Tarte Shape Tape Foundation (matte)-WTF??

Oh friends…if you’ve read my latest couple of posts I was really excited when I heard we were getting a Shape Tape foundation. Like, REALLY excited…I’m sure like me, you’ve heard the big to-do about it by now. Besides the product itself, a lot of people are really upset because of the limited shades in the line. There are only 15 shades currently…and this may have seemed standard a year ago….It no longer is thanks to Fenty and Huda Beauty. I’ll say this, I think it is garbage that they put this out without the full shade line-up. They have stated it was a timing thing, well if that is the case then why not only come out with ONE finish in ALL of the shades instead of just some shades in two finishes?

Anyway, you can buy this on Tarte.com and it will be coming to Ulta next month. The price tag is super hefty too in my opinion. It’s $38USD but after taxes and shipping it will set you back to almost $50USD. You do get a good amount of product ( a little over an oz). The wand is excellent and the bottle looks just like a giant bottle of shape tape.

If you didn’t already know, this comes in matte and hydrating. Anyway because I was so excited I went ahead and snapped it up anyway… before you get disgusted keep reading…

The shades are very confusing and by the way they are all “neutral” or warm. Since I am cool toned there really wasn’t anything for me so I chose what seemed to be the closest AND neutral. I chose Light Neutral and ummmm….guys….It’s not great 😦 First off right out of the package, as you can see on my skin and swatch rubbed in, it is incredibly effing orange..THAT Tarte, is NOT neutral! It smells ok and was pretty thick but the color is awful. My point is even if you are white, this still doesn’t work for all skin colors. This was literally the least orange shade I could find that would possibly work for me and…no go. I am not an Oompa Loompa, are you? Well…if you aren’t….you’ll be hard pressed to make any shade of this work for you until if/when they add more shades….and by then they may have damaged their good name.

Ok, nevertheless I persevered and tried it on anyway knowing it would look like shit, but I still wanted to test the formula. After all for the price tag it must be pretty good, right?

WRONG! First of all I can’t speak to a wear test of this because I had to clean it off after about 10 minutes because it was laughably orange…BUT when I applied it I applied with multiple brushes/sponges etc. It kept caking up and sticking to dry skin especially on/around my nose. In order to give you a better idea, here is the shape tape foundation on the left, and my fenty on the right after removing the shape tape. It does oxidize badly too which is awful because it is already orange. The formula itself is thick and provides medium (not full coverage).

Shape Tape Light Neutral on left, Fenty 150 on right.

I don’t think I could honestly be more disappointed in this if I tried to be. I even tried to go and setup a return on Tarte’s website but it kept erroring out on me so I guess I have to spend my time calling them and waiting on hold. Tarte normally knocks it out of the park but between this and the newest Clay Play palette (they didn’t even bother changing the packaging or shade names from the first Clay Play Palette) I’m not really sure what is going on over there. Don’t get me wrong, I’m really not trying to bash Tarte, I actually really love Tarte but these are some pretty big mistakes.

Honestly I can’t recommend this to you and that makes me so very sad. I wanted so badly to like this and have waited a long time. IF you can find your shade match and still want to try it (it might work for really warm tones??)…I won’t stop you. You may well even like it…If you do…count yourself lucky.

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