Emmie Reviews – Makeup By Mario SurrealSkin Foundation

2022 was a pretty iconic year for complexion products. Specifically foundations. The Nars Light Reflecting, Rose Inc’s Skin Enhance Tinted Serum, and Hourglass’s Soft Focus all launched last year and went on to be best sellers for their respective brands. But right as we thought we were done for the year, Makeup By Mario dropped his very first complexion product, the SurrealSkin Foundation. And it immediately went viral! I saw this foundation pop up pretty much everywhere. Which means I had to get it for myself. I have spent the last little while reviewing it and I have a ton of thoughts. So, if you want to know if the newest launch from Makeup By Mario is truly surreal? Just keep reading!

MAKEUP BY MARIO SURREALSKIN FOUNDATION – $78.00 – makeupbymario.com (30 shades available)

Starting with the packaging, the SurrealSkin Foundation is housed in a cylindrical, clear glass bottle. It has a white cap and there is chrome and black detail on the bottle. The bottle itself is well weighted and is a good option for a makeup artist’s kit (Mario got his start as a makeup artist, so that makes sense). The SurrealSkin Foundation is vegan, cruelty free, and contains 30ml of product.

The foundation is dispensed via a pump. And it’s a fairly stiff pump. It’s actually easy to only pump out a small amount of product with it. Now, I’m not sure if my pump came on an angle when I first got it. Or if that’s just from use. But it hasn’t affected the pump in any noticeable way.

The SurrealSkin Foundation comes in 30 shades. The shades are broken up into five categories. Light (5 shades), Light Medium (7 shades), Medium (6 shades), Medium Dark (5 shades), and Dark (7 shades). Overall, I reckon the shades are pretty well balanced and there is a good range of undertones. But as always, there is room for future expansion. I do know that some of my lighter skin friends struggled to find their shade initially.

As for me, I ended up picking up the shade 5N. Described as Light with Neutral Undertones. It’s a pretty decent match for me. Though I do notice that it does oxidise on me slightly. This is definitely a foundation that I recommend testing in store before purchasing.

Finding a way to apply this foundation was a legitimate challenge for me. Makeup By Mario recommends either a brush or fingers to apply it. And I did end up having the best success with my fingers. The texture of this foundation is on the thicker side than a lot of the foundations that I’ve tried recently. And the warmth from my fingers allowed it to blend into my skin way more effective than had I used a brush or a sponge. Also, just as a side note, if you did get this to work with a sponge, let me know how! I legitimately hated this with a sponge.

The SurrealSkin Foundation is described as being a medium buildable coverage with a luminous finish. I agree with the medium, not so much the buildable. This is a foundation that can get very cakey on me very quickly if I try to add more. So, I usually went in with a 1/2 pump all over the face. And then maybe a 1/4 pump in an attempt to build up the coverage. But never more than that. As for the luminosity, for me, it does have a more natural finish at first. But then the luminosity becomes more apparent as the day goes on.

Which is a nice way to go into the wear test! And as you can see, it does become way more luminous as the day goes on. The irony being that for me, this foundation feels dry to the point of uncomfortable on the skin. Part of the reason why this review took so long was because I kept taking the foundation off during my shift because I hated the way it felt. There is Squalane, and a few oils in this foundation. So I’m surprised it feels so off on me. But I’m guessing that the bulk of the glow is coming from the silica that is in this foundation.

As for the wear itself, for a foundation that touts itself as being long wearing, I was pretty unimpressed. I did lose some on my forehead, that is to be expected. But I also noticed that it had faded significantly on my upper lip and my chin area after 8 hours of wear. I also noticed that while it didn’t crack in my lines, it was sinking into my pores around my nose. Finally, while my cheek products layered well, the products on my nose always looked off when I applied them over top of this foundation. Almost like it was caking up.

Overall, I have to say that the SurrealSkin Foundation was a bust for me. And I personally don’t recommend it. If you want to give it a crack when it does launch in Australia (at the time of writing, it hasn’t yet), definitely get a sample first. But I cannot in good conscious recommend that you buy it blind. Especially if you have more mature, dry skin like me. Have you tried the Makeup By Mario SurrealSkin Foundation? Let me know in the comments below!

Cheers and love
Emily xo