Il Makiage F**K I'm Flawless Concealer

Fact: we are as susceptible to Instagram advertising as anyone. Indeed, we sometimes wonder if Instagram a) bugs our rooms, so often do things we've just spoken about turn up in our feed, or b) have just planted a chip in our brains, or something.

Anyway, we saw an ad in our feed for this (slightly outrageously named) Il Makiage concealer, with an enticing mention of a questionnaire to find a perfect match.

And we thought: this is something we need to know about, because these kinds of innovations will potentially shape the future of make-up shopping, in a world in which many people don't really fancy going back to retail the way it was. (And for now, retail most definitely ISN'T the way it was.) 

So, we answered some simple questions with the aim of finding the correct shade, out of 30. (Yes, 30. How concealer shades have taken a quantum leap forward…)

Questions like: What's your skintype? (Answer: Dry – married to my moisturiser.) What kind of coverage are you craving? (Answer: Medium.) Then a choice of photos, to indicate skin colour – which goes from porcelain pale through to dark, and then offers more precise options within the choice. 

Then a question about undertone (Neutral, in our case, but the questionnaire helps, if you don't know, by asking about the colour of veins on the inside of the wrist – blue/purple, or greenish/blue, or 'hard to tell'.)

There are also questions about whether gold/silver jewellery (or both) work on your skin, one about burning in the sun (or not), and so on, plus how long you've been using your current concealer. Quite a few questions, then your concealer prescription is revealed. (In our case, #3.5.)

A couple of days later, a very chic black box arrived with the concealer. And guess what? It's absolutely perfect. Really nicely concealing but smooth, drying to a finish that when used as a primer helps shadow cling amazingly, even in the heat we've been having. (It reminds us of a Kat Von D eye primer that was sadly discontinued and we've been mourning ever since.)

We're so convinced, we might just go back for foundation. Welcome to the future of make-up shopping...

£24 – buy here 

Prize Draws