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The Fairest of Them All: Fenty Pro Filt’r Soft Matte Longwear Foundation Review
QUICK FACTS:
Brand: Fenty
Product: Pro Filt’r Soft Matte Longwear Foundation
Price: $42
Available at: Sephora (in store and online)
Like everyone else who is at all into makeup, when Rihanna announced her Fenty line featuring a foundation shade range that offered FORTY options ranging from the fairest of fair to the deepest of dark, we
ll it was an exciting day. You have to understand, I am ridiculously pale. Like people asking me if I’m okay, constantly trying to get me to wear blush pale. My friends losing me against an ice cream truck (true story, it was sad) pale. Blended into the backdrop of my health card photo pale (see photo). And while most people have a pink or yellow tone to their skin, I seem to have blessed (cursed) without either, if I had to classify it it would be blue. So basically it’s been a struggle to find a foundation match since the time that I started wearing makeup. Once upon a time, there was a L’Oreal foundation that came close, but first they discontinued it, and then when they brought it back, they’d changed the formula and after wearing it for all of an hour, I was sporting a very attractive full-face rash. Not pretty! That was the moment I pretty much gave up on drugstore liquid foundation. Then I tried MAC’s lightest foundation, which the very lovely salesperson assured me was what all his palest customers used, but even that didn’t really work for my skin - but bonus, it didn’t leave me with a rash! My solution between giving up on the MAC foundation and my discovery of Fenty was a Maybelline FitMe powder, which in all honesty may actually be meant to be a setting powder since the shade name is Translucent. Don’t worry, you can laugh, its been the source of much amusement among my friends (I’m looking at you T!)… I will say that the powder is something I’m going keep in my makeup bag for days when I’m not feeling a full face or as a backup if I haven’t remembered to bring along the Fenty!
I will admit, it took me a while to get around to investigating the Fenty - fear of being let down again probably! So one day when Ashley and I had wandered into Sephora, I decided that I’d take a deep breath and ask the salesperson about whether she thought it would work for me. First, she took me over to their little color match station to get the most accurate shade match for my skin… If you’ve read our Sephora Do’s and Don’ts article (if you haven’t, get on that!) you probably know where this is heading: apparently my skin is so pale that the little handy dandy machine they have there can’t actually get a reading… so that was a thing. Luckily, the woman I was talking to happened to be a redhead so she understood the whole extreme pale thing, and turns out also uses the Maybelline powder I mentioned earlier! So once we’d bonded over that, she took me over to the Fenty shelf and handed me the bottle of 110 and told me this was probably the closest shade match I’d ever get. I will have you know that there is a shade lighter, so this was an exciting day! Turns out I can probably flip between the two, but the 110 was in stock when I went to order it online so that’s the one I got!
The description for 110 says this is “for very fair skin with cool undertones” and OH MY GOD THIS STUFF IS AMAZING! Seriously, the first time I wore it I was halfway done applying it and Rachel came into the washroom and asked if I’d tried it yet: it’s that good of a shade match!!! It even blends with my neck, which is even paler than my face! (Yes apparently that’s possible.) So this is basically my shade match holy grail, and I will cry if this is ever discontinued.
Application-wise, I’ve tried it with my fingers, a foundation brush and a sponge, and personally I found that the sponge works best! This stuff dries fast so when I was using the brush, I found that it left almost brushstrokes on my face, which is a look, but not exactly the one I was going for. But that also could be the type of foundation brush I was using, so I’d be willing to give it another shot with a different style of brush. A little goes a long way with this stuff - I think to cover my entire face I only need two, maybe three pumps depending on the day. I’ve also found that if I’m looking for super light coverage, mixing a drop of it with my daily moisturizer works really well!
I really like the formula - as it is a matte foundation, it is a bit drying so just make sure that your face is well-moisturized when you apply it! I was a bit confused by the “soft matte” in the name but once I used it, I totally saw what they were talking about: it’s definitely a matte foundation, but unlike a lot of matte foundations, it still looks like actual skin! This is a HUGE bonus for me, I never want it to look like I’m wearing foundation - and for that matter, I never want it to feel like I’m wearing foundation and this formula is basically weightless: to the point where I forget that I have it on! But it lasts all day, and through some pretty ridiculous weather that has vanquished foundations that came before it. I’m talking torrential rain and ridiculous winter weather like we’ve been having this week. So basically, this stuff is pretty much all around holy grail!
When it comes to the packaging, it’s very clean and streamlined but still pretty. The bottle is easy to fit into your makeup bag of basically any size, and it features an easy to use pump that delivers pretty consistent amounts of the product while also being sensitive enough to give out less product with a lighter pump, more with a
more enthusiastic pump. I will say that my only real negative with this bottle is that sometimes the product drips down the nozzle of the pump - not a lot, but still, I want to use every drop of this stuff so I don’t want any to go to waste! That being said, it’s reasonably priced ($42!) so I’m not as fussed as if it were priced like some other high end foundations.
I would absolutely recommend this foundation to anyone, but especially to anyone that has struggled to find a shade match! With forty shades and a variety of tones, I have my fingers so crossed that your holy grail match is just a Sephora trip away too!
