This was my first favourite foundation. I worked with this so much in the beginning of my career, and after a break of a few years, I’m coming back to it again.
It’s a lightweight, oil-free fluid foundation that gives good coverage without heaviness, and gives a beautiful sheen to the skin. It’s perfect for evening, or the red carpet, or if your life is more supermarket than red carpet, it works for that too!
Developed by Pat McGrath when she was the Creative Director of Armani Beauty when it first started, it very much espouses her philosophy of luminous, glowing skin. At the same time she also developed the Armani Fluid Sheers, which are luminizing liquids that were designed to be mixed in with the foundations, and they are absolutely gorgeous either on their own as a strategic highlight, or mixed in with the Luminous Silk foundation. I have a few of the Fluid Sheers but my favourite is no 2.
I like the colours that Luminous Silk comes in, as the colour range starts very pale and goes into really quite deep tones, although my one grumble with the shade range is that the shades for very dark skintones are just too red. In the States it goes up to Shade 13, and I find that anything up from 10 is very red-brown, so I hardly ever use them. (Becca is amazing for black skin, as are some of the Illamasqua deeper shades). The shade of 5 or 5.5 is so universally perfect that I go through far more bottles of that than any of the others.
I would say that it’s a slightly lighter weight foundation than Chanel Vitalumiere, and applies beautifully with a brush or sponge. The shade range is also more extensive than the other prestige beauty houses (Dior, Chanel, YSL), as it comes in 17 shades in the US.
It is an oil-free foundation, but as always if you are an oily gal do try before you buy as it can look a bit greasy if you live in a hot climate or have very oily skin.
And a big PS – the Armani Foundation brush is also awesome.
Armani Beauty has a new Creative Director, Linda Cantello, one of the most awesome of awesome makeup artists – let me tell you this lady was wielding a brush when you were in nappies, so she knows what she’s doing! The new face of the brand is the super-vixen, Megan Fox, and after a bit of a break Armani is back on my beauty radar in a big way.
See Linda’s work on the impeccably beautiful Megan Fox here:
It started as a murmur at the last Fashion Week – not a bronzer in sight, instead either natural skin tomes or slightly paler, bones highlighted with judicious use of contour and luminiser. Then came Twilight, the vampire film seemingly beloved by all, and the murmur became a whisper, and now with the release of New Moon (the sequel to Twilight), and the fact that I haven’t opened my bronzer bag in six months, I think the whisper is officially a roar – pale skin is back in.