Foundation Review: Charlotte Tilbury Unreal Skin Sheer Glow Tint

The title of this post was getting ridiculously long and really I needed to add the word “stick” to the end of it but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. But now that I read the title again, perhaps it could have done with the extra word. To make it really, really long. Do you ever read a group of words so many times that they become completely abstract and you begin to question how the English language ever took off?

Anyway it’s important that you know that the Charlotte Tilbury foundation is a stick, because it’s actually my favourite type of foundation. Scribble it on, buff it in, no chance of drips or spillages, you could almost apply it in a zero-gravity situation, if you ever found yourself in one.

(I think I’ve thought of my next piece of video content.)

Not only is it a stick, it’s the most gloriously slippery, lightweight kind of stick that glides over the skin with barely a hint of friction, leaving you with half a dozen or so trails of soft, glowing foundation that simply melt seamlessly together when you blend with a brush or fingertips.

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God, it sounds perfect, doesn’t it? This is the opposite of “pan stick”, this Charlotte Tilbury Unreal Skin Sheer Glow Tint Hydrating Foundation Stick. Takes longer to say the name of it but application time is a mere fraction. Here’s the thing, though: I’m not quite sure we can call this makeup stick a foundation. I sort of think that the people at Charlotte Tilbury should have stuck to one description or the other in the product name: tint or foundation. Both suggest quite different things, in my experience. If I had to describe this makeup product to a friend (and we’re all friends here!) then I’d call it a tinted moisturiser in a stick. And there is nothing - I repeat nothing - whatsoever wrong with this.

How long have I waited for a face base stick that was light, easy to blend, glow-giving and relatively sheer? I shall tell you: almost the length of time I’ve been blogging about beauty. I adore the ease of application with a stick, even though all the time I’m applying it I’m inwardly choking on my own oesophagus at how much more it costs per ml (or gram) than just a normal foundation in a tube or bottle.

(For example, Lancome’s Teint Idole in a stick costs £3.40 per gram, the equivalent-ish product in a bottle costs £1.30. I say “ish” because obviously they’re not the same product, they have a totally different format, different packaging and so on. But still, the convenience of being able to apply makeup with the gay abandon of a three year-old let loose with the pavement chalks is a costly one.)

So yes, I adore the ease of application and I have been waiting, for all this time, for someone to bring out the ultimate “my skin but five-to-six times better” product, something deeply hydrating and that gives a fresh and youthful sheen to the skin, a juiciness that makes you want to keep prodding at your cheeks because they suddenly look as though they’ve been filled up with water through some magical miniature hosepipe. The comfort of a tinted moisturiser with the convenience of a product that can be applied with no mirror, in the dark, whilst on a rollercoaster.

Unreal Skin ticks so many boxes. The texture on application: glorious. The feel: so, so hydrating. The coverage: very light, but just enough to knock back redness, take down a bit of dark circle, to subtly even out skin tone. The finish? Ah. Yes. This is where it divides opinion. Because Unreal Skin is glowy. They weren’t messing around when they named this product. There couldn’t be much more glow, even if you gold-leafed yourself.

(All these content ideas, all coming at once!)

Skin looks so glowy with this makeup stick that it is almost metallic. It reminds me, when I wear it in an unadulterated, unpowdered way, of the time I face-painted my four-year-old sister to look like the tin man. Light reflects from every facet of the face, it is almost as though it becomes its own light source. A beacon.

Most people seem to absolutely love this effect. It’s so OTT that it cannot fail to attract attention; passers-by are blinded, oncoming vehicles flash at you in a panicked manner, signalling frantically for you to dip your face. If you positioned yourself carefully, on a hot and sunny day, you could probably fry ants on the pavement just by pointing your nose in the right direction. In short, if you want the biggest, best glow that you can possibly achieve in an easy and foolproof way then this is it. As the product name promises, the overall effect is unreal.

But herein lies the problem for me. I’m not sure that I want my skin to look unreal. I want it to look absolutely amazing, but believable. There’s something very overt and brash about a glow all over that could never happen naturally and also something weird about skin that glows from places it shouldn’t. I’m not sure that we should particularly want the ends of our noses to glow, or the skin on our upper lip, which always ends up looking sweaty, or the jawline. Isn’t the beauty of a glow the fact that it happens where the light hits? Suggesting a beautifully smooth and perfect surface? I’m just not sure whether an all-over glow actually does us any favours. We need contrast in life; shadow and light, warmth and coolness. Surely?

That said, all you need to do with this amazing stick is to make sure you don’t use it all over. I think this is why I have a problem with calling it a foundation: it’s not something I can conceivably use to blur, conceal and add a bit of warmth on every part of my face that needs it. There’s a) not quite enough coverage and b) too much glow. (Have I mentioned the glow thing?)

I find myself scribbling the Tilbury Unreal Skin stick on the outer parts of my face and using my Lancome Teint Idole stick on the middle areas, where I need to cover nose redness and undereye darkness. I’m a two stick girl now!

(You can find the Lancome stick online here*, I use shade 220. I have to say that the shade range is very narrow. Coverage is comprehensive, finish is velvety with no obvious sheen.)

None of this is a criticism of Unreal Skin: I don’t think that there’s another face stick like it. It pretty much manages to harness the absolute genius of Tilbury’s bestselling Hollywood Flawless Filter, just in a slightly different format. If you’ve used that product you’ll know that it gives the most excellent megawatt shine, whether you use it underneath foundation as a primer or over the top as a grown-up highlighter. The Unreal Skin stick feels perhaps slightly more hydrating to me, which is a feat in itself, but I just think it’s the convenience factor that has made it so instantly popular.

So: would I purchase when this stick runs out? Yes I would. If I was left entirely to my own devices then maybe I’d take a bit more time to answer that question, because I do tend to use the product more as a very lazy glow-fix on lazy days and I have plenty of other products that do a similar kind of job. But it’s that thing when so many people compliment something you’re wearing - a new shirt, for example, or a classic winter coat - and you’ve never really thought that much of it but everyone keeps saying how amazing it is and so it gives you a strange second-hand kind of faith in it. Terribly weak, character-wise (“I’ll let everyone else decide on what I wear! If they like it, I’m happy!”) but perhaps sometimes you need to see yourself through the eyes of others to really appreciate something…

I wear shade 4 in the Charlotte Tilbury Unreal Skin Sheer Glow Tint Hydrating Foundation Stick (ffs, I almost expired typing that out again) but suit a shade 3 in the winter and can just about stretch to a 5 in the summer if I have some natural bronzage going on. Note that it does highlight pores, if these are a bugbear of yours. Just thought I’d throw that grenade in right at the end. It’s £35 here*

Here’s a video of it on film:

Annoyingly, I actually think that it looks pretty incredible now that I watch the video back. For God’s sake! I’m not amending my post now. You’ll just have to make your own minds up…

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