RMS Uncover up review (everyday foundation)

After years of wearing foundation to work, I became frustrated with the feel of it on my skin and the amount of time it took to put on. After trying a few tinted moisturisers, bb and cc creams, I was unhappy with the minimal coverage they provided and the lack of ‘skin benefits’ I received despite their clever acronyms. I found myself stuck between high coverage that foundation provides and the smooth lightweight consistency of moisturiser. I wanted something in between.

After countless google searches reading through beauty blogs and reviews on product sites, I stumbled across the idea of ‘natural and organic’ products. The first image which popped into my head was low coverage and poor performance products. This image stemmed from my rationale that why would high end beauty products contain so many chemicals and mixed compounds if natural ingredients worked by themselves?

Whilst I’m not yet converted to a 100% natural, organically certified, vegan, non- toxic, not tested on animals skincare and make up, I did have a mini realization that my previous thought may need to be reworked.

So I purchased the most well known 'high end' brand in organic, natural beauty 'RMS Beauty'. The brand is stocked at Mecca and when reading about people’s experiences on blogs and review posts, it held a sense of familiarity to my former, better skin days. I deliberated over this product for a while due to coverage doubts and the apparent time consuming exercise to apply with my fingers. One night after work I located the sole stockist in HK and purchased the ‘uncover up’, ‘skin2skin foundation brush’, ‘beauty oil’ and ‘magic luminiser’. 

I woke up the next morning and applied the ‘beauty oil’. For anyone thinking of purchasing, 3 drops is plenty! I opened my tiny jar of uncover up and applied with my fingers before using the brush to blend it in. Well my second fear was instantly recognized. It takes a fair amount of time to apply. The formula is thick and so it prohibts collecting a large amount of the product on your finger each time you swirl it around in the container. It literally feels like one finger covers 1:3 of the space on your face. The majority of my face was covered with finger prints before blending. After blending in all of the fingerprints, my cheeks were still a light red and my under eye dark circles barely covered. Sigh of disappointment. After checking the time I was running late for work. I used my eyebrow pencil, brown mascara and the magic luminiser on the highest points of my face and rushed out the door.

Walking to work I noticed I felt the wind come through the foundation and hit my skin like I was wearing nothing. Groaning at the lack of perceived coverage I rushed into the MTR station.

Seeing my skin in bathrooms and the countless mirrors on Hong Kong store shopfronts, I felt disappointed at the lack of coverage on my cheeks and the unevenness and patchiness of my skin normally covered. My face looked a bit like an oil slick and I felt like I might as well of been wearing only day cream.

As I had just dropped over HKD $1k on the products, I thought I better use them up and continued my search to find a solution. I started to further research alternate tinted moisturisers and reading reviews of Dior Nude and Laura Mercier tinted moisturizers returning to the comfortable non- organic high end products.

It wasn’t until the third week when I caught a glimpse of my skin in the bathroom mirror at work. My skin looked reflective and to my surprise, youthful. Now I am 24 so to help contextualize I didn’t look in the mirror and look 10 years younger... I don’t think any skincare product can do that. But yes there was definitely something different staring back at me. Checking the sides of my face, my cheeks were still a light red however this didn’t seem to bother me like usual. I touched my skin and it felt moist. Moist like after the application of coconut oil (see next blog post) and day cream mix on weekends.

I started questioning why I was happy with the reflection now in the third week as opposed to the first. That night I inspected my skin and noticed my pores were less visible on my cheeks and forehead, my skin was smoother and overall my skin looked more even and plump.

It has now been over a month and I feel comfortable confirming my assumption. It was the introduction of natural oils into my skincare routine and allowing my skin to breadth during the day by not wearing full coverage foundation.

I didn’t want to write a blog post that depicted an image of instant improvement in my skin's appearance as this wasn’t the case. My skin took time to improve and is still improving as I write this post, but working on your skincare as opposed to covering up with better coverage foundations works. If you can afford the time, it’s a good investment.