Image courtesy of sephora.com
Last week I was able to get a foundation sample of Stellar Beauty’s Limitless Foundation and I have been testing it out for the past few days to see if it is something I want to invest in. To give some background, Stellar Beauty is a brand created by former Canadian TV personality Monika Deol, and it caters specifically to medium skin tones. Deol claims that medium skin tones are not accounted for in the beauty industry (she references her time working on television as an example) and resolved to create a line that work for medium-toned skin tones like hers. I was very excited to see that this line launched as I liked the concept (space age-y but still quite luxe-looking) and also liked the idea of catering to the middle-of-the-spectrum people.
I was particularly interested in seeing if the line had neutral shades that still looked natural as my particular beef with foundation lines has mostly been on how yellow/orange/golden a lot of them are. This works for many people of colour but I am more neutral-to-olive in tone and I really dislike foundations that look super yellow or golden. As such, I don’t particularly like NARS (very golden), Bobbi Brown (yellow in general and neutral shades have been a bit ruddy-looking in my experience), and Cover FX (which I find over-commits to shades in general. The G-range of shades are particularly atrocious for being so warm-toned to the point where I can’t imagine who would be that golden-orange in tone). The best foundation match for me so far has been Make Up For Ever’s Y415 foundation stick. Needless to say, I wanted to see how Stellar Beauty fared in comparison.
I got a sample of the Stellar Beauty foundation in shade #7, which is a light-medium with slightly peachy ish undertones. My first impression is that the shade is the perfect medium neutral tone that is not ruddy looking, and meshes in very nicely with my skin. I wore it on a work day once by dotting the foundation around my face and blending out with a beauty blender. It kind of looked heavy on first application but settled in nicely after that. I noticed that it didn’t seem to blur my pores or anything like that, so that area of my face still had to powdered with a HD powder after the fact.
It lasted okay. It broke up by the end of the day, and looked slightly cakey but I attribute that to me applying with a heavy hand more than anything. It still looked pretty natural despite the coverage. The second day, I went to the gym and applied the foundation with my fingers. Surprise, surprise – it applied so beautifully and evenly with my fingers. Furthermore, it lasted even longer because I had really taken the time to work it into my skin. Applying a little at a time and working in layers also did wonders to its longevity — but I think that’s probably a pro-tip for most foundations in general. I tend to be so slap-dash about make-up that I tend to cake on my MUFE foundation stick and call it a day but the Stellar foundation seems to be a beautiful option for medium coverage that’s radiant and very skin-like.
I have dry skin so this kind of a skin-like foundation works pretty well for me, but I feel like people with combination skin can work with this as well. I do think it benefits from powder to tone down the shine but it’s not egregiously shiny in nature (nothing like Becca’s Aqua Luminous foundation, which can look almost dewy-overkill). Overall, I think it’s worth going in and getting a sample as I can imagine this being a perfect work/day-to-night foundation for a lot of people. I particularly think this range is worth exploring if you have a medium to dark skin tone that’s more neutral in tone as I think this range has some beautiful options for that (though I will say the yellow-based and caramel shades also look quite skin-like and beautiful as well).
So far, the Stellar Beauty line-up looks promising. The foundation, in particular, has a decent range of shades (22) that look like they would suit light to deep skin tones. People have complained about the concealer range being too small (I agree, it’s only six shades) but there are also a range of translucent powders in the line that seem like they would cater everyone from light to deep in skin tone. So far, so good for a complexion line that’s relatively new and just launching at Sephora.
Trials of Beauty 