Review: Rare Beauty Always An Optimist Illuminating Primer

Drifting around in the beauty orbit means seeing trends come and go, and sometimes staying. Do you remember the period when just about every celebrity released a fragrance, and then some? Britney Spears was among the first who did, and I had a friend who ran through bottles of the Christina Aguilera scent. Then, we started seeing a rise in the number of celebrities who went from being the spokes person for a brand to creating their own brands, churning out much lusted after products and staying strong in the market. Rare Beauty is one of those brands, and I've been more than impressed by their offerings so far.

When Sephora was having a sale recently, I added the Rare Beauty Always An Optimist Illuminating Primer to my cart, because I wanted to seamlessly slip into Autumn with radiant skin, skipping the dull, stressed skin stage that can crop up with the intermittently unpredictable weather, and I thought having a dewy primer to help grip my daily makeup might be helpful with that goal. This has been designed to give the skin a radiant finish, and is suitable for combination, dry, normal and oily skin.

 

This primer comes as a water-based gel formulation, which translates to being a very lightweight product that leaves the skin feeling smooth and looking glowy. It is a pearly shade (which makes sense, as this has ultra-fine pearls infused in the formula) that disperses on the skin once it has been massaged in, and this helps in hydrating the skin as well. The formula also includes a botanical blend of lotus, gardenia and white waterlily to help nourish and soothe the skin, so that it both works quickly at a surface level, while also being skin loving.

It comes in a plastic translucent pump bottle with a pull off lid, one where you can view how much product you have left, so that you know when to buy a new one, and this feels secure enough to travel with, without the cap popping off suddenly, leading to it oozing everywhere. I find about one and a half pumps to be sufficient for my face, and I love how this texture feels on my skin - light and beautiful! I also really like how this does give me a dewy base, allowing for a beautiful glow throughout the day. 

On top of everything else, it does a great job of keeping my makeup in place, and it's very much a primer that I would use over and over again. This is available in both 15ml and 28ml at $29 and $55 respectively. While I thought I would experiment with something new by only indulging in the smaller version, I could happily finish the large one, and buy a back up to wait in the wings! Available now at Sephora, and on their website. For my oily skin babes, is this something you'd try?