Foundation Review | NARS Sheer Glow – Worth the Hype?

März 28, 2015

Good evening everyone!

I am usually a reasonable shopper. I have my limits for most things (100-150€ for a real pretty winter coat, ~50€ for a real pretty dress, 20-30€ for make-up etc.) and adhere to them quite well. However, sometimes, I just get weak. Do you know this feeling when for some unknown reason you just have to have something? There is no reasonable explanation why you should pay 50€ for a foundation but you find yourself purchasing it eventually anyways…?  If you do, then you know exactly how I felt about this foundation.
In my case, there were two factors that spiked my interest: First, I saw Youtubers hyping this foundation into the heavens and it did look quite nice in most videos. Second, NARS is absolutely not available in Germany. The brand was sold for a quite short period of time but, as beauty-unconscious as most Germans are, could not really stand on stable ground and eventually disappeared again from the German market. That is not the case for beauty-obsessed Korea: NARS has some counters in high-end department stores. So if I wanted to try anything, I had to buy it while I was still in Korea or probably pay double for importing it. I guess you already know how that ended.

I mean, I honestly should have known better when looking at the packaging – a solid glass container without a pump. How can your foundation retail for 40/50€ but you still have to shed extra  money for the pump? RIDICULOUS. Even more ridiculous, when I tried to get a pump the sales people told me they are currently out and can’t offer me anything. Great. Thanks for nothing. Also, they matched me to the darkest shade of their light spectrum… I honestly trusted the sales person (they didn’t speak English so I tried to communicate in Japanese but they weren’t stellar with that either..) and didn’t know that Deauville was actually the darkest shade for fair skin types. I am pretty sure I should rather be Light 1 or 2 but… you will see. Just keep on reading, we’re getting there in just a bit.
  SWATCHES  
You can already see, this is not a match made in heaven; it’s very yellow on my pale skin. I made a comparison swatch with my MAC NC15 Studio Fix Fluid (which I barely use these days but used to use it for almost 3 years) and Revlon Colorstay in Buff:
As you can see, the NARS foundation the sales person „matched“ me to is a lot darker/yellow than the other shades I use. NARS also looks the most cakey and „dry“ from the swatch alone. 
  PERFORMANCE  

I made this review 4 or 6 weeks ago, shortly after I came back from Japan and my skin was still in quite a bad shape – just so you don’t wonder why my skin condition keeps getting better and worse in the last weeks, I sometimes don’t post the reviews in the order I photograph or wrote them 🙂
The foundation itself is water-based which means it does feel very light when applied to the skin – it’s about the only thing I liked about this foundation. I guess you can tell from the front picture that this is just the complete wrong shade for me – I don’t even mind the darkness but I look just SO YELLOW here, it does look so unnatural on me 🙁 It applies like a charm even with fingers – I wish my Studio Fix Foundation had that formulation. But that’s really the only difference I can tell – in my opinion, this foundation is just an even more expensive version of the MAC Studio Fix, Finish and coverage are about the same (MAC Studio Fix a bit better I’d say) but overall, I don’t really see a difference except for the price tag. I am also super mad that a professional sales person from the NARS counter mismatched me so badly. Also, I don’t see the „sheer glow“ it is supposed to have (hence the name) – this is just completely matte on me.
  FINAL THOUGHTS  
I think this could be a nice foundation in the right shade but personally, I find the price tag way too high for what it does. It doesn’t do anything special on my pores, nor when it comes to the finish or coverage. It’s just an average foundation in my opinion and I think you can already read that I am very disappointed. Immediately after I took these pictures I sold the foundation on Ebay – no way this is gonna rot on my shelf. I really hope the person who got it lives happily with it! Will definitely not repurchase this.
Have you tried anything from NARS? What do you think of the brand? It will def. take a lot of good arguments for me to ever risk the huge price tag of this brand again.
Lots of love,

Sam

Prev Post Next Post