Fenty Beauty Pro Filt'r Hydrating Longwear Foundation: A Review

Can oily girls wear hydrating foundations? Should we?

So as you may or may not know, I've been an Ulta Beauty advisor for at least the past year. While it is a beauty lover's dream job to be surrounded by makeup, I was always a little upset that the legend Ms. Robyn Rihanna Fenty created a makeup line in an exclusive contract with Sephora.

I've always had a love for Fenty Beauty; the aesthetic, the message, the quality, you name it. It's always been a brand that has caught my eye, especially being a woman of color.

When Fenty first launched its original Soft Matte foundation in 40 shades, I knew I had to see if I could find my perfect foundation shade. Also its mattifying formula sounded perfect for my unreasonably oily skin at the time. I picked up shade 330 and I immediately fell in love. The finish worked perfectly on my skin and gave me this flawless complexion I had never seen on myself before.

That was in 2017.

Here we are more than two years later and Fenty Beauty by Rihanna has launched a second line of foundations for the dry skin girls. The Fenty Beauty Pro Filt'r Hydrating Longwear foundation.

Now I know what you're thinking, WHY would an oily girl like me have ANY interest in a foundation that's advertised to be the complete opposite of the foundation you swore you loved so much?

The answer is actually quite simple. My skin care routine has stepped up. Back then my skin was so hard to manage because it was so oily. That's why the foundation worked so well for me. Fast forward to two years and one year of beauty retail later and my skin type has changed!

Through my 13 months of working for Ulta, I've learned that my skin was oily because it was simply dehydrated. I started to take better care of my skin, I repaired my moisture barrier, and it made me break out a lot less. Because I was moisturizing more, my skin didn't feel the need to overproduce oil and so my skin type became more normal and even a little on the drier side.

Because of this, my Fenty Soft Matte foundation was no longer a match

I still have my bottle of the original Fenty Soft Matte foundation on the off chance I ever become oilier again, but for the most part it hasn't really been touched. Lately I've been really into a dewier look. I don't care if I look greasy! I want to look natural and luminous, almost like the "glass skin" effect.

Something in me told me to try this foundation.

I drove to my local Sephora for the first time in years??

Keep in mind, I work at Sephora's main competitor, so I haven't had much reason to go to Sephora in the last year that I've worked for Ulta. It definitely wasn't the Sephora point system that drew me in! I found the section for Fenty and looked for my shade in the hydrating foundation. They said that the hydrating foundation numbers are supposed to line up with the original matte foundation shade numbers, so I grabbed 330 in the hydrating foundation.

The Foundation To start, I was a little hesitant about this foundation because I am combination skin and summer/fall are the hottest times of the year in San Diego. So this could either look great or terrible on me. The Anastasia Luminous foundation looked great. It stayed on me all day, but the ingredients that made it creamy and dewy are also what broke me out. I decided to take a look at the Fenty Hydrating foundation ingredients to see if this would be risky.

I looked at a couple of the top ingredients listed and looked at their rating on the comedogenic scale. Everything looked okay so I decided to give it a go.

Right of the bat the foundation looked really nice. It wasn't really a dewy foundation in my opinion and it more so looked exactly like the soft matte foundation, just with a different feel on the skin. I feel like this foundation is supposed to achieve in a hydrating formula what the soft matte formula did for oily people. It looked nice. If this foundation was only based off the appearance, I would have 100% kept it.

The foundation comes in a toothpaste looking tube with a pump which I really like. It kind of reminds me of a moisturizer which is really nice for a hydrating foundation. Both the original and the new foundation come with 1 ounce of product. So while the hydrating does look smaller, you're getting the same amount for the same price. It seems really minimalist and easy to travel with so for that they get an A from me there.

Obviously the formula is MUCH different from the soft matte formula, so unlike the original foundation, there was more time to spread this one around the face before it dries up, you can definitely take your time. At first it looks really wet on the skin, but like I said, it dries up to look almost the same as the mattifying formula.

The wear time was great too! I only powder my undereyes and nose area lightly with a brush, and I didn't really crease that much. I wore it for 13 hours and even took a nap on the couch for 5 of those hours. My foundation looked great after I woke up!

I was planning to mix this foundation with the soft matte foundation to see if it would give a nice in-between finish, but honestly, the hydrating formula by itself was already pretty good. I know a lot of people have had problems with it shifting around, but I honestly didn't see any of that. It's really nice if you don't have sensitive skin.

The downside of this foundation was after continued use for about two weeks, I started to notice whiteheads forming, especially in the areas where I was normally acne prone. This annoyed me a lot because my skin was already mid recovery from the Ethylhexyl Palmitate in the Anastasia foundation, and now it was getting worse. I don't know exactly what ingredient in the Fenty foundation made my skin react like this, but I'm positive that it's what created the whiteheads. After I returned my foundation, I went back to my Becca Skin Love foundation and everything went back to normal. My skin still has a couple pimples left behind, but it's already improved drastically!

Final thoughts:

I think this foundation is great if you aren't acne prone. I genuinely loved the look and feel of the foundation and would buy it again to use on clients without acne prone skin. This formula for some reason just didn't work out for me and that's okay. When I purchased the foundation I also picked up a highlighter match stix, and I think it's one of my all time favorite beauty products now so that's a plus!

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