Can you glow up with Aldi budget make-up?
Mirror puts store’s new lookalike range to test
IF there’s one thing Aldi has become known for it’s their impressive takes on expensive branded products.
Following the success of their familiarlooking beers and caterpillar chocolate cakes, the chain has now taken on the make-up industry with its Lacura range.
The £2.99 Perfectly Nude lipstick has been a big topic on social media, with users claiming it’s an excellent duplicate of Charlotte Tilbury’s £26 Pillow Talk.
Similarly, the Cashmere Glow Luminous Foundation (£5.99) has been likened to Armani’s £45 Luminous Silk Foundation. Aldi’s new range also features the Girl Gone Bad Mascara, an eyeshadow quad, eyeshadow primer, lip liner, concealer and a lip gloss.
To see whether the products are worth the hype, make-up artist Mahina Quadri put them to the test on my face, starting with the Cashmere Glow foundation.
Mahina, who posts on Instagram as @mahina artistry, agreed the Aldi product looked a lot like the Armani foundation in its packaging and the way it dries on the skin.
She rated it good for “quick everyday” but wasn’t impressed by the lack of shade options – only six in comparison to Armani’s 40. She added: “It went on really smoothly. It was matte at the beginning and gave a glow towards the end. But because of the shade range I wouldn’t be using it.
“It looks similar to Armani Luminous Silk but it’s not just about looks. Longevity is the key. If it doesn’t last then the money has gone to waste.”
Next up was the eyeshadow quad palette and eyeshadow primer, both priced at £3.99.
Mahina said: “I absolutely loved the matte eyeshadows. They went on really nicely but the shimmer was not giving. It’s not as pigmented as I thought it would be, there’s just a slight glow. The primer had a bit of shimmer so if you’re going to use the eyeshadow use the primer first.”
Mahina wasn’t a big fan of the Girl Gone Bad mascara (£5.99). She said: “It gave the length but dried too quickly and I wasn’t able to manoeuvre it.”
But she loved the “absolutely amazing” Perfectly Nude lip gloss and the matching lip liner (£2.99 each).
She said: “It shone, it was giving and it didn’t have a sticky feeling. The lip liner is creamy. Any liner like this will last as it dries down to be matte.”
However Mahina did note that the liner could be difficult to sharpen because of the shiny outer packaging. Finally came the lipstick. I’d recently spent a day wearing it and found the colour lasted an incredibly long time, staying on for 10 hours, but it did dry out my lips quite badly.
I still thought it a bargain but Mahina wasn’t convinced. She said: “The colour is pretty but if it is drying it’s a ‘no’.”
Summing up the range, she said: “It’s OK. You can use this if you quickly need to go out. It’s not something that would last the whole day. If you wore this on a night out, your make-up will slip.”
And she wasn’t wrong. After several hours wearing the Aldi products I found the mascara had started to transfer around my eyes in little black clumps and felt dry and uncomfortable.
My face had also become shiny with foundation totally lost in the T-zone.
Without a blusher or highlighter in the range, Mahina improvised and applied a little eyeshadow to my cheeks. The blush stayed on quite well but the shimmer didn’t last.
The lip gloss and lip liner, however, were the standouts, as Mahina predicted. They lasted for hours, looked great, didn’t feel sticky and didn’t dry my lips like the lipstick. Clearly, the expert knows best.