YSL Touche Éclat foundation review

My all time favorite longwear foundation? YSL All Hours foundation in BR20. It has great lasting power, the shade match is on point and I just love that thing to the moon and back. So when I discovered YSL had updated their infamous Touche Éclat foundation to be repackaged and possibly reformulated, I decided that my next bougee foundation purchase would be this. It was a ride (how can you shade match when none of the lightest, or darkest, shades aren’t even in store) and today I am giving you my full review of how I feel about this foundation now that I have used it consistently for on a day to day basis for a full 1.5 weeks.

YSL Touche Éclat Le Teint foundation BR20 Cool Ivory

Let’s stat where this foundation hurts the most and that is its price point. For years the All Hours was the most expensive foundation I had ever owned. We can now add this one to that list. Because at €55 a pop, this foundation doesn’t come cheap. To be fair though, that’s not how much I ended up paying for this foundation. I actually bought this during a sale and I got 25% off, meaning I paid just under or over €40 for this. It comes in 30 shades, but sadly many of these are not available from brick & mortar stores, but can only be found online. This was the case for any of the shades in the fair to light range, which is why this foundation was a bit of a gamble, but I will tell you more about that when we get to the shade match section of this review.

What does this foundation have to offer?

The reason why I wanted to try this foundation is because it promises to be a more natural version of the All Hours. While I love my All Hours I find it too heavy duty for an everyday look and it is more my ‘special occasion’-my-makeup-should-withstand-a-hurricane kind of look. I don’t need that on a normal workday but since I like my All Hours so much I wanted to try this more breathable, hydrating formula that I was hoping would work better on a day to day basis.

How does this foundation swatch?

So let me talk about the texture first: this is a super blendable, easy to work with foundation. It has a great pump that doesn’t squeeze out too much and two small pumps is enough to cover my entire face. I feel that because of the pump not giving you too much product that you can really determine how much product you use each time and there is no waste of product. For a product this expensive that is a great thing. The formula is a bit glowy, lightweight and despite it being a more hydrating formula it also has great staying power. I actually filmed several videos at the end of a workday as I was testing this out and while some of my natural oils do come through I find this works really well and my dry, dehydrated skin. I also didn’t notice any strong scents which is another added bonus.

What is the shade match like?

As you can probably tell on the back of my hand, I may have ordered a shade that was too dark for me. I took these pictures at the end of spring, which is when I am very pale, so it wasn’t going to go. This is why I am testing out the foundation right now as I was hoping the shade would be a better match if I were to try it on my slightly deeper post summer skin tone. And it worked! I am able to blend it down my neck quite easily and when you add bronzer, concealer and powder this actually looks great on the skin. I do think though that the foundation is perhaps a bit too yellow for me, so why the brand named this shade Cool Ivory is beyond me because it is not a very cool toned foundation.

My struggles finding my shade match

But before we look at the coverage and round off this review, I have to come on here and tell you about my shade matching struggles. I ordered this foundation online as we were still in lockdown. I couldn’t find great swatches online and since I own the All Hours foundation in BR20, I decided to go for that shade in the end. It looked promising in the pictures I could find and I have learned my lesson by now that super light shades aren’t always the prettiest on me. But when I got it home and put it next to my All Hours, my heart sank: it doesn’t even look like it in the bottle!

Now you should know that where I live, opened makeup cannot be returned, so I would either have to commit or make an exchange. I decided to go for the latter option, waited about a week or so for stores to reopen and tried to exchange the product. Long story short: I could only return it by sending it back as I had bought it online (bluh) and because none of the lightest shades were actually available in store (double bluh). So an in-store exchange was not possible and the sale I had used to purchase this product had long since expired.

In fact, I found out that the shades listed as available in store were completely different from the ones available online and if you looked at the in store overview it was as if the shade I had purchased didn’t even exist. There weren’t even any testers around for the shades that you could only find online! Now, I could have sent this back to the warehouse, but online the store doesn’t do any exchanges: you can only return the product and get a refund. This would mean I would have to repurchase the foundation at full price or wait for another sale. So instead I decided it was not worth the hassle, kept the product and just hoped for the best.

How does the Touche Éclat foundation compare to the All Hours foundation?

I thought that for the sake of the review I could at least put these two shades up against each other. Remember: both foundations are in BR20 Cool Ivory and in the bottle they look nothing alike. And here you can see why being able to swatch a foundation and trying it in store is soooo important. In the picture above you can see the YSL Touche Éclat on the left. The All Hours foundation is to the right. Straight out of the bottle in a full on swatch you can see that they look very differently: the texture is different and also the shades. But something happens when you blend these out: the All Hours goes quite a bit darker as it oxidizes but the Touche Éclat goes lighter! As you can see in the picture below: once blended out the shades of these foundations look nearly identical and the only way to tell any difference is the fact that the right side of my hand looks a bit glowier. So in the end BR20 worked out just fine and it is identical to the BR20 shade in the All Hours foundation even if you might not expect it from looking at it in the bottle.

What is the coverage like?

So let’s go back to just the Touche Éclat foundation for a bit. As you can see, in a full on face picture this really doesn’t look weird, orange or too dark at all. It sheers out beautifully, still gives me the coverage I like to deal with any redness and it just works really well for a day to day basis. I have found this to last all day, blend easily on the skin and it just gives you a stunning natural finish. Yes it is a little bit darker than I would prefer, but overall I think this foundation works really well for me and it is a great workday foundation that does what it needs to do, never feels thick or cakey and stays looking great all day. All I had to do before I sat down to film my videos was add a touch of powder to take away some shine, but the foundation stays on without accentuating texture and making you look weird throughout the day.

My final thoughts

I really like the YSL Touche Éclat foundation as it is a great one, but my experience buying this product has left a bitter taste in my mouth. Some of that is due to the store where I bought this being weird about their online purchases only being able to be returned online and not in store and not being able to make an exchange for the product in store. They could have just taken back the product, ordered the shade I had wanted to exchange it for and send it to my home address. But due some complicated company procedures the store employees said they could not do that. However, part of this is also due to YSL: they don’t even have testers available for shades that are for sale making it impossible to find your shade if you are in either the lighter or darker ends of the spectrum. For makeup this expensive I find it unacceptable that in 2021 a brand creates shades but then makes it so difficult for customers to have a good experience. You have the shades, they are for sale, at least make sure the shades can be swatched so people don’t run the risk of spending €55 on a product that they can’t use.

Would I recommend the YSL Touche Éclat foundation?

I would still recommend this, because just because I had this experience doesn’t mean it will go for everyone. If you fall into the range of shades that is for sale in store or if you live in a country where more shades are readily available you can easily buy this product. I sadly live in a country where brands often don’t even sell the lightest shade, even if the shade is available. In The Netherlands we have a long way to go and whether it is due to stores not buying the products to sell them or if brands decide the market doesn’t need them, I’m not sure. All I know is that I always need to go out of my way to find products anyway as we either don’t get them or shades are not available. However, I have a blog and Youtube channel and so I know where to go and look. I can only imagine how difficult it is if you are a regular consumer who is just looking for their match in a certain product.

What was your worst experience buying makeup?