What It Is:
Clarins Instant Light Eye Perfecting Base*
Why This Should Be in Your Bag:
Eyeshadow primer is an essential tool in my makeup bag. I have oily eyelids and without primer, my shadow is creased and melted by midday, leaving me looking like one hell of a hot mess. My holy grail primer is Urban Decay Primer Potion, but I’m always willing to try new ones!
Clarins is a bit late to the shadow primer game, but has released this one as part of their Perfecting Base collection. They say it is “a universal half-make-up, half-skin care base enriched with oat polyoses to smooth, brighten and even out the eyelids while extending make-up wear.” I appreciate that is has some added benefits and was excited to test it out.
How To Use It:
Straight from Clarins, they recommend:
CC Rating: C
As you can see, this one was just not a win for me. My first impression of the Instant Light Eye Perfecting Base was that it was quite a bit thicker than any primer I’d tried before. When applied it really did even out my eyelids, but was 2-3 shades darker than my skintone and had a slightly emollient texture to it, likely due to oils added for skincare purposes. However, it was those very oils that were the downfall of this product for me.
When I wore eyeshadow over this, it was creased, greasy, and melting by hour 5 or 6. Compare this to the normal 12 hour wear I get out of my regular eyeshadow primer and you can really see that this product doesn’t live up to its claims. I also didn’t see any skin benefits, but I also couldn’t wear this any day that I actually wanted to wear eyeshadow.
When worn alone, I found my eyelids looked greasy around hour 5 or 6 as well, but without product this happens around hour 3 or 4. If you’re looking for a product to just even out your eyelids and don’t plan on wearing eyeshadow overtop or you have very dry skin, you may like the Clarins Instant Light Eye Perfecting Base.
[Need some new makeup but not sure what to buy? Check out Alex’s other beauty reviews here.]
*item was provided for review
