Beauty Review: Double Wear Makeup by Estee Lauder

Those who have a combination skin type with visible pores, an oily T-zone and prone to break outs are always in search of the best product that would solve these imperfections… or at least would cover them up!
One of the powder foundations for combination skin I tried out recently and used to even out my skin tone for an Autumn inspired photoshoot is Double Wear Makeup by Estee Lauder.

Double Wear
Stay-in-Place Powder Makeup

Promise: Provides “medium semi-matte coverage”, is a “worry-free powder makeup” that “looks natural for up to 8 hours, even through nonstop activity”. It is also promised that you will have “a continuously flawless look without touch-ups”.
I especially liked the phrase “through nonstop activity”. I got an image of me working out in a gym and still having a flawless skin tone and “semi-matte coverage” :-)

Well, though I am quite happy (for now!) with my powder choice and I have never had a better powder foundation, it did not work as well for me as it was promised and as I hoped for.

My Review:

The sales girl recommended Estee Lauder’s Double Wear as having one of the best (and thickest) coverage. “Very good for your type of skin” – she ensured me.

Matte-finish, oil absorbing: Well, most of the powders for combination/oily skin I have tried before including the ones by Maybelline and Max Factor kind of let me down. They never really provided the long term “matte finish” as promised. The same unfortunately happened with Estee Lauder Double Wear. In a couple hours my resistant to oil-absorbing inredients T-Zone was shiny again.

Color: The promise that Double Wear “won’t change its color” is very true. It gives an amazing even color to the skin and it looks as if powder actually blends with your skin. Very very nice but of course only till the oiliness starts to show in the T-Zone.

Smooth application: The fact that it “Glides on silky smooth” is completely true. It gives the skin a very natural even look covering up minor imperfections and minimizing the appearance of pores. However, since it turned out to be not oil-absorbent enough for me, I had to reapply it and do some touch-ups much sooner than 8 hours. I found it looked smothered and unnatural when I did it though. The reason is that it does give you a very thick Double Wear that when mixed with oil and covered with another layer of Double Wear just looks like a mask. So I changed the application strategy and applied it with a brush instead of the applicator-sponge provided with the powder. It works excellent and allows a couple natural looking retouches (before those it is advisable to use a blotting paper on the shiny areas).

What I would Recommend: I think this makeup is ideal for an even tone, matte look and coverage of imperfections for medium oily skin and normal skin.
If you have oily skin:

use mattifying/oil absorbing moisturizer on the T-Zone

keep a pack of blotting paper with you (I love the ones by Clinique)

apply the powder using a brush to allow natural looking touch-ups when needed.

Beauty Talk: Thinking about Beauty

I guess the first post is always a bit of a hard one. You are starting from a “clean slate” … and the thing you are going to put on this clean slate should be something important… I want to dedicate my first post to Beauty.

What is Beauty?

Beauty belongs to those meanings that are impossible to give a two-sentence-to-the-point explanations. It belongs to those types of deep meanings the depth and various angles of which we keep discovering and rediscovering as long as we live.
(And before you go to Wikipedia to find your answer just try to think about all the things you find beautiful in your life and try to come up with your own meaning of Beauty)

Trying to give Beauty an explanation one should address several levels of this phenomenon.

Beauty is a feeling we get from a perception that can be visual, mental, tactile etc… And it is the feeling of enjoyment, pleasure, inspiration and excitement.

I would say the essence of beauty is the pleasure of perceiving it.

There are so many things in life that can be beautiful: a person, a moment, a feeling, an object, a dream…

However, Beauty does not exist as a given fact. Everyone experiences beauty in their own way… in a special way different from someone else. This is due to the fact that each of us is shaped by the experiences we have had in the course of our lives. And there are no 2 people in the world with completely similar life experiences. Every person will experience beauty with the shades of feelings and perception known and felt by only this very exact person.

Because of this our perception of Beauty is changing together with us… with our accumulation of various experiences, with the changes in our perception and our feelings.

And my final thought about Beauty is that society and the current “beauty trends” play an extremely important role in our perception of it. Sometimes, they influence our vision of Beauty to a bigger extent than we realize (this is a completely different story though). However, it is undeniable that trends and fashion pass but the classical ultimate Beauty stays.

I want to dedicate my first post to my beautiful friend Natalie! I would like to dedicate it to her beauty as a woman and her beauty as an amazing person and a wonderful friend.
And especially to her recently found beauty of life as being a Mum! Happy 1-month birthday to Baby-Boy-Nikita!

Love,

G