Strobing / Laura Mercier Matte Baked Radiance Powder

You may or may not have already heard: Strobing is the new contouring. This technique, currently trending over the past week, has been dubbed the easiest and most effective way to define your features.

The art of strobing requires a highlighter and only a highlighter, contouring palettes will be obsolete. For this look, the aim is to make your skin luminous and dewy, highlighters or liquid illuminators are all you need to amplify your most prominent features. Highlight features where light hits, typically the highest points on your face…cheekbones, forehead, brow bone, temples, down the bridge of the nose, cupids bow and you could also dust a bit on your chin and a little in your tear duct area. For this technique, my weapon of choice is the Laura Mercier Matte Radiance Baked Powder.

Laura Mercier's Matte Radiance Baked Powder in "highlight-01" is marketed as a ultra-smooth baked formula that provides natural colour with a radiant healthy glow" It claims to be a long wearing formula that's non-dusty, non-drying and give a modern, multidimensional matte finish with a hint of soft luminosity (sounds a little paradoxical, I know). This product also claims to have a sheer, buildable coverage, giving you the freedom to customise your glow.

Excuse my poor swatches, it's extremely hard to take photos of highlighters/illuminators. This photo does not do it any justice.

This is a bright highlight shade (great on pale to medium skin tones). It does have very, very fine micro shimmers in it, not enough to make you look like a disco ball, fortunately, on the skin it only translate as a subtle, iridescent glow. When used with a brush, it gives a more natural, soft-focus lustre sheen, but when used with fingers or applied slightly damp, it is a lot more intense, slightly metallic and dewy-looking. 

The texture of this powder is quite firm and velvety smooth. It's dry and a little on the powdery side but it's finely milled, so it blends beautifully. In each compact you get 0.26 oz/7.50g worth of product which is quite a generous amount, but the packaging of the Laura Mercier Matte Radiance Baked Powder is quite bulky so it's definitely not travel friendly, however, depending on your base/foundation this product can last up to 6 hours (though it does claims to wear for 8). I find this works most effectively ontop of liquid foundations or bb/cc creams as it is quite dry and powdery it won't last as long ontop of other powder products. 

This product comes in 1 highlight shade and 4 bronze shades for deeper skin tones. This currently retails for $42 AUD on LM counters at selected David Jones stores. You could purchase this in store or online here, or here.

Let me know what you think x