The Face: Getting Nearly Naked with Revlon

There are times in life when one has to eat humble pie, gobble down one's words in copious amounts and admit one's wrong. Today is one of those days.


You may have heard me waxing lyrical about the fabulous range of foundation shades that Revlon offer, catering for all skin tones, shades and ethnicities....BUT. There's always a but, isn't there. I'd always lament that this fabulous choice, while available for women of colour in the United States, was sadly lacking here in the UK. In fact, I  constantly find that most (although not all) high street brands of make-up forget to go darker than what they term "olive" skin tones - most olives I see in my local supermarket are green, not a look I'd hanker after. Anyway, what always got to me was that Revlon HAD these shades, even uses the likes of Halle Berry as one of their "faces" but they just didn't sell enough of them over here.

So now I eat my words. With added salt, pepper and even a little chilli! The Nearly Naked* range of foundations, much lauded by beauty journalists and bloggers alike, offers an impressive ten shades that range from the very fair to the three shades darker than me, so Asian skin tones have got it covered. 

This photo has been untouched, uphotoshopped, un-anything !!

Again, untouched, unphotoshopped etc, photo taken with a rather unforgiving flash!

I'd say this gives medium coverage, perfect for those days when you don't have anything too drastic you want to hide, but want to even out the skin tone. More coverage than a BB Cream, less so than one of my (high end) foundation favourites, By Terry's Cover Expert. I wore this from morning till night, worked in a couple of tube journeys, some press meetings, and a dinner out with the girls in Yautcha, without touching up or even powder, just to see how it would perform. I can't even begin to tell you how many compliments my skin received, and I wasn't even asking anyone what they thought - all comments were completely unsolicited! It's been a long time since I've experienced that! The first photo is the daytime shot, and the second is the face in the evening - I didn't even touch the foundation, just the eye and lips make-up.... not bad for a high-street brand, eh?

I purposely wore this without the Nearly Naked Powder* (£7.99) to see how it fared and I give it a 9/10. I've since worn it with the powder and my face stayed matte for most of the day, but after a gruelling eight hours of a busy London life, my face was dewy, yet the coverage was still there.

I'm normally (read 99% of the time) a high-end girl when it comes to foundations, but this newest offering at only £8.99 from Revlon definitely gets my high-street vote.

Any other high-street foundations I should be giving a go?

P.S. I found the shades very forgiving as they blend so easily, I could get away with Nutmeg or Natural Tan, and the Nearly Naked powder shade right for my skin tone is 040, Medium/Deep, in case you're wondering.