Urban Decay Naked Skin Concealer
Urban Decay recently released a new concealer to flesh-out (ha) their Naked Skin line of products. Keeping with the line’s aesthetic, Urban Decay’s Naked Skin Concealer is packaged very similarly to the Naked Skin Foundation – a simple, cylindrical tube with a clear body and chrome-colored cap. It has launched in eight shades – fewer shades than I’d hoped for, because it still means women of color and the ghostly pale are kind of screwed for now.
I recently had the opportunity to try it at during a Naked Skin event at my local Sephora, and wanted to share my experience with it.
The artist at Sephora matched me first with Naked Skin Foundation in 2.0, and went from there to the concealer and matched me to the Naked Skin Concealer in shade Light Warm. He offered me Fair Neutral as well if I wanted to do the much lighter, brighter under-eye look – but I don’t dig a stark under-eye highlight, so I opted for Light Warm.
As is appropriate in such a situation, my artist did not apply the product onto my face with the wand itself, and instead used a disposable doe-foot wand. I did get to see the Naked Skin Concealer cap’s applicator, however; instead of the stiff doe-foot wand most of us think of when we think of that type of applicator. Instead, this is the flexible nouveau one – if you’re familiar with the doe-foot inside the Rimmel Apocalips (Show-Offs) products or the YSL lip products, it’s similar to that.
The Urban Decay Naked Skin Concealer glided on smoothly, both to bare skin and onto skin already prepped with a base (primer, foundation). It blended out very well with a Sephora Pro Airbrush Concealer Brush #57 and disappeared into my skin and into my foundation. It was lightweight; I couldn’t feel it under my eyes. We set it with one of the Naked powders because, well, it’s a good idea to do so.
Once on, I felt that it neutralized the naturally-occurring darkness I have under my eyes pretty well. The Naked Skin Concealer is not immensely luminous (which I prefer), so don’t expect a super-brightened under eye – I feel like even if I went with the lighter shade (which we did swatch on my face), I’d just have that reverse-raccoon thing going on. It was effective on other minor imperfections (scars, etc) as well. So far, so good. I liked it, but was still unsure of the $28 price-tag.
About three-and-a-half hours later, I walked past a mirror and noticed that it had creased substantially. So much so that I did a double-take because I had never noticed concealer crease this much before on me. Of course I’ve had crease-y under-eye concealer, but this was was visibly bad – someone looking at you who didn’t know how to look at makeup would notice. It was pretty rough. I tapped it out with a finger to make it less obvious and re-set it with translucent powder, but it had creased back up within an hour. I’m glad I didn’t have somewhere to be and this was just for fun/for the event.
Up until noticing that, I liked the Urban Decay Naked Skin Concealer – not enough to trade my Maybelline Instant Age Rewind ($7) in for it, but enough to recommend it to someone who just wanted a prestige concealer. Even though it was fine in other areas, the under-eye creasing was a major deal-breaker for me. It would still work as a spot concealer, but I also think there are better products out there if you’re looking for just that. I ultimately would not recommend this product because at nearly $30 it doesn’t multi-task well enough to deliver enough value for an every-day user.
Urban Decay still offers their other concealer, the 24/7 Creamy Concealer Pencil. I also feel that this one, while suited to spot concealing, isn’t great for under-eye work.