By Cindy Bregin Crouch
Emmy Award Winning Investigative Reporter
October 26, 2025
Hey, cosmetic companies, you do realize you are running multiple sales a year, right? I’m largely going to relegate my buying or restocking to these time periods where you are at least 20% off. The exception to this rule is when I’m trying out something new. And if I’m trying out something new, I really appreciate the No Makeup Makeup policy of “try it before you buy it” meaning you send it to me. You have my credit card information, and only after about 30 days do you charge me if I haven’t made a peep about returning it. That seems fair. And then let’s say I don’t love it and I contact you. Then I’m guessing you don’t charge me, or you have me send it back. I have run across some cosmetic companies that are saying, “Hey, Just give it to a friend. We’ll credit you. You don’t have to send it back.” Which makes all the sense in the world because what are they going do with it? It’s a used product, so it’s not like they can resell it. I certainly hope members of the general public aren’t abusing this policy.
Favorite foundations of the moment:
Jones Road What The Foundation.
I really strongly like this foundation.
Slick marketing and this foundation delivers. It comes in a wide range of shades for a wide range of skin tones/undertones/colors. Great job as usual, Bobbi Brown. Here’s where I’m not like the rest of the crowd. I cannot stand the tinted moisturizer from Jones Road. I have one admired girlfriend who loves it. I don’t think it’s heavy (thick?) enough, and I think it separates when I attempt to powder over it. I understand the concept of tinted moisturizer. I love colorsciene’s Flex SPF 50. I want just a bit more from the Jones Road tinted moisturizer. I want more “coverage” out of this one, specifically. I am able to powder with either one of my favorite powders: my MAC Studio Fix Powder Plus Foundation or my favorite MAC Mineralize powder. My powder routine works with the Jones Road What The Foundation, but it does not work as seamlessly with the Jones Road Tinted Moisturizer. Not sure why. I just overall feel it needs to be slightly thick-thicker and reoffered as a revised and improved tinted moisturizer. Make it a little more like a BB cream or maybe a CC cream.
No Makeup Makeup:
I love this foundation. The creamy one that you probably should consider applying with the brush this line sells. You’ve already have a brush? Just make sure it is almost exactly this one. I probably have 50+ brushes (80% are Trish McEvoy- the best ever, even still). My Trish brushes are circa the year 1997 and they are still in great shape. Back to the No Makeup Makeup foundation. For whatever reason it’s got excellent coverage, but I find that I use more of this product than any other foundation. I’m not sure of the exact reason why and I’m wondering if it has to do with my choice of their brush application. Normally, I am a dump it in the palm of my left hand and spread it around with my hands and fingers kind of gal. I do appreciate that people like using a brush with certain foundations and if there ever was a case to be made for using a brush, this is the foundation that needs it. This foundation has beautiful coverage. Non-creasing whether I wear it alone or use my usual MAC Studio Fix Powder Plus Foundation or MAC Mineralize Powder. Again, I’m just trying to figure out why in the world I use so much more of this? Is it that I am really digging using the brush or is the foundation itself actually requiring me to hit it with a second pass? I need to do a little more self-analysis with this one but every time I wear it, I absolutely adore it. It handles either of my aforementioned powdering options beautifully.
My foundation line of the moment was recommended to me by the brilliant kids at my local Primp and Blow blow-dry bar. And just to clarify, I’m calling them kids, but they’re all in their 20s or late 20s. I am 60 years old this year. I am using the term “kids” lovingly. They couldn’t recommend highly enough Dior’s Forever Skin Glow. I also decided to give Dior’s Forever Glow Veil a shot. It appears white in the bottle. I don’t regret it. It’s not too shiny. For instance, colorscience are you listening? Your glow sunscreen is the worst. The only application I can see putting that on that makes any sense to me is on a corpse. They’d glow all right! Maybe I’m still too trained in “toning down” my T-zone? Not sure, but this thing makes me feel like I am highly oily (think greasy oil slick but on my face) and ready to pop out with a lot of acne. It truly does makes me feel like a petroleum accident. That’s why I am being this specific about how I feel about Dior‘s FOREVER GLOW VEIL. I feel very elegant and definitely non-greasy. Dior’s FOREVER GLOW VEIL layers beautifully over my moisturizer and sets the stage for their foundation. I even sneak my colorscience just plain old regular SPF 50 on top of my moisturizers. Then I slap on the glow shield. This does not leave me too shiny. It’s just a beautiful primer that locks in all of the moisture and prepares my face to accept their foundation effortlessly. I wouldn’t mix lines on this one at all if I were you. Please use their glow veil with their foundation. 