Face, Reviews

NARS All Day Luminous Weightless Foundation: A Dissenting Opinion

[cf-shortcode plugin=”acf” field=”affiliate_link”]

I’ve been looking for a new foundation for a while because I’m feeling a bit bored with my current one (YSL Le Teint Touche Eclat). Ever since the press releases for NARS All Day Luminous Weightless Foundation started popping up, I’ve been soooo antsy to get my hands on this stuff. One of the Sephoras here finally put their testers out last weekend, so I snapped up a sample as fast as I could. Which is my way of telling you – this review is of a sample, so it’s not like I’ve been wearing it for months or anything. Just fyi. I have worn it almost every day since I picked it up though, and I feel like that’s plenty enough to have an opinion.

Packaging

NARS All Day Luminous Weightless Foundation

Like I said, I haven’t bought this foundation, just got a sample of it, so I can’t really offer any opinions on the packaging. I put a picture of it for you though – it seems to be basically the same as their other foundations. That’s all I can really tell you about it. I could rant about the sample container (I manage to get bits of makeup everywhere) but I’m pretty sure NARS isn’t colluding with Sephora to make a mess of my vanity.

Color

NARS All Day Luminous Weightless Foundation

I’m pretty sure I’m doomed to never own a NARS foundation, because even though they have twenty shades of this stuff… none of them match me. I thought Vallauris might work since it’s medium-ish with cool undertones, but when I tested it at the store it was straight-up oompa loompa material on me. Way darker than I expected and more orangey than pink. After much deliberation I settled on Santa Fe – it’s still a little too yellow but close enough that I can make it work. But, if you’ve already found a match in other NARS foundations, I expect you could find one in ADLW too (I’ll be abbreviating the name henceforth because I’m already tired of typing it). They do run from ultra-light to very deep, which is a huge step above what most brands offer.

Texture, application & wear

This is where I diverge from the opinion of basically everyone else ever, which seems to be that first ingredient in ADLW is unicorn tears. Seriously, everyone seems to love this foundation and I just. don’t. get it. I’ll start with the good stuff though, which is the coverage. The consistency of this foundation is very runny – think YSL Fusion Ink or Chanel Perfection Lumiere Velvet. For a thin formula, it has a huge amount of coverage. I got halfway through putting my makeup on to do this post when I realized I should probably let you see some bare skin (bow chicka bowwow) to give you an idea. So the left half of my face (right side of the photo) doesn’t have any foundation on yet:

NARS All Day Luminous Weightless Foundation

A little bit goes a long way with this stuff – I just barely dipped my finger into the sample pot and dotted that all over my cheek:

NARS All Day Luminous Weightless Foundation

 

And then used a stippling brush (Chanel #7, if you’re curious) to spread it out:

NARS All Day Luminous Weightless Foundation

I didn’t use any spot concealer in that one, so what you see is what you get. The problem is, it’s just massively unpleasant. I think you can sort of see in these photos how it sits on top of the skin (I know the color mismatch isn’t helping any with that). Getting it to blend is difficult and tedious, and once it’s on I can feel it. The name describes it as weightless, but even though it’s not thick it still feels a bit suffocating and mask-like.

NARS All Day Luminous Weightless Foundation in Santa Fe

For all that, it does look pretty smooth, except in flaky areas. You’re gonna need to exfoliate for sure.

Wear throughout the day was another bust. Cue up a ‘McKayla is not impressed’ meme here. It steadily settled into all my lines and pores, even though I tried it over a few different primers. Let’s not beat around the bush here – it aged me, and not gracefully. Pardon the weird expression in the picture below – it was the best example of what I’m talking about, especially the crepiness at the top of my cheekbone.

NARS All Day Luminous Weightless Foundation

On top of that, it got patchy and powdery-looking in my dry areas (mainly around my chin and nose) and in oily areas, well, this happened:

NARS All Day Luminous Weightless Foundation

I’m very careful not to touch my face, but somehow it still broke down and came off between my eyebrows after 6 hours or so (though this picture was taken after maybe 10-12). As you can see, it has exactly zero oil control, though I can’t really count that against it since I don’t think it claims to.

So yeah. Basically nothing about this foundation worked for me, which makes me glad I waited to test it before buying.

In Short: Odds are I won’t even finish my sample of it.

NARS All Day Luminous Weightless Foundation

NARS All Day Luminous Weightless Foundation ($48) is available at nordstrom.com and sephora.com

 

3 Comments

  1. Hue Rocks

    February 8, 2015 at 10:29 am

    Good to know somebody doesn’t love this foundation. Maybe you can use the rest of the sample as an undereye corrector? I mean, it’s so orange it may counteract the undereye darkness. But in the 1st picture it doesn’t look like you have any…Anyway, I really dislike how it accentuate druness and everything else. If I get the chance to get a sample at the counter I’ll give it a try, but so far I may keep using my MUFE face&body.

  2. Beauty Skeptic

    February 9, 2015 at 10:44 am

    I haven’t tried this, but I find that all of NARS foundations are suffocating and unpleasant to wear. I wore Sheer Matte in Punjab on my wedding day – it indeed matched me and photographed BEAUTIFULLY, but I felt it all evening, and I am definitely not into feeling my makeup. I just bought Sephora’s serum foundation, the Teint Infusion Ethereal Natural Finish (gotta love these long names) and it is another very fluid, thin, like the Fusion Ink. Wearing it for the first time today and so far so good. :D

  3. Lexie

    February 9, 2015 at 6:15 pm

    Hmm, I’m excited about this foundation but will definitely pick up a sample before purchasing… I loved my sample of Sheer Glow!

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.