All Eyes On Her

Man, I was so ready to hate this stuff.  I figured that any concealer costing THAT much was pure hype; the next Crème de la Mer and whatnot.  I even had the perfect snarky French pun post title all ready: Clé de Peu.  See?  SO ready for mockery.

But I kept reading so many references to how great the famous Clé de Peau concealer was, and it wasn’t just on my usual trusty EDS — celebrity blogs and fashion mags have been trumpeting about this stuff for long enough that it finally got my attention.  So I swung by my local Nordstrom, and I asked for a free sample of the two palest shades.

I put on a couple dabs of both Ivory and Beige on my hand, and I was still scoffing since both seemed extremely yellow and unnatural.  “How can this be so great if they only have FOUR colors?  There’s no way that’ll ever look natural on THAT many people’s complexions.”  But being the diligent tester I am, I also dabbed a bit of the stuff on some blemishes once I got home.  Still scoffing — the obvious beige-yellow shade stuck out like a sore thumb.  But then, it disappeared!

I seriously have no idea how they did it.  The concealer sort of melts into your skin, and it stays opaque but the color almost camoflauges with the rest of your complexion.  Not 100% perfectly, but enough to give you really good coverage while not sticking out and being obviously the wrong shade.  And this worked all over my face, from my rosy cheeks to my pale-white forehead.  It was still a tiny bit detectable after a few seconds, but nothing like when you first put it on.

And the thing that REALLY surprised me is how good it was at concealing the dry flakiness that I sometimes get on my spots from using Retin-A.  Most concealers tend to highlight that and make it stand out more, but CdP helped keep it under wraps for the most part.  (Not perfect, but better than many other concealers.)

Now, it’s not 100% perfect, don’t get me wrong.  A lot of the raves were about under-eye use, and I actually don’t like it there — it seems to cause my fine lines to be a bit more obvious.  But I feel that way about any under-eye concealer, and it’s not an area that I tend to want to conceal very often.

I’m a little concerned that it won’t be stellar on my acne, since the ingredients don’t really attempt to be non-comedogenic.  But so far it doesn’t seem to have drastically worsened anything.  I’ll probably stick to my more acne-friendly Everyday Minerals custom concealer palette for normal cover-up situations, and bust out the pricy CDP for more drastic occasions.  However, I may have to use the stuff every day, lest it go bad on me — I’d be way too mad if something that expensive turned before I’d managed to get my money’s worth!