Sometimes, the things you love let you down. Trying out beauty products doesn’t get more disappointing than when something you had high hopes for and were really excited to try… ends up being a complete letdown.
Here, the things that disappointed us – we’ve come to find that it hurts even more when it’s from a brand you love. Unfortunately, these did not work out well for us – disclaimer: trying beauty products is a personal experience, and hardly anything is universally bad – and into permanent storage, or the bin, they had to go. Sorry it didn’t work out between us.
Allies Of Skin Bright Future Overnight Facial
$159, available on alliesofskin.com
I really like Allies Of Skin, and am so proud that this is a homegrown brand. When they first emerged in the market, I tried both the 1A All-Day Mask and 1A Overnight Mask, and both were great! Both formulas sunk into my skin easily and left it feeling supple, and I had no issues with bad skin reactions.
So when the brand launched the brightening version of the overnight mask recently, the Bright Future Overnight Facial, I grabbed it from the press kit for myself. This one comes in the form of a yellow gel that felt light on the skin; upon application, all seemed well. I massaged it onto my entire face, and continued going about my pre-bedtime internet surfing. About 15 minutes later, I caught myself picking eraser dust-like bits from my face – what on earth, why is my face so dirty??? – and these bits wouldn’t stop emerging.
Upon closer inspection, I realised these were dead skin cells kudos to the exfoliating effect of the product, which means it’s doing what it’s supposed to do. But, it didn’t feel pleasant at all. My skin felt grimy, and the exfoliated bits were simply too large and too numerous to not bother me. And… it wasn’t like my face felt particularly smooth after a couple of uses either.
Disappointing, but I haven’t lost faith in this brand yet. I’m still looking forward to whatever they next add to their lineup, and may it not cause so much eraser dust the next time round.
– Tami Lai, Associate Editor
Agent Nateur Holi(stick) N°3 Deodorant
$35, available on naturallybetterco.com.sg
A handful of you may remember
my Emma Watson phase… Yes, I splurged on a couple of items, and one of them happens to be this deodorant that came highly recommended by the actress. Effective deodorants of a natural variety are difficult to come by, but man was this the worst I’ve ever tried. The sodium bicarbonate in the formula didn’t irritate my underarms, but it didn’t do much to prevent odour either. In fact, it made me smell worse than I would if I went out sans deodorant. Entirely counterproductive. The formula’s heavy on coconut oil and avocado butter too, making it a pain to wash off and a nightmare to deal with in such high levels of humidity. I’m a huge advocate for green beauty, which makes this product that much harder to slam because it practically goes against my conscience 😭, and it’s also from one of my favourite natural beauty webstores. It just didn’t work out for me.
– Jade Yeo, Writer
Laura Mercier Candleglow Soft Luminous Foundation
$80, Laura Mercier counters and Sephora ION
I’ve been a fan of this brand ever since I fell in love with their Blemish-less Foundation Primer and their Tinted Moisturiser, which is why this foundation completely disappointed me. At the first pump, a light layer of oil oozes out along with the product, and I was already afraid to put this on my face. However, it seemed to blend in nicely on the back of my hand, so I soldiered on and applied it on my face. The coverage wasn’t as great as I’d hoped, but the oil seemed to dissipate well enough and it had a nice matte feeling to it. Halfway through the day, however, not only was my face an oil slick, but half my foundation had melted off. Perhaps it’s partially my fault for going ahead with this foundation despite the obvious presence of oil. I would probably recommend this to people with dry skin looking for a lightweight coverage.
– Patrene Mathieu, Designer
Sigma Beauty Loose Shimmer in Ravishing
US$8.40, available at sigmabeauty.com
By now it should already be established that I absolutely adore peachy hues, so you have no idea how much I wanted this particular shade to work out. Loose shimmers are a lot of fun to play with; you can literally use them anywhere on your face, and I intended to have this pale peach-pink hue all over my lids, cheekbones and collarbones. In the tub, the powder looked promising. It was so finely milled and buttery to the touch — but ironically, that’s exactly what failed it. This one colour sheered out to nothing. Like, literally nothing. There was no pigment, except for a few specks of pathetically negligible glitter flakes that you’d honestly be considered to be forgoing shimmer for the day. And the best part was that I even tried my hardest to make the product work. When I had it mixed in with glitter glue it applied so crazily streaky on my lids I almost gagged; when I placed a cream highlight beneath the powder it not a single trace of pigment decided to show up. It was also too sheer (an understatement, in fact) for an inner corner highlight.
I have another colour from the exact same series called Zeal, and that one worked out beautifully into a mermaid blue-purple duo-chrome hue. The texture is different from Ravishing; Zeal is a tad chunkier but applies on perfectly even. It’s saddening that I have absolutely zero use for this one loose shimmer, so it’s now sitting in… cold storage on the bottom shelf of my vanity.
– Chelsea Tang, Editorial Assistant
Banila & Co. Prime Primer in Matte
$25.10, available at The Shilla Duty Free
Not long after I wiped out the entire tube of Benefit’s POREfessional primer (I literally cut open the tube to get every last bit of it), I had to travel to Seoul for an exchange program, so I figured why not get my primer there? It was a first for me to try out a Korean brand, as far as base makeup was concerned, and I was really excited to try Banila & Co.’s primer after hearing rave reviews about how their primers are apparently the best in Korea.
So I got myself a bottle of their Prime Primer in Matte which came in a pretty mint colour. I was expecting the formula to be similar to the POREfessional, which had a pasty, sandy feeling but instead, the consistency was a translucent gel-like formula (hmm ok…). When I slathered the product all over my face, it did not give me that satisfying matte feeling at all, and the primer also did not fill up my pores to make it look smaller. I also noticed that into the day, my foundation started to clump up into small patches! This did not happen when I used Benefit’s POREfessional. Perhaps the consistency was more velvety because the Koreans are into the dewy look, or I might just be biased towards Benefit, but if I were to buy a matte product, I would expect it to have at least some mattifying effect. And clearly, this just didn’t do the job for me.
– Phyllis Guo, Editorial Assistant
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