We’ve spoken about this before. Where diversity is concerned, not all foundation brands are created equal.

That’s why we were so intrigued when introduced to Illamasqua’s brand new Skin Base Mixers (available on counter). There are four  - white, amber, chestnut and terracotta  - and they’re designed to be mixed with their existing Skin Base Foundations, £32, in order to custom blend the exact shade for your skin type (in fact you get one free with every foundation purchase from today). Like a sort of rudimentary Dulux mixing machine for make-up.

It begs the question, why has nobody done this before? It’s surely the key to a 100% democratic choice for skin tones of all shades and sizes and puts the power firmly back in the hands of the people, as opposed to the brands knocking out Sand after Taupe after Biscuit while a good 40% of the population are left asking, what about me? Well the answer is, they sort of have. Prescriptives, the US cosmetics brand that first brought us bespoke foundation, do still offer a custom blend foundation service in a limited number of House of Fraser stores, but it's not quite the DIY beauty democracy that is literally mixing up your own shade, right there in front of your eyes. 

We should point out that the Mixers themselves are not purely flat pigments, each one has a particular enhancing quality that can be added in small quantities to your current (Illamasqua) foundation without drastically changing the colour. For instance, the white one brightens while amber reduces redness, it’s all in the quantities.

For the time poor women who barely gets a minute to smudge a swatch of BB across her forehead in the morning, home-blending her own foundation shade may seem like a bit of a faff. But for anyone who’s ever struggled with making a realistic colour match amongst the bountiful melee of mainstream make-up choices, this bespoke blend approach to base has the potential to be literally face changing.