Greetings, readers! I apologize about the ‘silence radio’ this week – on top of being without wi-fi (I was bereft!), La Coquette is suffering from a decidedly unglamorous winter bug. Rather than play with makeup, I was fixated on aspirin and Matzo Ball Soup……..
but with my tea in hand, I’m ready to blog again!
On my cosmetics spree two weeks ago, I picked up a bottle of MAC’s Fix+ Mist. Now, if you read a lot of beauty blogs or anything on Makeup Alley, you’ll know that some women say this stuff is the best thing since the invention of mascara in a tube. It refreshes! It sets makeup! It raised my newborn children!
Ladies, they’re lying. I won’t deny that the Fix+ is useful and even a good product, but at $20 for 100ml/3.4oz, it’s expensive for what it is, and unless you’re a real cosmetics junkie like me, it’s not worth the buy… but perhaps I should explain what this product actually IS.
The Fix+ is basically a facial mist that combines water, glycerin, and a few fancy ingredients like green tea, chamomile and cucumber to soothe and refresh the skin. Housed in a clear bottle with an (admittedly convenient) black spray nozzle that locks closed for travel, it can be used in a variety of ways – before foundation application as a primer, after makeup application to remove that plastered look caused by an excess of setting powder, as a mixing medium for eyeshadows, and throughout the day to give skin a dewy, fresh look without disturbing makeup. I personally have been using this primarily after applying makeup, holding the bottle at arm’s length from my face and giving a few quick sprays. The mist is very fine indeed with no large droplets ending up on my face, but the glycerin makes my skin feel a wee bit sticky afterwards. While I do like the immediate effects – my skin does have a bit of a ‘glow’ – I find that this makes my foundation look patchy and strange after a few hours, so I’m not quite sure why some bloggers swear it keeps their makeup in place for hours. It does work well as a mixing medium for loose eyeshadows – it has all of the same ingredients as the MAC pro water based mixing medium, with the added soothing elements.
In short, this product is nice, but if you’re on a beauty budget or just getting your first real cosmetics arsenal together, I’d venture to say that this product would be an extravagant expenditure. It does what it promises, certainly, but isn’t the miracle product that you’ve always been seeking.
