H&M recently launched its whole new beauty range worldwide and it also included Portugal(!). I went to take a peek and I came home covered in swatches, eager for more, and, of course, with a few products to put to the test.
Custom Concealer Trio (£7.99)
A palette with three different colours of concealer, which you can mix to find the perfect match for your skin tone. Unfortunately, they only come in two shade ranges: light/medium and medium/dark, the “dark” being more of a medium-tan tone. The texture is creamy but not greasy.
I would say this is more suited for people with already smooth skin, with no irregularities (textured scarring or flakiness), with normal to dry skin types.
On a more oily skin, this will start to melt and fade quite quickly.
To cover blemishes and other imperfections, its coverage and pigmentation are quite good, although it won’t be as long-lasting as say a waterproof or a more waxy concealer. It also has a tendency to cling on to dry patches and scabs, leaving that area a bit cake-y after a while (the cream melts away, leaving just a powdery pigment residue attached to the skin).
To cover dark circles, I’d say this is far too thick, and could only be used by someone with a super smooth and slightly dry under-eye area, because it will crease like a mo-fo.
I bought this to see if I could get away with it as a low-budget contouring palette and it did quite a nice job. Of course, due to its aforementioned characteristics, it won’t last long on a more oily skin and it clings to the uneven textured bits of your face.
It’s an ok product, basically matching its price.
Powder Blusher (£6.99)
Very pigmented, satiny-matte finish, soft creamy texture and blends pretty well on the skin.
It can get a bit patchy if you don’t have a smooth skin texture (but that happens to me with almost every blusher I own), and if you have a tendency for blushers to oxidise on you, this won’t be an exception.
The pretty nice array of colours available doesn’t include a freaking light cool toned lilac-y shade — if you’re looking for a cool-toned pink, like me, you have again been forgotten and left with a Barbie-pink. But that has been the norm ever since Benefit’s Thrrrob was discontinued. Sigh.
(don’t be fooled by the photos and video — or the bad lighting inside the H&M stores —, Cotton Candy is a Barbie-fuchsia).
Cream Eyeshadow (£4.99)
Creamy, easy to blend, you can layer it up for a strong punch of colour or leave it as a soft wash over the lid, quite pigmented, nice metallic finish, some out of the ordinary colours to choose from, it gives you quite enough play time before it sets. It won’t crease throughout the day, instead it will fade without any major annoyances.
Powder Eyeshadow (4£99)
These graze along the Inglot price range (at least here in Portugal), but for a good reason: they are freaking good and give brands like Inglot a run for their money. Really high quality, creamy, pigmented shadows, the mattes are not at all powdery — with good binders that make them stick to the skin —, they blend beautifully, and there’s an astonishing range of colours and finishes to choose from. I can only find good things to say about these.
Inglot eyeshadows are (or were, when I purchased them a couple of years ago), pretty pigmented also, but dryer and rougher in texture. Not necessarily worse, just different. The downside, comparing these two incredibly different brands, is the customisable palettes that you can get with Inglot. H&M comes in singles tightly packaged that will be hard to de-pot, and in great pre-selected 12 colour-palettes (really affordable too, and, according to the swatches I took, the exact same formulation as the full sized pans — “what sort of wizardry is this?”, M.A.C. wonders.
Cream Lipstick (£7.99)
These are £7.99 lipsticks that directly compare to £20 lipsticks, no joke.
(Chanel, Too Faced, Urban Decay). Extremely comfortable to wear, nourishing on the lips, high pigment, not sticky at all — maybe a tad of slip — beautiful full-creamy finish, don’t bleed in to fine lines, don’t smell of anything (better than smelling like a chemically preserved old lady, L’Oréal), and an astonishing range of colours.
Nail Polish (not on the website… but cheap)
So good. Quite opaque, glossy finish, two thin coats and you’re done and they dry so quickly.
Do they chip? I’m a nail biter and a chronic clumsy person, so of course it chipped on me, but I would guess a normal person would get almost of week of perfect wear — with a base coat and a top coat.
I want more. I’m going back to the store (by the time this post comes up, I already have).
This is one of those brands that comes to rock the “affordable-labeled” L’Oréal and Maybelline market’s boats, because it brings high quality and a great value. There are 700 products in the range, from beauty to skin and hair care, of course there will be duds. But many of the products beat the heck out of the drugstore establishment.
H&M took the beauty market by storm. Nicely done.
note: the website is a bit of a mess, so I couldn’t find links to some of the colours I’ve mentioned on the video… there’s something to improve, H&M.
the freevolous 