YSL Le Teint Touche Eclat Foundation

*update* full review with swatches available here.

The beauty world has gone crazy-bones for the latest foundation by Yves Saint Laurent. It's been an incredible 10 years in the making and is the foundation version of the cult Touche Eclat, illuminating, under-eye, wonder pen! The foundation claims to target shadows whilst defining contours, concealing imperfections and enhancing your skin's natural beauty. It is infused with light reflecting particles (much like the pen) and the formula feels weightless. It launched at YSL counters today and I popped into Debenhams last week to give it a try.

YSL were running a promotion where you got a 7-day sample of your perfect shade home with you to try. Now I know several people had problems printing out the Facebook coupon; I tried several times myself and it's never printed yet. However the MA couldn't have been more pleasant and I hadn't even mentioned the coupon-issue and she was only too happy to take me for a sit-down to find my correct shade and give me a sample. Unfortunately she had been completely amazed and overwhelmed by the response and hadn't received full-size bottles of every shade to give out, so many were 'out of stock'. I'd also left it quite late as the promotion had been running since the 21st June, but it had been my first opportunity to go shopping. She colour-matched me anyway and gave me the empty bottle to be filled when more stock came in. She rang me on Saturday to say it was in and I can go in anytime to get it (hoping to go tomorrow).

So there's 22 shades in the range, which I would like to think is pretty comprehensive. Debenhams are advertising 16 shades and I've just found out the others are exclusive to Selfridges. They are split into three colour families anyway, BR (rosy beige), BD (golden beige) and B (natural beige). The MA selected the three lightest shades for me to try which I assume were BR10, BD10 and B10. One shade was considerably darker than the other two and much darker and more tan than my complexion. I didn't ask exactly what she was putting on my face, but an educated guess would assume that this shade was BD10. The other two were both light and one was very pinky toned which again I would assume is BR10, because my best match was the B10. I could barely see that swatch on my jawline and she'd applied it rather thickly for me to see, so it's safe to say this is a decent match (yay).  BR10 is still also very light, but as I said it was noticeably pink.

I didn't have a 'big enough' sample on my face to get an idea of how it performs or feels really, it was purely to be colour-matched, so I'll have more info for you once I try the sample.  The next day I did wake up with 4 or 5 blemishes where the foundation swatches had been applied but I'm hoping this is just a huge coincidence because I desperately want to like this foundation! It's been so hyped up, but Glamour magazine say that it stands up to that and I want to believe it! I'm going to try and be good and not jump headfirst into purchasing it until I've trialled my weekly sample just in case it does cause me to breakout. Like I said, I'm hoping to go tomorrow and then I'll see how I get on and have some swatches for you. It's priced at £28 for a 30ml which I don't think is ridiculously expensive. At Debenhams you get 750 bonus beauty points when you buy this foundation along with any other YSL product and online the offer is slightly different (750 points when spending £40 on YSL skincare and/or makeup) which I think run until the 22nd. I spent my last £15 of reward points before they'd even had the chance to email my statement (go me!), but I'm wondering if I can last until the end of my month where I have another £15 of rewards waiting or I might just take up the 750 points offer (that sounds more like me, doesn't it?). I would strongly recommend that if you're interested in this, you go along and get colour matched as it can be a bit daunting with the colour families and 22 shades! She did mention to me that B10 was one of the more popular shades, so there must be a lot of pale Scottish girls out there like me and it's a relief for me to finally be finding shades closer to my natural skintone.  Let me know if you've had a chance to try this out yet or if it's something you think you'd be interested in.