We’re back with the next two matches in the concealer tournament! If you missed the first four matches, I started with 16 concealers I’ve been testing, some for years and some much more recently. As always, I’m happy to do follow ups with anything I didn’t include here or anything that’s launched since that you’re super curious about! Important reference for concealers: I have dry 35+ year old skin that has fine lines. If you have oily skin, you might love the ones that lose specifically because they don’t work as well on my dry skin.
For the actual tests, I wore one concealer on each side of my face, both under my eyes, to spot conceal, and as foundation on different days. I kept the rest of my makeup the same. I also switched sides just in case. I’ve also been posting (way too) close up pictures in my Substack chat and having everyone vote on which side looks better without telling them what they’re looking at.
In this post, all links are affiliate links (thank you for your support!), but all opinions are my own and I bought all these products myself. Swatches are under a ring light to show true to color (photo #1) and then standard lighting to show the formula a little better (#2) for all the products.
And here’s where we are in the bracket:
Round 1, Match 5: Givenchy Prisme Libre Skin-Caring Concealer in N95 vs. Sarah Creal Face Flex Concealer & Complexion Enhancer in 2 – I actually love both of these and don’t remember why I paired them together (I’m assuming that’s just the way the votes worked out but honestly I’m upset at past me for sticking to my own rules). I’ve used almost half of my Sarah Creal at this point and this is my second bottle of the Givenchy, despite neither being a great shade match for me. The Givenchy is slightly lighter and peachier than the Sarah Creal, which is a bit more yellow. Neither is particularly olive, although they also don’t claim to be olive shades.
The Givenchy blends out really easily and seamlessly. It’s one of those concealers I can use under my eyes or just keep blending across my face as foundation. The Sarah Creal doesn’t spread quite as much, but it stays where I put it better and keeps its coverage. The Givenchy almost wants to sheer out into a skin tint level of coverage, which is really pretty, but much less of what you want an actual concealer to do (or so I thought).
Under my eyes, the Givenchy looked smoother and settled into my fine lines less vs. the Sarah Creal, and everyone in my chat picked the Givenchy side in the blind comparison even after I switched sides. I also made my neighbor vote (hi! thank you for reading and voting in person!!) without telling her which was which, and she picked Givenchy too. She thought it looked more seamless and less dry. I had my husband vote, and he actually picked the Sarah Creal, so this definitely wasn’t a totally unanimous vote. Even though I, and almost everyone else except my husband, consistently preferred how the Givenchy looked on my skin, I still really like Face Flex. I will absolutely keep using mine until I run out (although I now have more than 20 concealers so I may not actually be able to finish any of them).
The Givenchy also has a surprisingly generous amount of product for a concealer, so while it’s obviously not inexpensive, the price per ounce is better than the initial price tag makes it seem. If this somehow ends up winning the whole tournament, I might actually buy it in another shade because N95 is definitely not the shade I would choose again. So, Givenchy moves on!
Round 1, Match 6: Rare Beauty Liquid Touch Concealer in 170W vs. Essence Silky Blur Hydrating Concealer in 50 – Rare Beauty started off strong with one of the best shade matches of the tournament. I actually bought it because it was one of the few fair/light shades labeled as olive, and it’s also one of the only olive shades that is actually olive. It blends into my skin so well and I wish I could have this shade in formulas I like more (yes, that’s a spoiler). Essence in the shade 50 is much lighter and pinker than I’d like. Even though I bought 50, 70, and 120 after watching a bunch of swatch videos to make sure I got at least one good shade, this is still the best of the three. Luckily it’s inexpensive enough that buying three shades wasn’t the end of the world, but I wouldn’t say I found the olive one or that there even is a shade that would work.
Both of these concealers are super creamy and easy to blend. They have good coverage and look smooth when I first apply them. I honestly thought it was going to be a great concealer day every time I put these on because they both looked so nice. Every time, I was wrong. Within about 30 minutes, I had fading coverage, creasing, and texture on both sides. They started to look dry and cakey, which is so bonkers considering how nice they looked in the beginning. Setting them didn’t help either, and if anything made the dryness and texture more obvious.
And by the end of the day, neither of them looked good. Those problems just got worse and worse, and this happened every time I tried these, even when I switched sides. When I did the vote in my Substack chat, a lot of people picked neither. I got messages saying this was the worst matchup so far. When I switched sides, more people picked the Rare Beauty concealer, but it wasn’t unanimous, and there was still a general vibe of “eh, I’d rather not pick.”
Even though neither was great on me, the Essence definitely lost more coverage and became more visibly dry than the Rare Beauty. I just felt like I could see way more texture, and it broke apart much faster. I know people are obsessed with the Essence concealer, and I was so excited to test it. I review plenty of drugstore/under $20/under $10 products here because I really do think there are so many amazing products in that price range now. But that also means that Essence isn’t going to get any extra points just for being $5 when there are so many amazing drugstore products to choose from. It’s also possible that my skin just doesn’t like it, but I’d honestly rather put that $15 toward one really great concealer than spend it trying three shades of one that doesn’t work for me.
Even though it did get much drier than I would want and it creased a ton, the Rare Beauty did better on the rest of my face than under my eyes. Because the shade is so good, it works better as an all-over concealer/foundation situation than a lot of these other concealers. I suspect it’ll be better for my skin in the summer when my skin is less dry, but it’s still not something I’d say you need to run out and buy. That all said, Rare Beauty moves on for this round!
I also did get the Marc Jacobs concealer and the Lisa Eldridge concealer, each in two shades, because I know y’all want to know (and honestly I also want to know). I’ve already started testing them both, which is why the tournament is getting a little more spread out timewise. I will figure out a way to get them into the tournament, and let me know if you have requests and/or suggestions!
