There are plenty of prestige make-up products out there that come housed in packaging as luxurious as the formulas they contain – and I’m the first to admit, I’m a sucker for a gilt-edged compact or heavy lipstick click-case. Tom Ford’s cult Shade and Illuminate has a permanent place in my kit, while Westman Atelier’s ridiculously heavy Lip Suede palettes are the only colour I wear on my face most days. But sometimes, looking beyond the luxury choices can really pay dividends – the best foundation isn’t always the most expensive one, and everyone knows a £5 mascara will work just as well as a £50 one.
In fact, one of the very best products I’ve ever tried falls firmly into the ugly-but-brilliant camp – and if you’re at all prone to redness, flushing or rosacea flare-ups, I guarantee you will love it as much as I do. Rosalique’s dated green tube admittedly won’t make it onto a well-curated social-media grid based on appearance alone, but trust me, it’s phenomenally good (and the shelfie is dead anyways).
Essentially it’s one of those green-tinted colour-correcting creams – but where most leave you looking either deathly grey or a slightly sickly shade of green, this smart formula gets it exactly right. It’s fairly thick (and worryingly pigmented) on first squeeze, but spreads well over moisturised skin, even in the midst of a super-sensitive rosacea episode. The colour transforms into a gentle tint that tailors to your skin tone, knocking back glowing redness without sitting heavily on top or emphasising your pores.
There are other benefits in store here, too: the cream comes with SPF50, which probably isn't sufficient to keep you totally covered (considering you won’t be wearing that much of the product), but it is a welcome added layer of sun protection. Going beyond the instant redness-diffusing benefits, there’s also calming ingredients – alpha-bisabolol, vitamin b5 and shea butter – to soothe aggravated skin throughout the day.
While my own redness admittedly sits at the milder end of the scale, I’ve never found anything that manages to bring my tone back into balance better than this: the result is much more natural than a layer of any liquid foundation could offer, and at the end of the day my complexion feels calm and comforted, rather than caked in make-up. Having said that, if you're especially pale-skinned, you may find it a little dark: perhaps try Erborian's lighter CC Red Correct instead.
You can keep your weighted spatulas, gilded bottles and Instagrammable packaging - this might not be the most exciting product on the planet, but I’ll never be without it.
