Hello lovelies! I posted these concealer palettes in my March Favourites and a couple of you asked me to review them a little more in depth. I bought these for my kit and everyone I’ve used them on has been really intrigued! I first saw Sam from Pixiwoo use one of these palettes in her videos ages and ages ago, and re-discovered them on a trip to PAM London, which is just around the corner from me.
The palettes are made by LeMaq (also referred to as Le Maquillage Professionelle or Maq Pro) a French makeup company who, from what I can tell by their (French) website and other stockists of their products, custom-fill palettes for various stores, schools and professional use. For example, The Neat Kit and Love Makeup also carry these palettes, but they look to have different colours in. I could be wrong but I will correct this post if find out!
PAM carries three of the concealer palettes, Light Tone, Medium Tone, and Dark Tone,the latter of which I don’t have yet but will be adding to my collection soon – I’ll update with swatches as and when. As you can probably tell, this is going to be a pretty positive review!
Here’s a photo of one sat on my phone so you can gauge the size of them. As you can see, they’re really dinky, but quite deep. Each palette contains 30ml of product so you’re actually getting tons for the size. That was the main appeal to me, that they were so compact!
Light Tone Palette
Top Row: 124, 131, 14, 91, C1
Bottom Row: 153, CR,170, 111, 52
Medium Tone Palette
Top Row: TL2, 90, 143, 95, C1
Bottom Row: 141, 52, 1989, 128, 97
Just as a side note, I have no idea whatsoever what these numbers/colours refer to, but they’re on the packaging, so they’re in the review!
These are oil based cream makeup. If you’ve got any experience using stage/screen makeup, you’ll be used to this sort of texture. They’re not as heavy as something like Kryolan Supracolors or other greasepaints, and they feel a little smoother to work with but they’ve a similar sort of texture. As you can probably tell from the colours, these particular palettes are meant for concealing and correcting. For example, the Light palette has a green tone for correcting redness, and a pinkish colour for neutralizing foundations/concealers that are too yellow. Both palettes come with peach and yellow colours, useful for correcting/brightening dark circles under the eyes (I wish the Medium palette came with a different tone of yellow to the Light palette, but hey ho! I would like a brighter, more true orange as well, but I believe there is one in the ‘dark’ palette) and an almost white shade too, which is generally useful.
There are enough colours to make these palettes really multifunctional – the red tone would also make a nice cheek or lip colour, and some of the peachier shades could function as a blush colour, or as a base on the lids to neutralize veins on before applying eye shadow. The fact these are obviously based around skin-tone colours means there are plenty of contouring shades as well. However, you can get different palettes with a larger variety of colours in them – there are lip colour versions, and this bad boy which has everything!
These are much more geared toward professional than every day use. Some people will love this type of makeup, and it won’t be for some other people or their skin type at all. Personally I don’t have a problem using this type of makeup on my skin, but I wouldn’t recommend them for wearing all day everyday and would only really use them on clients and models for a short amount of time. Performance wise though, they apply smoothly, are blendable, don’t separate on the skin and while they need to be set (like all types of cream/wax/oil based makeup) once you’ve done so, they’ll stick around. As they’re wax based, they are water resistant as well which is handy. A little goes a long way and gives good coverage - while I probably wouldn’t use them as foundation, you certainly could without worrying about totally emptying one section of the palette!
While I’ve yet to fully explore all the possibilities of these palettes, I’ve been using them for correcting and concealing, and I’ve also use them to tone down pigmented lips…
and to highlight and contour…
Overall they’re a fab little addition to my kit and I’m very grateful to have them! The palettes retail for £24.50 and are available from PAM London, my amazing local professional store.