The Mid-Year Filipino Beauty Roundup
Hundred-piece collections, palettes, brushes—Fil-beauty is growing even more.
We’ll say it again and again: Filipino beauty is thriving. And this year it’s grown even more with brands dropping mega collections, base products (the hardest to develop!), makeup brushes, and even palettes, previously thought to “not have a market” locally. Here are some of our favorite launches from the past six months.
Finally, Sunnies Face mentions in their caption, as a powder is one of their most requested products to come up with. Their Skin So Good The Powder comes in a six morena-forward shade range (only two of which are fair), with a lightweight, silky formula that mattifies without leaving the skin looking flat. It also features some skincare benefits so you don’t have to worry too much about leaving it on the whole day, and a sleek chic compact that’ll have you taking it out to retouch anytime of the day.
Get Ready With Me Cosmetics, a beauty line created by Mae Layug, one of the pioneer Youtube beauty creators in the Philippines dropped a whopping 128-piece collection this year. Brand new formulas in the line are the Radiant Skin Foundation, Powder Rush Loose Setting Powder, Powder Rush Pressed Translucent Powder their Makeup Prep Squad Primers that come in life-proof, blur-matte, and hydrating jelly, and new variants and shades added to existing formulas of their Life Proof Fixing Spray (Radiant), their Radiance Tint, and the Quad Goals palettes which now have baked formulas, shimmer highlighter toppers, cool-toned blush shades, eyeshadows, and more shade undertones for bronzers and contours. Overwhelmed? Understandably. If you were to get only one product, go with the Foundation—26 shades to choose from, with five “shade shifters,” which are artistry shades of white, blue, orange, yellow, and green to either mix into your base or correct skin tone imbalances.
Fil Beauty-tok sweetheart and L’O beauty feature Marj Maroket collaborated with Filipino brand Happy Skin to come out with a 7-piece brush collection—6 face brushes and a sponge. While there are a ton of brushes available out there, not a lot of them are Filipino made and s well thought out as this collection made by a true-blue beauty girl. The six face brushes include a foundation brush, an all around powder brush, a buffing brush, a creme cheek brush, a setting brush, and a concealer brush, and of course the makeup sponge that’s softer than your usual blender. If you were to get only one, it would be a toss-up between the foundation brush, which comes in a functional sloped shape that’s softer in shape and texture than similar base brushes, or the concealer brush which is smaller than usual concealer tools so you get to really zone in on the undereyes for example or around the nose.
The comeback of celebrity makeup artist-created brand Teviant is a range of multi-use mousse makeup pots that come in Filipina-friendly shades. Artist Albert Kurniawan shares that this formula has been two years in the making: with the brand opting not to launch the formula during the pandemic, it bought them more time to perfect the formula and come up with their tight edit of eight shades—four rosy-toned hues and the rest neutral brontour colors and highlighter shades. Fair-skinned and brown makeup lovers alike will love the hot pink shade revel—universally flattering used on cheeks, eyes, and lips.
“What if you had the power to choose?” asks co-founder Joel Andrade. With a big launch and a mini-rebrand, Issy & Co is now just Issy and has come out with a 52-piece customizable palette collection to mark the new era. The collection consists of 34 pressed eyeshadow singles, 9 blushes, 3 bronzers, 3 highlighters, and 3 contour shades—all of them you’re free to mix and match endlessly with a refillable and reusable empty magnetic palette that can carry up to 12 eyeshadow singles. It’s completely up to you what shade permutations you want the palette to contain, though. If you feel this is a little too intimidating, Issy has curated five eye palettes for you to choose from if you please: one that’s All Matte, another All Shimmer, Sundown which is a warm color story, the rosy palette Courtesan, and Spacewalk which is a cool shade selection. To top it all off, Issy has also come out with the Eyeshadow & Concealer base. With its oil control properties, it extends makeup wear and boosts the vibrancy of pigments. Talk about endless possibilities.
