Imagine the scene… it had been a looooong week. You missed lunch, had a horrible meeting and generally felt blurgh so you stop in department store on the way back to the office, to face a never ending pile of paperwork, on the way back from said horrible meeting, on a day which just happened to be pay day. You have no intention of buying anything, because… well, as a make up hoarder, you have plenty of make up… but it is always nice to mooch in a department store, see what’s new, maybe spray a bit of perfume and then head back to the office right?
Ummm… I am not sure what happened on that particular day, as I have walked past the NARS counter on MANY occasions but something made me stop and look at highlighters. Within two minutes I had swatched Albatross, decided that I loved it, bought it and was stuffing the receipt into my purse. Yes really, that fast! Yes, it really did make me feel better!
I don’t know why I was drawn to this white ish powder as with my deep skin tone, highlighters with a golden undertone are a must. Just goes to show the importance of swatching because on the skin, that is exactly what Albatross is.
It is light yellow gold tone on my skin (rather than deep gold or orange) and it is BEAUTIFUL. The powder is extremely finely milled so a little bit goes a long way and it is really really buildable. Perfect over matte blushers but it also adds a new dimension to blushes with shimmer as those which I own generally have a more orange gold tone. I have been wearing it in combination with my Tom Ford blushes and it looks amazing. I can use it to add a subtle highlight under my brows and a touch on my nose. I tend not to use it to highlight the centre of my forehead or my chin as I am a bit too old not quite ready for the whole strobing look. It also works beautifully on the inner corner of the eyes regardless of whether you are wearing warm or cool toned eye shadow. Albatross is a product that was completely outside of my radar. Probably because it looks like a white powder. Even at the counter it is situated next to other highlighting blushers which have a warmer and deeper undertone like Satellite of Love or Miss Liberty but I kept going back to Albatross.
This is not a product which I use with my NARS Mie brush – it is overkill on my face as the brush picks up too much product. I am more likely to go in with my Callanberry Foundation brush for perfect precision application and then blend it out with a bigger brush if necessary.
There are lots of dupes for this product on the high street. Both MUA and Makeup Revolution have this exact tone in their lines at a seventh of the price. I have played with purchased and worn these products BUT and it is a big but, they don’t last as long on my skin. After three to four hours they need to be topped up. Albatross on the other hand, lasts all day.
Sometimes impulse buys are a mistake, but Albatross was a stroke of genius.