Sephora who tried pushing a Bare Minerals foundation at me. Let me be very honest - she was super nice. But she kept trying to tell me my 'perfect' shade was a foundation shade that only matched my lower chin, but was too orangey and dark for rest of my face. In fact, after she did a demo, I looked so weird that she didn't argue much when I said, "Sorry No Way".
Weird? Is it just me who has this problem of having a mosaic skin tone and wondering which shade would go with most of the face? I dont think so, cos I've seen and heard similar problems from my other S-Asian friends, so I hope I am speaking for a good-sized population here.
I was discussing this strange phenomenon with my MUA friend when she explained it to me and it was like seeing the Light. And it made sense, so much sense!
Reasons are (as per her and as per me now):
1. Most white women go for a slightly tanned look and hence prefer a slightly darker tone for their foundation. Since a lot of SAs in Sephora and other dept stores and MUA Youtube gurus are of fairer even skin tones, their choices and way of choosing becoming a general guideline which the rest of us end up adopting.
2. We all suffer from pigmentation. But the way it affects us varies by skin tone. Fair skinned (white) ladies get freckles etc. Olive/Brown skin tones like mine gets dark patches which ends up making parts of our face in a different tone(like for me, my under-eye area is fairest while my under-chin is darkest). It is not targeted like a freckle and cant easily be covered by concealer.
Makes sense? It did to me.
So now what?
Now, you can chose to look at the foundations you bought and didnt work for you and see it in a new light.
What I do now? I find that I need to mix my foundations (I get a dark and a light shade in my fav formula and mix them to my right consistency) , apply a corrector around my darker patches and generally smile & ignore the shade advise I get from SAs here.
Another change I noticed was - I ended up using concealer much less and corrector (yellow and peach shade) more.
And it works.
Tell me what you think - did this make sense to you?
Logging you in...
MGuest · 479 weeks ago
My skin is described as fair or fair-medium at something just under MAC20.
1) I don't go for a slightly tanned look on the base as then the foundation doesn't look right with my neck and chest. (I minimize sun exposure given we know that, other than the vitamin D and mood-enhancing effects << important things!, a lot is not so good for any of us.) My perception is that SAs at stores have some experience and talent with makeup. They've spent time playing with it, so their skin unevenness would not be much perceived by us.
Agreed, a youtube guru with even skin is more likely to show off her pre-makeup look (and be on youtube to begin with). We with uneven skin (by our own standards) don't all have the confidence to do that, and consequent to what is on youtube, get a warped impression that 'most' people have even skin. Also agreed, what a SA has learned that works for her is what she will generally recommend. Many of them are not MUAs; they may know less that you or I do given that we're, um, obsessed. :) We place perhaps too much trust in the SA. Finding the right combination for an individual is hard and does take experimentation.
My experience with salespeople and foundation advice is that I'm typically given foundation recommendations for shades that I consider too orange and too dark for me, so we're alike in that. Perhaps the bright unnatural light in a shop contributes to that trend? Also, we have expectations and assumptions about what colour our skin is. It's generally a complex blend of tones with variation over parts of the face. A single product line usually doesn't have many options.
2) Skin is really variable. There are trends, but I don't get freckles while my SO with similar skin tone does. I do have larger areas of melasma/hyperpigmentation. Mine are brown in some places and red/purple elsewhere. Though it is more common with deeper skin-tones, skin of varied shades from lightest to warmest to darkest can have pigmentation in shades of red, blue, black, yellow, purple, pink, orange, and brown.
Foundation is so popular because we're striving to achieve that even skin tone! I agree it's not easy and concealer is usually intended for targeted smaller areas; but there are options. I'm glad you've found that the yellow/peach corrector approach works for you. I've tried all sorts of things: corrector/concealer/liquid/cream/paste/powder/green/yellow/peach and have found my current best approach:
(serum/eye treatment/moisturizer),
green-based moisturizer (does improve things but I don't always take the time for it),
Dermablend Professional Cover Creme foundation (medium-soft solid in a pot) in key areas,
extra peach corrector below the eyes,
powder foundation on top.
I was recently asked by a woman with a deeper skin tone than mine, who has suffered from burns due to trauma and has definite consequent facial pigment unevenness, what I was doing on my face. So I suppose this means 1) you can tell I'm doing something (though we also talked, of course; and she's seen me with and without makeup), but 2) it seems to be relatively effective. I can be grateful I'm not dealing with a personal challenge of working to feel confident and attractive with facial burns. I'm proud of her and how she deals with it. That's much harder and there's also texture to contend with.
My conclusion is: If I were a salesperson with a stake in the business, I'd encourage the relationship with someone looking for foundation, and give them samples to try - something like "Pay $x, get y samples and come back to get the best option for your skin, or up to z more samples before you choose," and make it clear that some people need to mix shades or even brands to get a good match. Also I'd encourage using concealer over heavy plastering of one foundation product. Concealer can easily me a different colour than the foundation because colour in different areas of our faces varies. And as an individual, the great thing is that once you understand your own skin tone, you can always buy a foundation to mix with the 'wrong' one (if you can't take it back) to fix it.
ladydevz 50p · 478 weeks ago
Yeah I agree that generalizations aren't the best way to understand things..
I should have also mentioned taht I had similar experience when I took a makeup artist class and most of my class mates applied a very orangey foundation on me even though the instructor kept commenting "its not looking right on her"..
I agree that SAs have a lot of experience from using and recommending makeup..May be the reason for the problem I mentioned is the lack of exposure to varied skin tones..
I also agree with your comments on finding out what works for you in terms of foundation - its all about finding that balance and what works for you.
I wanted to raise the point that even if you're in Sephora or MAC and comes across an SA who definitely sounds more knowledgeable, you should still keep your eyes open.. :)
Medusa Pro Box · 370 weeks ago