If you don’t know already The Ordinary is a brand housed under the umbrella of Deciem who I’ve talked about a few times in the past, I had and continue to enjoy products from their Hylamide line. The Ordinary has been the latest released brand from Deciem to which it came on to the market with a big splash having been featured and raved about from notable and powerful influencers.
What is The Ordinary? It is marketed as being an affordable line of effective skincare ingredients. It’s cheap, when I first looked at the new range of products I couldn’t believe the prices. $6 primers? Retinoids less than $10? Absurd prices for things I’ve spent a small fortune on in the past. At first glance I think The Ordinary can appear to be revolutionary in their approach to beauty and skincare, highly sought after ingredients offered at a quarter or less of the prices of products sold by other brands. But, if it sounds too good to be true…it usually is too good to be true. I have tried some of The Ordinary skincare in the past and I found it more than a bit lacking in effectiveness compared to the results I’ve grown accustomed to with more mid-range and higher-end skincare brands. However, when I saw they were launching foundations I couldn’t help myself from wanting to try them because I have no drugstore priced foundations, I think the least expensive foundation I own is around $23 before taxes. The idea that I could find a cruelty-free, vegan, and good quality foundation for only $7 bucks sounded great.
SIDENOTE
I was browsing Amazon and found my two favorite Hylamide products on there and being offered with Prime shipping! The Low-Molecular HA Re-hydration Booster is even cheaper on Amazon than being offered on the Deciem site, I will be repurchasing it from the sellers I found on Amazon from now on and because of my Prime membership I’ll be able to get it in a flash. The Hylamide HA Blur primer is also cheaper on Amazon! Read my review (here).
I waited nearly a month for The Ordinary Colours to be release. There was an initial announcement that they would be released in the middle of March, and by the end of March there was nothing, just apologetic and ambiguous Instagram comment replies generally to the effect of “we’re working on it.” I received an email to sign up for a waiting list, I dutifully signed up immediately and my wait continued. Then some more weeks past and I got an email that Colours were available to purchase, instantly I clicked on the link provided and started browsing the Colours. I couldn’t have been on the site for longer than 10 minutes when my cart was full and I was ready to purchase I clicked the checkout icon, the page was loading slowly…very slowly. I eventually was sent to a crash page and was not able to complete my order, in fact I wasn’t able to get back onto the Deciem site for a few days following the crash and when I did I ordered immediately for fear of another crash. I’m sure it is clear I was very excited about this makeup release and was eager to get my hands on these foundations and failure was not an option. At this point my order is in and I’m thinking “great, I finally will have it.” Almost two weeks go by without me receiving any kind of shipping notification and I get an email from Deciem, “…25,000 people signed up for email waiting list…250,000 ordered product…we are overwhelmed and sorry.” I paraphrase but that was the gist of the message, it was disappointing yes but for a $30 dollar order I was fine (mildly annoyed) waiting.
It took nearly a month from my order date for the package to arrive, in my order I repurchased my Hylamide Low Molecular Ha serum, The Ordinary High Adherence Primer and of course the whole point of the order The Ordinary Colours coverage foundation. I really was unsure of what shade of foundation would match my skin and the swatches on the site looked very light and I just couldn’t get a good gauge of the colors so I relied on the descriptions given since there were no swatches of the darker colors available online at the time of my purchase. I called myself erring on the side of caution and ordering a shade darker than what I thought could be right…I don’t know why this seemed like a great solution at the time, but if you remember I was in a frenzy, desperate to get my order in and the product pictures that were up looked very light.
SHADE
3.1 Y is the shade I decided to go with because 2.1 just looked incredibly light in the product photos that were availible, and it is just too dark and appeared slightly orangey on my skin. They now (thankfully) have pictures of real swatches on actual skin that I think will make it a lot easier for people ordering and color matching in the future.
The Ordinary Coverage Foundation 3.1 Y
FORMULA
The Ordinary Coverage Foundation is oil-free and water-based which are key factors I look for when shopping for foundation. I think that the formula is actually pretty decent, definitely full coverage and fairly long wearing. To me it feels like a gel-like consistency and applies to the skin very thinly. Even though the shade is not close to being a match I still wore it during two full shifts at work and I don’t feel like I lost any coverage at the end of the day. On both days that I wore The Ordinary Coverage Foundation I didn’t touch up my skin and at the end of the day while examining the foundation close up I surprisingly did not have any dramatically separated foundation in the areas that my oil breaks through as the days wears on. Even though at this point in the day I was just moments away from washing my face I did do a blot test to see how much if any foundation gets removed when trying to reduce the shine and I did not get much color lift at all, only in the deepest part of the creases on the side of my nose did minimal product come off on my blotting tissue. I do think that whenever they come back in stock I’d like to order one of the serum foundation as well as the coverage.
It was very hard to look past the poor shade match while wearing it and I just wanted wash it off all day. I avoided mirrors until I got home. I did use The Ordinary High-Adherence Silicone Primer and…meh, I was not really swayed in a negative or positive opinion with it. I am already a big fan of the HA Blur primer from the Hylamide line and this one cannot compete with that one at all in my eyes. I don’t feel like it smoothed as much as my normal primer and it definitely did not help with reducing shine. I just felt like it was a very blah product and certainly would not repurchase. Because of my overall lack of satisfaction with the products I purchased I went to find the Deciem return policy…but it’s hardly worth the effort to return $12 worth of product when you have to pay return shipping as well. I will likely pawn them off on my mother and see if she likes them because I would hate to full on trash them.
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