With more than 150k reviews all rating the IL Makiage foundation at five stars, it has become one of the most popular foundation brands in the US.
Does anyone else miss shopping in-store for beauty? With online beauty sales booming, it’s clear we have all learned to love buying makeup online. I do miss a good browse through my local Sephora and Mecca store though.
Whilst it may seem easy enough to add your favourite shade of lipstick or eyeshadow to your online cart when shopping makeup online, until now, foundation still seemed unreachable to most online shoppers. With so many shades, undertones and bases available in a foundation, it seems risky to attempt buying a new foundation online, with no in-person colour matching being done. Or is it?
Here enters tech-led New York City beauty brand IL Makiage.
Founded in 1972 by New York Makeup Artist Ilana Harkavi, IL Makiage now retails around the globe, with locations in the UK and Germany in 2020 and in Australia in 2021.
According to Forbes, in 2018, the brand found a second coming as one of the beauty businesses to know, thanks to new leadership and new investments valued at over $44 million, sending the prestige brand’s popularity into the stratosphere, with the launch of their new foundation.
It uses a specially designed software called PowerMatch, which is a complex algorithm program using data from 700 skin tones designed to create a perfectly skin matched foundation. And the foundation comes in 50 shades.
For me, all it took was one ad on YouTube and I was intrigued.
The ads were a compilation of some of the best beauty influencers trialing the new perfectly blended foundation, which is matched to your skin type, tone, and colour using a one-to-two-minute online questionnaire on their website.
The PowerMatch quiz covers all the basics for creating your foundation. What is your skin type? What type of coverage are you after? How do you apply foundation? You answer via multiple choice, choosing sassy answers like ‘married to my moisturiser’ for dry skin or ‘each part of my face has a mind of its own’ for combination.
The questionnaire then moves onto a series of questions related to skin tone. This involves a variety of pictures of faces with varying skin colours and tones. You click the face most like your own skin tone, and it then breaks it down into another category of skin tones within that skin tone.
According to IL Makiage, 700 skin tone combinations are used within the algorithm, which is why the questionnaire has you repeat the process with selecting more faces with specific skin tones, until you eventually arrive to a final skin tone which resembles you the most. It takes about a minute and then the system generates the correct base and tone for your foundation, based on your answers.
With more than four different foundation brands already sitting on my beauty counter, I hardly needed to add another, but I was seriously impressed by the videos I watched, showing how flawless the application of the foundation was when applied to varying skin types. Covering everything from inconsistent skin tones, blemishes to dark circles.
But can a foundation really live up to such high expectations? How do we know the influencers trialing the foundation weren’t paid big dollars to promote the new foundation range?
According to 155K people who have left an independent 5-star rating on the foundation, making it the most-reviewed product in the US, the IL Makiage foundation is legit.
And with more than 50k google searchers online researching the IL Makiage foundation, it’s no wonder this brand is slowly climbing up the global charts of being one of the best-selling foundations around the world.
Of course, if you prefer to put your trust in purchasing a full priced foundation online, IL Makiage also offer a Try Before You Buy Service, where you only pay for shipping on an item and have 14 days to trial the foundation, and any of their other product. If you don’t like it, you must return the product before the 14 days are up, otherwise you will be charged for all the products you obtained through this policy.
In the name of beauty, and for my own personal interest, I took the quiz online and waited patiently for the foundation to arrive.
I didn’t have to wait long. Within four days, my foundation had arrived. Along with a colour matched concealer, which I purchased separately.
The foundation comes in a luxurious glass bottle, packaged in a cleanly designed box. The concealer comes in a chrome tube, with a glass side panel so you can check in to see the level and know when to re-order. The packaging for both products is simple and sophisticated.
The foundation is called Woke Up Like This RRP $68, and is silicone based, and the concealer is called F*ck I’m Flawless RRP $49. Both are full coverage with a matte finish and contain blurring powders to help make skin look flawless.
Both products also contain the added ingredients of hyaluronic acid and vitamin E to help with hydration, so the formula never cakes, doesn’t suffocate pores and looks as natural as your own skin, blending effortlessly for a no makeup, makeup look.
The main ingredients of the foundation are non-toxic, however, it’s not recommended for damaged, sensitive skin, or teen skin types, as some of the ingredients are not non-irritant and non-hypoallergenic. The brand also recommends you don’t apply this foundation to the eyelids or lips.
It doesn’t contain SPF, so do remember to apply a sunscreen to the face before application to your skin if you plan on being outdoors at all.
It’s vegan, cruelty-free and the formulation is oil and paraben free.
My final thoughts after using the foundation. I’m kind of in love with it. The coverage is outstanding and blends effortlessly into my skin, covering imperfections with so much ease, I hardly recognize my own skin. And a little goes a long way too.
The streak-free formula is cool on the skin and as per the instructions on the enclosed leaflet inside, it is recommended you allow at least five minutes for the foundation to melt into the skin after applying, before you think about building additional layers.
You don’t need much to apply to your full face, and with the foundation feeling incredibly light weight. It’s buildable, depending on the type of foundation look you are going for. I like the natural no makeup makeup look, so one application with the colour matched concealer was all I needed to finish the look.
The PowerMatch questionnaire is impressive to say the least, on how well worked to colour match the foundation to my skin type and tone. It was a perfect match.
