If there’s anything that could end the reign of all eyeshadow fallout, this is it, pansit!
This is Make Up For Ever’s High Definition Microfinish powder. By far, it’s the most fine milled, luxurious and natural looking powder I’ve tried…
So this is the box. This is the baby 0.14oz one, as there’s another size that’s 0.3oz. I got this when I bought MUFE’s 30th anniversary HD kit in Hong Kong earlier this year.
This is a makeup powder that’s made in Japan and made of Silica.
Its promises are the following:
“This industry-recognized luxe finishing powder sets the foundation and slightly mattifies skin without changing its natural contours. Made of 100 percent-mineral silica, it softens the appearance of imperfections, fine lines, and pores and completely evens out the complexion for a glowing, radiant look. This translucent, dermatologist-tested, and talc-free formula does not dry the skin. One universal shade works for all skintones. The lightweight, silky texture and ultrafine formula adds a soft focus effect for a flawless finish and can be applied over foundation or worn alone.“
It can be applied over foundation or worn alone, and it can be put on any skintone.
As seen here, too, it’s part of the HD line which is meant to make a natural finish. If I’m not mistaken, the whole notion of HD makeup was conceived to make movie stars look better in movies and videos, and it’s meant to make the blemishes look smaller or fainter and make the complexion look more even and more dewy.
The packaging, as with any other MUFE product, looks professional, minimalist, and clean.
And this is what’s written on the butt.
The moment you open is, this is how it looks like. It looks like a crater, and it’s got this paper finish sticker on top of it.
This is how it looks like when half opened. This is an unusual sticker as the usual stickers I see over loose powders are purely plastic. This is the only paper like one I’ve encountered.
And when you open it, it’s really not like most of the other products you’ll encounter.
Instead of a plastic lid with holes on it, it’s got a pantyhose lid. Well I guess you could formally call it a mesh covering, but I prefer to call it a pantyhose cover tee hee hee.
You dispense the product either by pressing a thick and dense brush (kabuki brushes and similar stuff) through the pantyhose layer to get to the powder, or you could also tap it lightly on the side to make some powder go to the rim or be easier to pick up with a brush.
Initially, I didn’t know that it worked best with kabuki brushes and used it with this big and fluffy Sigma beauty powder brush. This is the F30 brush.
This is a powder, but is a very very slippery powder. As in I was like ooh la la when I was touching my cheeks after application as it felt really really smooth. It’s sooo slippery that as I was doing my eye makeup, I was shocked (in a good way) that all the fallout got easily removed with just my fingers or with a flick of the powder brush. This does not happen so easily especially with pigmented shadows and most of the other powders I have tried. Usually, once you touch fallout, it will smudge and spread, but with this powder, it gets off the face with barely any effort.
What I liked further is how invisible it is. As in I could feel that there was powder on my face and that it feels matte, but visually it does not look like it was caked on.
And you can see that with good lighting and good photography, it really does a lot to make the blemishes disappear and for the skin to have a really nice glow. In this photo, it’s as if I applied highlighter even when it’s just been this powder that I’ve applied (aside from foundation).
I just love the nice glow that it gives. In non-flash photography, it looks so pretty and feels so velvety on the skin. In terms of oil control, it is not very very efficient against big blotches of oil on the nose and forehead, but generally it’s able to keep some oiliness at bay.
This would have already been a holy grail product given how velvety it is had it not been for its weakness– flash photography. You may have remembered Angelina Jolie’s powder mishap awhile back and wondered what had caused it. A lot of people thought that the makeup artist was a useless person, or that no one had the guts to tell her about it, or that no one noticed it in real life. But that’s true, for certain no one noticed it in real life, because HD powder goes on invisibly onto the skin. When applied thickly, it has this tendency to appear in blotches under flash photography– exactly what happened to Ange. It has microparticles that reflect light that with a lot of flash photography, this happens.
It’s not her makeup artist’s fault inherently because anyone would be so amazed to use this on a celebrity given how velvety and smooth it is. And I don’t think it’s a publicly known fact yet (aside from makeup artists who use this regularly) that this is what happens when you use this powder with flash photography.
I tried out the same thing at home, flash photography over a swatch of it, and you can see how obvious it is when applied a bit thickly. Multiply the number of cameras with flash and you get the effect that was seen on Ange’s face awhile back.
It goes well on for selfies (albeit an expensive powder for selfies), everyday stuff, for when you’ll have videos taken and the like. But this is not the type of thing I’d trust to use on a bride or a model, or for graduation photos because of this phenomena with flash photography.
I got this with the HD kit altogether, alongside the elixir and primer. The three item pack was 610HKD (approx Php3600), so I have no idea how this item specifically cost when I bought this in Hong Kong.
In Sephora, it costs US$19 though.
As for value for money, I really love the texture and finish, and personally, I know I’d be able to use this often because I’m mostly seen in tutorials and in no-flash photos. This is similarly priced to a lot of the powders I own despite having an off the top finish and texture. I really love this product, but it’s just not a universally applicable powder and I cannot dismiss its weaknesses as a makeup artist.
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