Foundation: The Answer Is …

Words Melis­sa Sturgess

The answer is Dior Pres­tige Le Cush­ion Teint de Rose.  I near­ly don’t care what the ques­tion is because this is still the answer.  But that’s not going to help you very much so I will say it this way.  If you want THE PERFECT foun­da­tion this is it. 

Let me give you the back­sto­ry.  I’m Aus­tralian and moved to Lon­don 13 years ago.  I didn’t have much expe­ri­ence with make­up (think 17 year old school grad­u­a­tion ball and a bit of mas­cara and lip gloss for work).  That was it.  When I moved to Lon­don I real­ly had to up my game but I nev­er real­ly got the hang of foun­da­tion.   My skin was still fair­ly ‘young’ and I was a bit naïve and so felt I could get away with a bit of this and a bit of that.  To be hon­est I can’t real­ly tell you what I have used for the past 10 years.  Most­ly a com­bi­na­tion of tint­ed mois­turis­er, fake tan with mois­turis­er and the incred­i­ble Chanel Poudre Uni­verselle Libre, a loose translu­cent fin­ish­ing pow­der which I apply with a large brush and a regal flour­ish over what­ev­er I have pre­vi­ous­ly put on my face.  It binds, blends, seals and removes shine.  Per­fect.  I have it in two shades – one for sum­mer and one for win­ter.  What more could a girl want.

But back to the per­fect foun­da­tion.  Why do I need it now?  Well, last year I was asked to sit on the pan­el for a med­ical cannabis sem­i­nar being run by The Spec­ta­tor Mag­a­zine at the Ham Yard Hotel in Soho.  I wasn’t ter­ri­fied because I’ve been build­ing a cannabis invest­ment com­pa­ny and CBD brand for the past cou­ple of years so I know my stuff and have lots of expe­ri­ence pre­sent­ing to groups of investors, but I did want to make a real­ly good impres­sion in every respect.  So that required a bit of thought and prep­ping and I quick­ly realised why peo­ple in the pub­lic eye have a go-to glam squad.  For this out­ing I called on the tal­ent­ed Kel­ly May of Neville Hair and Beau­ty and Natasha Lakic – phew – hav­ing got to know them ear­li­er in the year.  They per­formed their mag­ic.  The Spec­ta­tor event was a phe­nom­e­nal suc­cess and led to lots of oth­er requests for me to speak about med­ical cannabis and CBD and so I fig­ured I need­ed to get my act togeth­er on the make-up front so that I could cob­ble togeth­er a rea­son­able look all on my own .

What I didn’t realise until I dis­cov­ered the afore­men­tioned mirac­u­lous Dior Pres­tige Le Cush­ion Teint de Rose  was that there is actu­al­ly a prod­uct that sits per­fect­ly between a tint­ed mois­turis­er like the fab­u­lous Lau­ra Merci­er Tint­ed Mois­turis­er Nat­ur­al Skin Per­fec­tor Broad Spec­trum SPF30 which real­ly evens out the skin and is boost­ed with vit­a­mins C and E, and some­thing like Estee Lauder’s Dou­ble Wear Stay-in-Place Foun­da­tion which does exact­ly as it says and can be built up to a achieve a sat­is­fy­ing, com­plete cov­er­age.   I’m a big fan of a tint­ed mois­turis­er with SPF for casu­al day wear.  It’s just like pulling on a pair of com­fy jeans and train­ers to head to the Kings Road in Chelsea for a cruise through the bou­tiques.  You get that cool, laid back, effort­less vibe.   Being an Aussie I am not a huge fan of a com­plete foun­da­tion look.  To me it feels heavy and it almost feels I am wear­ing a mask.  As I age I think it makes me look old­er.  I don’t need or want to look younger but I do want to look as good as I can for my years.

So when pro­fes­sion­al­ism or a bit of glam­our calls I promise you all the answers are in this lit­tle gold­en tub of delight.  It is described by Dior as com­bin­ing the revi­tal­is­ing pow­er of 500 rose petals and rose light pig­ments to enhance the skin’s nat­ur­al glow with colour-cor­rec­tion tech­nol­o­gy.  And guess what – I believe every word of it because it is all true.  It gives one’s com­plex­ion a won­der­ful, soft even tone.  It gives it a glow and cre­ates a super nat­ur­al silky satin fin­ish that looks absolute­ly incred­i­ble and com­plete­ly nat­ur­al.  I am obsessed.  Appli­ca­tion is with a round puff which is pressed into the foun­da­tion infused cush­ion and then blend­ed onto the face.  I tend to start from the mid­dle of the fore­head and work out to the tem­ples, then move to the nose area and work out to the cheeks.  I then work the foun­da­tion in around the eye area and last­ly blend spar­ing­ly down the neck to achieve a pro­fes­sion­al (haha) fade into my nat­ur­al skin.  I am by no means an expert, as you have prob­a­bly gath­ered, so the joy of this prod­uct is incred­i­ble and almost inde­scrib­able.  Five min­utes of appli­ca­tion time and eight hours of feel­ing a mil­lion dol­lars.  That’s my kind of deal.  Oh, and it has SPF 50.

Melis­sa Sturgess

@auschick