Review: Espoir Nude Liquid Powder

From time to time, I have to reign in my inner hoarder and resist the urge to buy 5more bottles of that foundation that I love. As much as I’d love to stock up, I oftentimes find myself walking past more stores and then buying 3-5 more bottles of different foundations / bb creams / what-nots, and then I’ll just end up with a good 30+ pieces in my stash.

Here’s one that I’d actually bought sometimes in April but never got around to trying it till now.

Espoir Nude Liquid Powder + Brush – KRW32,000

The Espoir Nude Liquid Powder is designed for use with this special brush, which I bought in a set (it does not come free with the Nude Liquid Powder)
The Nude Liquid Powder comes in a dropper-style bottle

I’m using Shade Ivory, which is sort of 2nd in terms of fairness.

Just one droplet is enough for half of the back of my hand – it initially comes off looking too bright, but can then be blended into the right colour

A barely visible difference in the texture and coverage

I say…

I was really intrigued when I first saw the ad for this, and after I got lured into the shop at Myeongdong and tried it, I was totally sold.

• First up are the color shades. I’m used to being the fairest shades for most brands, but take note that Espoir’s color shading is fairer. In terms of fairness, it goes from Porcelain –> Ivory –> Sand –> Honey (but this has pink tones vs the rest that have beige-yellow tones). So for me, I’m a Laneige 13, which translates into Ivory here.
• It comes in a dropper bottle, and I guess it does help in terms of hygiene.
• However, since it has to be shaken well before application, I kinda wish they hadn’t frosted the exterior of the bottle which makes it super smooth, and I also wish that hadn’t made it a glass one too. I’ve got two words for you – butter fingers.
• It’s sort of a suspension emulsion inside, so you must, must shake it like it’s hot and shake it like you mean it before application.
• One droplet goes a long, long way, so I average about 3-4 full droplets for the entire face.
• It’s super duper lightweight – the claims are true. I really do feel like I’m wearing nothing.
• There’s no scent to the product – a v v v faint scent of almost-bamboo if you incessantly inhale for  5 seconds like I did.
• It goes from liquid to powder just.like.that. It’s super fast – you don’t even need to blend. It will automatically convert to a powder finish once you’ve applied it over your face.
• I doubt that the liquid portion actually evaporates, so you don’t have to worry about applying it within a time limit.
• Instead, since their website says that there’s bamboo sap in this for moisture to your face, I’m assuming that this bamboo sap makes up part of the liquid suspension and gets absorbed into your face. It would probably explain why my face felt slightly more hydrated after applying this, despite the powder finish.
• Also, the powder finish has a very nice natural glow with a velvet feel.
• It brightened up my overall complexion, which I loveee.
• Since it’s lightweight, I wasn’t expecting it to last very long, and I was right about that. The initial 3-4 hours of wear was wonderful – my skin looked and felt great.
• But once it exceeded the 4-hour mark, the oil started coming forth (there’s not much oil control for this product), and it started melting off (in a good David Copperfield-disappearing way).
• It’s also not great for touch-ups because of 1) its packaging, and 2) its texture. It can end up looking somewhat over-powdered.
• Beauty tip: Make sure that you’ve applied a good moisturising / holding primer before applying this, because if you don’t, you will end up with powder potholes in those enlarged pores, thus emphasising them. I used the Sulwhasoo Luminature Essential Finisher before applying this.
• Beauty tip #2: Because it has a lightweight powder finish, I found that my usual blush stick (Esprique Melty Fix Cheek ) ended up wiping away the Espoir Nude Liquid Powder instead. For this, I’d advise you switch to a powder-form blusher so that you can add on top instead of taking away.
• There is a very slight difference when applying with the brush and applying with the fingers.

To me, the brush-finish is more natural while the finger-application has a little more coverage. Hmmmm.

• I’m not fussed about either, but it feels more awesome when you use the brush, simply cos it is ridiculously soft and glides over your face.
• Finger-application is also more convenient around the corners of the nose, under the eyes and those weird icky corners.

Overall, it is quite an interesting product to try out, especially if you’re a fan of the powder finish and also love your lightweight makeup finish. Just be sure to close your bottle cap tightly all the time – I had actually left it there in its original packaging since April 2014, and 4 months later (aka today), I find that I only have 70% of the bottle’s product left, despite not having used it before. Hmmm. :/