Fake Make-up - Benefit Review

Today, I shall be discussing the Benefit Big 10 I bought roughly 2 weeks ago from a cosmetic fair, and my verdict.




Prior to going to a real Benefit store near my office, I swatched most of the liquid ones and the POREfessional. I also familiarized myself with its smell, feel and color, so I'd know what it would be like.



One thing you'd spot right away is the packaging of dandelion and bella bamba. Their front stickers are not properly placed/fitted on the packaging of the product. I didn't notice this when I purchased it off the stall, since it was in the box, and due to the excitement of the moment.

Here are the swatches:



From left to right: Stay Don't Stray, benetint, posietint, highbeam, ohh la lift. One thing that is very distinct is the smell. It reeks chemical! Since the store didn't have an open product for swatching/smelling, you can sniff them when you had purchased it.



Here they are, blended. You can see that benetint didn't stick to long. It was very, very runny.



Oh, I did also try POREfessional on my hand, but I didn't have pictures of it. It felt like this powdery BB cream with a funky chemical smell. I hated it so much I had to wash my hands right away. It also felt kinda itchy on my hand.



Last Thursday, I hurriedly went out of my office so I can go to try out  the following in the real Benefit store in Shangri-la Plaza. I had with me the following in my bag, from my Big 10 purchase:

• POREfessional


• Benetint


• Posietint


• Highbeam

Of course the swatching and comparing had to be done discreetly. I tried all 4 in the store. Smelled and swatched it. Here are some of the swatches I had a photo of:

Above is the fake and real benetint, Benefit's best selling product. The lighting was pretty bad in the spot where I took photos of my hand, so please bare with it. Upon application, the fake one was very, very runny as compared to the real one. The real benetint was more viscous and darker, and barely had any smell. The fake one, was giving this strong chemical smell.

After application, the real benetint had more color pay-off. Mind you, I already swiped the fake benetint on my hand twice and it still gave of that little color.



For the highbeam:



First off, the smell. The fake highlighter had this very strong chemical smell. The real one, had a more subtle, barely there scent.

Upon application, the real one felt more soft and smooth on the skin, whereas the fake one was very chalky. The fake one was more bright, shimmery than the real one.



I did swatch the posietint and POREfessional, but I wasn't able to provide a photo of it. Both fake posietint and POREfessional had a very strong chemical scent going on. The real posietint had none, while the POREfessional had a subtle scent. The fake posietint was more runny and bolder as compared to its real counterpart. For the POREfessional, the real one had this silicon feel and definitely not oily, typical silicon primers, but was brown, whereas the fake one was more of an oily BB cream type.



So after I had reached the verdict that my Big 10 was in fact, 100% fake, I felt really down. If only I didn't give in to it being cheap and all.



Shame on you seller! No wonder you didn't have any online store, people would bash you for selling fake products! Shame on you for even claiming they came from US when a customer asked, when in fact they would probably came from Hongkong. Such a sad fact that they have this physical store in Alabang.



For those Filipinos out there who plan to visit this particular, shady store who sells benefit cosmetics, beware! They are fake and the owner wouldn't bat an eyelash telling you that it is real and came from the US. Unless you don't care if you're using fake stuff and wouldn't even bother if you started to feel horrible effects on your face, then do cater their fake make-up.





Now, I'm wondering... Is my Maybelline's Dream Mousse Concealer fake too? I bought it off a different stall from the Big 10.





Lesson learned. For cosmetics, make sure you buy it from a reputable seller/store. If you don't have access to it, read tons of reviews. It may be more expensive but hey, you've got only 1 face so take care of it!





Do I buy some stuff of the net? Yes,  I do buy some of my Korean stuff off the net. I already have a good reseller. I proved it when I bought products off the mall store and compared it against what I bought from her (same product). And I am 100% sure she sells real Korean skin care and make-up. If you want to know where I get them, just drop me a message or a comment. :) No, she didn't ask me to post this. In fact, she doesn't know I am a blogger. I'm not sure if she caters international orders, though.





I was so frustrated after finding out that day, so I bought something off the Benefit's real store in Shangri-la - Benefit's How to  look the best at everything. I'm really loving their POREfessional, boing and Oxygen after swatching them, and can't wait to try it out.

AND I am so darn sure that this is authentic Benefit make-up.





Have you tried or bought any fake make-up?