When I was out shopping this weekend, I noticed that MAC’s All Races, All Ages, All Sexes collection is still out on counters. Because I love neutrals, this collection held a lot of interest for me. After playing with the products at a few counters, I decided that the texture and quality of the collection was not something that suited me. I settled on the two products reviewed here.
MAC Personal Style Beauty Powder Blush ($18.50) is a very subtle nude. It’s described as a “light mauve taupe” on MAC’s website.
Here is a comparison of MAC’s Personal Style with two other nice nudes, Lancome’s Miel Glace and MAC’s Taupe Pro blush.
As you can see, Lancome’s Miel Glace gives a pleasant shimmer compared to MAC’s Personal Style. Both have a touch of pink, although MAC’s Personal Style does lean mauve. MAC’s Taupe is much more of a true matte nude. After attempting to use Personal Style several times over the past few weeks, I decline to recommend this blush. It takes a number of layers to get the blush to show on my somewhat fair skin at all. If you’d like a subtle look, I’d use Lancome’s Miel Glace instead–the application is much nicer. If you want more impact, get MAC Taupe.
The other item is MAC’s Universal Mix pigment ($19.50), previously discussed here.
Overall, I found Universal Mix quite difficult to work with. As Karlasugar warned about here, Universal Mix is not a pigmented as other MAC pigment offerings. Serves me right for buying it before reading her review. Also, there is a lot of fallout. It’s messy!
In the swatch below, I’ve used 3-4 layers of Universal Mix compared to the other products swatched there. Despite the layering, Universal Mix is still applied thinly in places. MAC’s Vanilla did a nice job with a single coat. Surprisingly, even Shu Uemura’s P White 900, a pressed powder eyeshadow, did better than Universal Mix.
Perhaps Universal Mix works better when used wet or blended into a moisturizer, when the texture won’t be an issue. To be entirely honest, I wish that I had not purchased either of these items. Of course, everything in makeup is “your mileage may vary,” so if you do enjoy them I’m very happy for you.
