Beauty Review: Laura Mercier Secret Camouflage

As I hit the ripe old age of 32 last week I thought it was about time I got to grips with a decent concealer. My amazing Mum gifted me Laura Mercier Secret Concealer a few months back but I found it difficult to blend and the colour was ever so slightly too light for my skin tone. I am a firm fan of Laura Mercier though (I regularly use the tinted moisturiser as you can see here) and, having seen Holly Willoughby swear by Secret Camouflage, I thought that might be the product for me. When have you ever seen Holly NOT looking flawless?

Off I popped to the Laura Mercier counter at John Lewis in Cheadle where, no matter what time or how busy the store is in general, there is ALWAYS someone at the Laura Mercier counter. This time the woman wanted everything gift wrapped and then changed her mind about the scent she had chosen. I am far too impatient for this type of indecision but she will be to blame should I ever buy their Lumiere D’ambre scent (£53.50) as the musky amber floral-ness was just too much. I had to buy my product and run otherwise I’d have been passing over my credit card!

Back to the product at hand… the lovely assistant immediately suggested shade 3 to me and said it was perfect for my skin tone. I asked how best to use the product and whether it would be too dry for the under eye area. This is where I desperately needed help to even out my skin tone and start to hide those nasty dark circles that come from early mornings. She confirmed that the product is quite dry but much more long lasting than their Secret Concealer (the product I already had) so recommended mixing with a tiny spot of eye cream for that area.

The packaging is the same as with all Laura Mercier products; a tough plastic case that is incredibly hardwearing with a compact mirror which is great for applying. The one thing that annoys me with these products is the lack of brush. This product is £26 and I’d rather they upped it slightly and included a small brush within the palette. Urban Decay do that so well with their eyeshadow palettes.

Slight whinge over and you can see there are two shades in the palette. This is so you can custom blend the perfect colour for your skin tone. I am, personally, dreadful at judging my colouring so she helped by showing me how to blend and how many ‘strokes’ to take with the brush. Genius! If you’re interested I need 4 strokes of the darker shade and 3 of the lighter shade to get my perfect colour.

This product is perfect for covering spots (just patted on then lightly blended with your finger), covering dark circles (lightly blended with a concealer brush after foundation) and blending out dark areas around the nose and mouth (done the same way as covering dark circles). I applied it without any eye cream at first but did find it started to flake a little towards the end of the day. I now use the tiniest spot of eye cream or moisturiser (I’ve been using Liz Earle skin repair, review to follow) and find this softens it beautifully.

The lovely assistant recommended I try their Secret Brightener with this under my eyes to lift and illuminate, now I wonder if I can ignore the perfume when I go back for it…

Have you tried Laura Mercier Secret Camouflage? What is your favourite concealer?

This item was paid for.