Burn, Baby, Burn
Makeup is supposed to make us look (and feel) more fabulous than before we put it on. So when products make us look worse (think: clumpy lashes, enhanced fine lines and blotchy delivery), it fills our inner beauty junkie with the rage of a thousand mean girls. Here are our biggest beauty gripes—and how to fix them with wonder products that rise above.
UV Damage Protection Without the Shine
Sunscreen is a must. But when SPF clogs pores and creates a greasy finish on skin then blemishes follow. This SPF—which is designed to mix in with your moisturizer of choice—contains mattifying properties to help keep oily skin types from going full-on greaseball.
Avoid Crevice-Creating Lipstick
We love the classic Hollywood look that a matte lipstick can provide. But many formulas are so mattifying, they seem to suck every iota of plumpness and hydration from our lips, drawing attention to chapped patches and fine lines. Not good. Like many other moisturizing formulas, this lipstick feels hydrating and light and leaves lips looking nourished—but, bonus—it delivers that velvet-rich finish we adore.
Elizabeth Arden Beautiful Color Moisturizing Lipstick in Matte Shades, $25
Find the Perfect Color—Online
Purchasing color cosmetics online is a tricky feat. Oftentimes, shades represented on screen don't translate on face. But since Ellis Faas, a legendary makeup artist, creates pigments based on elements found in and on the human body—such as blood, veins, freckles—every shade works for every body, no matter what your skin tone—or how the shade appears online.
Forget Foundations That Settle
The whole point of foundation is to help make skin look certifiably flawless. So when makeup settles into fine lines, it leaves us feeling anything but.
The fix: Try Westmore Beauty Coverage Perfector 2-in-1 Foundation, which uses Japanese-sourced technology to suspend the product so it sits—and stays—on top of skin.
Fight Fleeting Lip Color
Not that we expect lipstick to literally lacquer our lips, but when wearing a bold color, we don't want our lip color to stamp every glass rim or tenderoni we touch. As for formulas that feather? We can do without those too, please and thank you.
The fix: This lip pen glides on, delivers saturated pigment and stays put through a round a drinks.
Abandon Eyelid Abuse
We invest big bucks on eye cream to help preserve the thin skin around the eyes. And we it onto the eye area with the lightest of touch to do the same. So when an eyeliner roughly pulls and tugs at the skin to make its mark? It may be purely psychological, but we can just feel the years being unfairly added to our visage.
The fix: This eye pencil glides on smoothly without roughly pulling at the skin. Even better, it stays in place, unlike many of its kohl counterparts.
Rouge Bunny Rouge Feline Gaze Long Lasting Eye Pencil, $22
Banish Messy Mascaras
On our dis list? Mascara that gives a goldilocks complex: When formulas are too dry, they make lashes look clumpy and brittle. And when they're too wet, they mark us with raccoon eyes.
The fix: Eyeko Black Magic Mascara lives up to its name. The inky black pigment brushes on while curling and defining lashes—and stays on the lashes without clumping. No wonder makeup artists use it on stars like Jennifer Lawrence, Chloe Grace Moretz for red-carpet appearances.
Ditch Hard-to-Control Polish
Ask any celeb manicurist: the key to a proper polish job is control. But when amazing colors are housed in bottles equipped with ultra-wide brushes, coloring within the lines becomes too tough a task.
The fix: The quickest way to a perfect ten lies in using two thin coats of paint. The brush on this high-shine lacquer is neither too wide or too narrow, allowing us to deposit the right amount of polish with every mani.
Combat Caking Concealer
Like its troublesome cousin, cake-y foundation, concealer that dries up into a crusty mess on our faces only creates more flaws instead of hiding them. Now it's not always the concealer's fault—skin must be properly prepped before most formulas can fully perform. But once a cover-up is applied onto moisturized and hydrated skin, we expect the stuff to hide spots and lines, not accentuate them.
The fix: Clé de Peau Beauté Concealer is the weapon of choice for stars like Kim Kardashian and Kate Bosworth for a reason—it covers imperfections without caking.
Stymie Sticky Gloss
There are always little tradeoffs when it comes to lip gloss. And we can deal with a little goopiness in the tube or more frequent application to get that blast of shine. But when gloss is so sticky that it captures wind-blown hair? That's where we draw the line.
The fix: This gloss-meets-color hybrid boasts a light formula that measures low on the tackiness scale.