Today I wanted to cover the latest make up brush trend which has make up lovers by storm; toothbrush style make up brushes. If you are an avid social media and blog reader you will have seen these brushes appear in almost every blogger or make up artists posts, they literally look like a tooth brush (or the larger ones a dishwashing brush as seen in many parody videos). My question is are they a fad or are they worth investing in?
The most well known company to sell these brushes is Artis, a high end brand which retails the tools from £28- £60 per brush , or £284-£410 for a full set. For the average person that's a lot of money to spend on brushes, but more recently a range of affordable options have been available.
The range I went for are from a brand called Iconic London, I got the face brush set which is for contouring and highlighting and creating a flawless base. The set at the time cost me £30 (plus £5 for delivery) and included 3 different sized brushes. I bought the brushes on pre order, however they did arrive earlier than expected.First impressions of these brushes were good as the rose gold finish was eye catching, and the bristles were soft to touch. The brushes don't feel 'expensive' and this can be seen from the material of the brushes as they are made from plastic and not metal, however for the price this was expected.
When I first used the brushes I used them to apply both liquid and powder products, although the tools are meant for both personally I feel they work better for liquid and cream products and found applying powder to be cakey and difficult to blend.
The bristles are all the same density for the different sizes, as a make up artist I find the smaller a brush the less dense and packed bristles should be to get better control of blending. For this reason I feel the largest brush in the set works best, and the smallest is quite challenging to use as a blending tool. I did however find the smaller brushes handy for cream highlighting and contouring although I still needed to go over the concealer with my beauty blender or buffing brush as the Iconic brushes didn't blend the product in as much as I would have liked.
A month of using the brushes on both myself and clients my verdict is that although they can be handy they are not an essential brush, I have found myself reverting back to my handy Real Techniques and Laura Mercier brushes. I would recommend the larger brushes for seamlessly blending and creating a great base, other than this I am slightly disappointed as I have seen so many high profile bloggers use similar brushes.
I did see the Artis brushes in Space NK last week and the bristles seemed a lot softer and less dense
which is clearly the biggest difference between the real deal and an affordable alternative, my next expiriment will be to try one out and do a comparison to conclude whether the extra money is worth the spend.
One point I did want to mention in this post is the customer service experience I received from Iconic, I noted shortly after I purchased these brushes the price jumped to £40. Personally I find that a big change in price over a short period of time, and would be unhappy to be paying £10 more than others for the same product. I also found it was quite difficult to contact the company or get any sort of response until I tweeted them. I got in touch with their PR team and had a similar issue. For me this was the biggest downfall of the experience, which has put me off repurchasing from the brand for the time being.
I pride myself in giving honest reviews to all my readers to help them in any way I can by sharing both good and bad experiences. I hope for this reason other customers do not have a similar experience and this was just a one off as the brand does have a lot of good products including an amazing strobe stick.
Have you ever tried a beauty product which did not live up to the hype?
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