There are few brands whose new makeup launches fill me with such anticipation as Chantecaille. You are almost guaranteed beautiful packaging, high performance, and proper beautifying makeup. Not necessarily the most dramatic or theatrical of makeup looks, but pretty for sure. The announcement of a new stick concealer was like music to my ears – or rather, coverage to my dark circles. Enter Chantecaille’s Real Skin + Eye and Face Stick.
I really enjoy Chantecaille’s original Le Camouflage Stylo concealer. It’s lightweight, brightening, and the clicky pen packaging is fuss free. But, as nice as it is to just add a little brightness, there are days when I need a lot more help in the under-eye area than that and I hadn’t originally looked to Chantecaille products to help me with that. I had accepted that heavy, full coverage wasn’t really Chantecaille’s vibe. While the Just Skin tinted moisturiser is a great light base option, and Future Skin foundation is a heavenly mousse-textured light-medium foundation, they’re not the kind of products that are going to cover serious skin issues.
Until that is, they released Real Skin +. This little concealer stick is a bit of a game changer.
I have to preface this rave with a bit of an honestly bomb; I am not loving this packaging. I’ve become so used to the mind blow of their holiday collections that I expect the cream of the crop from Chantecaille. I want luxe, I want weighty, I want glass jars, sparkles, shiny metals and embellishments. This complexion stick is rather underwhelming in it’s silver and purple striped tube. It feels a bit tinny and disposable, the outer graphics leave me wanting and the actual stick product sits within the cylinder with a gap around the edges, so that it rattles and wobbles slightly. Needless to say – I’m not a fan.
Packaging aside, this could be one of the most useable products of the year. At first swipe, this concealer stick is creamy and effortless to blend with my fingertip. I swiped it along my cheekbone, blended it downward and saw significant coverage against the redness in my cheeks. I used it under my eyes and was so impressed by its ability to tone down the darkness without looking cakey. What was intended to be a quick swatch test, turned into a full face application in seconds. A few swipes over the forehead covered my patches of sun pigmentation, and with very little effort – and no brushes needed – I had a full face of foundation that appeared pretty much invisible. My skin was looking really, really good.
I had expected to like this product, but I hadn’t expected it to be quite so versatile. I anticipated using it the way I do my Cle de Peau concealer; solely under the eyes and blended down onto the cheeks a little. But Real Skin + is definitely more than just a concealer stick. This texture can easily be used as a cream foundation without it being too heavy and cakey. However if used this way, you’re certainly going to get through a tube quickly as it’s no doubt more concealer sized than a foundation should be.
Speaking of Cle de Peau – how does it compare? Undeniably similar in looks, I find Real Skin + to be much creamier and easier to blend, but just a touch lighter in the coverage stakes. If you find Cle de Peau a touch too dry, this might suit you. Compared to other stick concealers I’ve tried, it definitely wins in terms of texture and feel on the skin, where some tend to be much dryer or more obvious when blended. What it most reminds me of, in miniature form, is the Westman Atelier foundation. Once blended in, I genuinely struggled to detect it on my skin and yet everything looked even, perfected…pretty.
My biggest struggle with this product came down to colour matching. There are twelve shades available but I spent a crazy amount of time hovering over the light end of the shade spectrums, going back and forth between choices. How hard it is to find your match from a tiny coloured circle on a screen. I definitely suggest testing it out at a Chantecaille counter if you can. I decided on shade 1 (the names start at 0w, then 0c, and there are also two 4’s – just to be confusing), which although looked worryingly dark in the tube, actually applied a little lighter on my skin. For an all-over base this shade works well for me, but for strictly under-eye concealing I might have gone one shade brighter.
After a few applications I did notice tiny hard bumps appear on my product, and have since spotted this on a few on display in store. I spoke with the retailer about it and had my product replaced. They were ignorant to what it was or what had caused it – is it a consequence of temperature change during shipment? A bad batch? It’s something that I hope that Chantecaille are aware of and working out quickly, because there is so much to like about this product.
If you’re in the market for a new concealer, and love the convenience of stick form products this is a winner. It’s a great alternative for those who covet the Cle de Peau but find it too expensive or inaccessible in certain countries. Real Skin + is also an excellent on-the-go makeup product to top up your base throughout the day, and it really fills the gap in Chantecaille’s line of otherwise barely-there base products.
Find Chantecaille’s Real Skin + Eye and Face Stick at Mecca and Space NK.