Worth the $$$? Gucci Natural Finish Fluid Foundation Review
As soon as Gucci Beauty rebranded and relaunched back in 2019, I was allll over it. Say what you want about Alessandro Michele, but you can’t deny his ability to create extremely marketable products. For those of us who can’t afford Gucci in our wardrobes, the makeup and perfume are a way to taste a little bit of luxury, at a much lower price point.
The newest launch in the makeup line is the Fluide De Beauté Fini Naturel, or for us Americans, the Natural Finish Fluid Foundation. It debuted alongside a Sérum De Beauté Fluide Soyeux aka the Silk Priming Serum, which I personally passed on. I purchased it as soon as I saw it on their site late last year and have been using it ever since. Read on to hear my thoughts on the shade range, pricing, packaging, etc. etc. etc.
Pricing & Availability
$68 for 1.0 fl oz via Sephora, Nordstrom, Saks, Selfridge’s, & Gucci
Due to… circumstances, I ended up ordering a bottle from three of the aforementioned retailers. If you’re all about the unboxing experience, I recommend ordering from Gucci! They give you little canvas “Gucci” bags, and you can include a little gift note to yourself. If you’re more concerned about ease of returning and customer service, Nordstrom’s return policy is unparalleled. And order from Sephora if you would like some beauty insider points to put towards a 0.0000005 ml sample 🙃 I personally did not order a bottle from Saks and would only do so if they had a good discount code and I KNEW my correct shade (more on that below), as their return policy is not very forgiving.
Packaging
A heavy frosted glass bottle with a pump and cap. It all feels very, very luxurious. The bottle is prone to finger smudges.
Shade Range & Swatches
It’s no secret that luxury brands are particularly awful at creating diverse and inclusive color ranges.
I do think Gucci took this under advisements and had a little more sense with the current climate and thought “hey, maybe it’s a good idea to come out with a range that ISN’T 50 shades of white???” And even though this is the bare minimum, it’s still sadly not the norm, so I will applaud them it.
There are a total of 40 shades, ranging from fair to deep, with cool, warm, neutral, and olive undertones. The distribution of shades also seems pretty decent, with a variety of undertones all across the range. And from what I’ve seen, none of the medium to dark shades have weird grey or orange undertones. BUT that’s only going from Gucci’s own swatches, which I have struggled with.
Now onto my personal shade matching journey.
The launch came with a mobile shade founder, which provides full screenshots of each shade to compare against your arm. Your chances of success with this are highly dependent on how close your arm is to your face.
While I applaud Gucci for casting a diverse range of people to model the foundation, the way they went about shade matching was… abnormal. See below for a few screenshots to see a comparison of the model wearing the foundation, and their swatch of the shade in question. Below are comparisons of 3 shades I had been initially looking to purchase. Using Photoshops eyedropper tool, I picked three swatches from the model’s forehead, cheeks, and lower chin and compared it to the swatch. Hopefully, you can see the disconnect between the model’s and their shades.
Because of said disconnect, I struggled to pick out a proper shade. I ended up purchasing 340N because the description seemed closest to my natural skin color. Unfortunately, it was too dark. So I looked for the next lightest neutral shade, which was 310N. Imagine my surprise when the shade ended up being even darker than 340N! Sometimes when brands offer a variety of undertones, the numbers aren’t always consecutive. So 150 warm might be lighter than 140 cool. But when two shades are the same undertone, I assume the depth of shades will follow chronological order.
Ultimately, I purchased 260W, 310N, and 340N. None of them are a perfect match, but I am able to get away with 260W mixed in with a dab of 340N. 310N is too dark for my skin tone.
There was also a shade 330W but it looked darker than 340N so I did not purchase it.
Overall, my tip for shade matching online is to ignore their models and rely on their swatches to find one which matches best with you.
To be honest, I’m not surprised I could not find a perfect shade match. It’s rare for me to find a perfect shade match. Often when we look at foundation ranges, there’s a variety of undertones with minute differences on the lighter end of the spectrum, with the jumps between shades getting bigger and bigger as the shade range gets darker. Unfortunately, I don’t think Gucci broke the mold in this instance.
I can’t speak to the darker/ deeper end of the shade range as I have not seen the foundation IRL (because covid), but for the medium range, there are definitely large jumps. Ergo, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the same thing with the dark/ deep shades as well.
So while this range is much more inclusive than similarly priced foundations from Chanel, Armani, and YSL, I don’t think it’s perfect.
Review
First and foremost, this is a VERY fragranced foundation. It has a heavy, floral scent that hits you as soon as you dispense it. The texture is quite runny and thin, but is easy to to blend out with my fingers, brush, or sponge. Because it is a runnier formula, a brush does eat up some of the coverage.
Speaking of coverage, this is quite buildable. One pump on half of my face is enough to cover my redness and even out my skin tone. My darker acne scars are still visible, but slight imperfections are blurred. The finish is somewhat powdery and matte, but not completely dull. If you have dry skin like me, you definitely need to prep for it appropriately otherwise it will cling to any dry patches. But as long as my skin is well moisturized underneath, I find this glides along smoothly. It looks really natural and skin like and not heavy at all.
It’s hard for me to properly test out wear time for makeup as I’m not really going anywhere. I think the longest I wore this foundation was 7 hours, and even then most of the time I was at home, sitting at my desk. It wore well everywhere, except for my forehead which did get a little dry and then oily. As for how it wears underneath a mask— pretty well. There’s a little bit of transfer, but it generally held up well without looking patchy.
Overall, it reminds me of the Pat McGrath Sublime Perfection Foundation (reviewed here back in 2019) in that they’re both lightweight and buildable and have a natural, skin like finish. The Pat foundation has a much dewier finish, whereas this Gucci foundation settles into a more powdery, soft matte finish. As I said back in my Pat review, I don’t think anyone needs to spend $70+ (with tax) on a foundation. But if you have the budget and are looking for something more matte than the Pat foundation, but with the same lightness + buildable-ness, I think this foundation is worth checking out.