100% do not deviate from this part of the drill. Now, I had my foundation matched at Sephora. I do not think they nailed it as they match me as a 2.5 W. When I got at home and looked at it in perfect light (even reapplied it on a totally clean face) it was a tad too dark. I looked like I did not know what I was doing. And I’m a real freak about matching foundation. I really wanted to give this a fair and immediate shot, so I hit a Nordstrom to find a trained Dior expert. I found a guy named Doug at Oak Park Mall located in Overland Park, Kansas. He said I was really a 2N. I told him I thought that was ridiculous as I have never been pegged as neutral in my life (foundation-wise however, I was and still am a very fair journalist), but for whatever reason, with my current level of lack of sun that I’ve got going on right now (just a hint of sun)… That 2N matched me best. However, I did not want to return one and buy another. I’m kind of a custom-matching gal and I don’t mind using two shades to get the perfect shade in my mind. So, I told Dior Doug I was going to purchase a 0W. I asked him if that made sense, and he said “Why would you do that?” I said “because I’m going to blend them.” He goes, “OK, if you’re going to go to the trouble of blending them, then fine.” I have been happily blending ever since. I believe I’m truly a warm. If I’m tan, I’m almost an olive. I believe Dior does get that specific and offers your foundation in olive or warm undertones. However, at 60 years of age, I have survived the era where nobody even had warm undertones in their foundation. Everything was pink, and I am definitely not a pink undertone. So, thank you world, for evolving into warmer undertones via pioneers like Bobbi Brown. I think she was one of the first to get yellow undertones into foundation. So was Trish. So was MAC. So was Laura Mercier. Believe NARS accomplished about the same thing at about the same time.
Now let’s get into the world of what I like to set these with. There are two that I really prefer. I love Charlotte Tilbury’s Airbrush Flawless Setting Spray. I feel like it comes all out in a fine enough mist. On the bottle under the name of the spray, they advertise: “party all night stay all day.” It really does work. It delivers as promise. It also delivers the promise on her bottle kind of an “airbrush finish” to my foundation, even though I clearly didn’t airbrush anything on.
The other setting I like is sold under the name D’alba Piedmont Spray. This one is truly different. I discovered it on Instagram via a guy who does his own makeup. His makeup usually looks too good, and so that made me go, “He’s really into this serum spray”. It’s actually called First Serum Spray. I have to agree with this guy. This may be my favorite one of all. As advertised on the bottle this finishing spray/setting spray truly does give me hydrated (but not greasy) and radiant skin. I love this one. And the way the serum sprays out is even a finer mist than Charlotte Tilbury’s, in my opinion. I definitely think everybody who is into setting sprays as a final step needs to try d’Alba Piedmont’s First Spray Serum. It is the bomb. And unless you have needs that I’m not aware of (and out of the norm), this is probably going to be your favorite setting spray serum as well.
Third place for me would be Urban Decay’s All Nighter ULTRA MATTE. Now I’m really not a Matte coverage kind of lady, but I like this one. I gravitate more toward the other two because I don’t tend to use this on my entire face. During the warmer summer months, I should probably give it a go, but again, I’m not a Matte finish kind of gal. What I use this every day for is taking powdery shimmery eye shadow purples, spray my dedicated purple eyeshadow brush and after the brush is wet on both sides, I dip it into the powder. Then I place that on both my eyelids for a pop color. That’s how I’m working this long-lasting makeup setting spray into my daily routine. And as advertised on the bottle, it is “all-day wear, lightweight and amazingly as promised “actual” temperature control technology.” Great job, Urban Decay. Bonus? The purple bottle. So visually pleasing to me. Reminds me of Prince.
Now with all three of these setting sprays that I’m mentioning, please put them in a glass bottles! Hey URBAN DECAY, d’Alba Piedmont and Charlotte Tilbury please start using glass bottles. All of my other preferred products are in glass bottles. Bobbi Brown’s foundation is in a glass container. Dior’s foundations also come in glass. No Makeup Makeup is not in a glass container because it’s a powder type container. However, I do not see why they could not fit that No Makeup Makeup in a glass system kind of like the Bobbi Brown. I just think it would be more effective if it were a lower and wider profile glass jar. If a company is dialed in at all to “current healthcare thinking,” we all are trying to get away from plastic, right? Glass may cost a couple bucks more, but it’s so much better for us. So, universe and all higher powers, please help these companies see the light. I want glass bottles from all of you. Like Stat. You are actually very late to this party.
Lastly, since I mentioned daily usage of two different settings sprays, what am I going to do on my upcoming trip to Japan, you might ask. I’m pretty sure I will just travel with the d’Alba Piedmont First Spray Serum. I’ll use it both for my purple eyeshadow setting needs and also as my final step to set/seal my face in place.
