I’m sorry, Covergirl, but you are not for me.
A few months ago (okay, maybe several months ago now), Covergirl released the newest member of their foundation lineup – the Vitalist Healthy Elixir foundation! I was excited. It sounded promising. 14 shades on release. Vitamins and good-for-you ingredients. Sunscreen. Pretty glass bottle with pump. Light-as-air wear with medium to full coverage. Sounded promising, so I bought it.
I really wanted to love this foundation. I really did. It blended out beautifully. It felt like I wasn’t wearing anything on my skin. It didn’t settle into fine lines and pores. It didn’t break up or move around when I got oily.
However, the palest shade wasn’t quite pale enough. Almost, but not quite. I could work with it as long as I used a very pale concealer. Then, there was the oxidation issue. The Vitalist Healthy Elixir foundation oxidized TWO whole shades darker than it started out on my skin. The only way for me to wear this was to mix it with a white foundation. What a pain in the ass!
That’s when I realized that this was the first Covergirl foundation I had tried in over 25 years. It’s also when I realized why.
I have never used a Covergirl foundation that didn’t oxidize horribly on me.
Flash back to 1988. There’s no Ulta. There’s no Sephora. There’s no internet. If you had money, you bought your makeup at the cosmetics counter at a department store, or at a Merle Norman. If you didn’t have money, you bought your makeup at Wal-Mart. Drugstore brands offered fewer options for foundations then, and definitely fewer shades.
I was in high school then. I got a small allowance, so when I bought makeup, I bought only what I needed, and I bought what was least expensive. That was usually Covergirl. I bought the Covergirl Clean Makeup by Noxema foundation for oily skin, and I usually just got the lightest shade they offered. It didn’t matter because anything but the lightest shade was way too dark.
It would always start off looking good in the morning, but it would turn orange by lunch. So many of us had the dreaded Line of Demarcation in those days. Mostly because a lot of us couldn’t afford the “good” makeup, but also because a lot of us didn’t know better. I didn’t even know that my foundation changing color was called “oxidation” at that time. I walked around with orangey foundation for years.
As soon as I figured out that Covergirl foundations and powders didn’t really work for me, I quit buying Covergirl cosmetics in general. I’m not sure why. Covergirl just became a brand I didn’t really pay attention to.
Come back to the present day.
Now, I have to admit that before I bought the Vitalist Healthy Elixir foundation I did buy a couple of other Covergirl products. I picked up a couple of the Star Wars Limited Edition lipsticks, because Star Wars. The colors were gorgeous, but the lipsticks were very drying and had a really pungent chemical smell that never faded. I also picked up a couple of the Katy Kat Matte lipsticks, because cats! The colors on these were disappointing, they were drying, and they also had that pungent chemical smell that never faded. Those purchases reminded me that Covergirl cosmetics and I just don’t seem to get along.
Then came Vitalist Healthy Elixir. I was hoping that maybe, just maybe, that foundation would be good enough to change my mind about Covergirl. Maybe this one would be the right shade and stay the right shade. Maybe this foundation would show me I have been wrong about Covergirl all this time.
Alas, that was not to be.
In over 25 years, they still haven’t fixed the oxidation issue their foundation seems to have. They still don’t have a wide enough shade range in their foundations to cover Pale Princesses and Ebony Goddesses. They still have overwhelming fragrance in several of their products.
So, if you’re wondering if you will ever see reviews of Covergirl products on this blog, the answer is probably not. This post is as close as it gets.
Wrinkles & War Paint 