Nars All Day Luminous Weightless Foundation gives you long-lasting coverage and a soft, natural look – and feels as if you’re not wearing anything at all.
Nars All Day Luminous Weightless Foundation is available in 12 shades, $75 each.
First, we have to give the makeup legend due credit for his patience. To come up with this foundation, Francois Nars waited 20 years for technology to catch up with his idea of a full-coverage foundation that resembles good skin. He likes beautiful skin, and once said, “If the skin looks beautiful, everything else will look great,” but hates foundation in the traditional sense – “makeup should never hide the complexion; it should disappear into skin”. According to him, foundation should be “comfortable, high-coverage and incredibly long lasting, but still very soft and natural”. This is difficult to achieve: Pigments are basically powders, which tend to absorb water. To get full coverage from a liquid foundation, you need a high percentage of powder, which equals a very heavy formula.
To circumvent this problem, Nars used coated pigments that are water- and sweat-resistant for that weightless and natural quality. The formula was even tested in a sauna for 30 minutes, and it reportedly didn’t just survive, but stayed true without wearing off. The oil-free foundation also has a mix of gold (to reduce dullness) and green (to neutralise redness) pigments to correct skin tone and brighten the complexion. For best results, Nars international makeup stylist Sadafumi Ito says to use just one pump of the product, and your fingers to blend and build coverage as fingers warm up the liquid, which makes the fluid more pliable, allowing it to go on more smoothly and easily.
An adapted version of this story first appeared in Female’s March 2015 issue, out on newsstands now.
