Les Merveilleuses Ladurée Cream Cheek Base 102

Older readers will know that my favourite blush colour is red, and in general I operate under the unspoken assumption that brighter is always better. The fevered macaque-butted clown-harlot aesthetic, y'know.

But! To balance that obsession is its kind-of opposite (doin' my bit for cosmic balance), my perennial hunt for pastel blushes that actually look pastel on my pasty skin. [Some shades often called pastel, chalky even, which are mid-tones on me: Illamasqua Katie, Benefit Georgia/Dandelion, Shu M 225, Mac Well Dressed, Fyrinnae Seduce, Nars Sex Appeal....] Having finally found a lavender-pink pale and cool enough to read as unspeakably hideously chalky to most / deliciously editorially chalky to me in Dainty Doll's Hippy Hippy Shake [better pics here], I've stepped up my efforts to find her a peachy sister.

Ladurée released two limited edition shades of its cream cheek base this spring, one of which seemed the truly-pastel peach of my dreams, and corrupted aided by So Lonely In Gorgeous, I managed to acquire a delicious macaron creme egg in shade 102:

PEEEEEEEACH!

Now the packaging is truly, stupendously, excessively hideous. My pictures can't convey just how ungainly and (though I hate this word) tacky the whole thing is -- it takes an act of evil genius to engineer something at once flimsy and clunky.

must work out how to depot. now.

In formula, like the Ladurée pressed powder blush I tried last year, this cream is quite dry, though thankfully not drying. The best way to apply is, as Ladurée themselves recommend, to draw on your face straight from the egg and then blend out with fingers or a brush -- it is very difficult to pick up any colour from the egg with a brush (however dense), and to pick up pigment evenly is almost impossible. Once on the skin, the high-silicone, silky-matte feel makes it easy to work with, much like a finely milled, silky powder blush (e.g. Dolce & Gabbana, Burberry), it's a snap to get a smoothly blended, unpatchy result. I do think that it'll get trickier to lay down more directional shapes once the dome wears down, but we'll see... update you in 5 years, mmmkay?

Because despite its high-whimsy stylings this blush is impressively pigmented. The right swatch is one swipe from the egg, and the left is the same, but blended out -- see how far it goes?

Once blended out, the strong white base on which this peachy pink sits also becomes dispersed so that the shade remains a pastel even on my pale skin, while never looking chalky / sitting too flatly on top of my clear colouring. (Grace has the best breakdown of this distinction here.)

More practically, blending also disperses the sparse white-gold glitter running through 102, making each speck easier to pick out :P Obviously zero shimmer is best for me (no catching on my dry skin), but large/sparse flecks I can work with, while fine/dense glitter presents more of a problem, hence my issues with Chanel Notorious or Tom Ford Narcissist.

Still not ideal, but as this Ladurée shade so perfectly fills a niche in my blush wardrobe, I'll live with it for now. Comparison with some peaches and pinks (since this is so well balanced in between):



The main thing to note is my tendency to acquire peach/pink pairs from the same lines 102's unusual bright-pastel effect, making most of the other shades appear dusty or ruddy in comparison, and Becca Lychee almost neon.



Constants: Shu Uemura Underbase Cream Pink and RBR Sea of Clouds highlighter as base; Shu Uemura Hard 9 Seal Brown brow pencil and Suqqu 02 Brown brow pen; Fasio Full Dynamic Volume mascara BR300.