My mom has really wanted to get onto the strobing trend so this highlighter stick ended up being a bit of an impulse buy from Ulta. I wanted to give it a try since I’ve only tried one highlighter in my life and it’s not nearly as light as this one, so I borrowed it (with permission!) to swatch and put up on the blog for the reference of all ye medium skinned folk out there.
Hollywood & Highlight is a “sheer pink pearl.” It’s a cool, pale rose gold-ish highlighter absolutely PACKED with glitter. It’s actually a lot more pigmented than I expected, but there’s a little sponge on the other end that does a good job at diffusing the pigment into something workable. This is supposed to be usable on the lips as well, but I only tried it on my cheeks because this particular color seems like a horrible lip color for anyone. But I mean, in theory, you could use this to get disco ball lips, yes.
Left: blended out; Right: unblended swipe from the tube
When I tried this at first I was like, holy cow, this is super light. Even when I blended it out I was hoping it wouldn’t be terribly pale looking on my face!
The shine between my eye and my nose is just face shine. Not highlighter. Just so we’re clear here.
Fortunately, this stuff blends and melts into the skin extremely well. I was pleasantly surprised. It still looks almost white and is a little more dramatic-disco-ball-looking than I’m generally okay with, but I’ll admit it’s a very nice dramatic highlight for those who swing that way.
This isn’t mine and as such I haven’t worn it for a day or anything, so I can only really comment on the formula. I don’t really have anything bad to say about it, to be honest! It does what it’s supposed to do and it does it rather well. It’s creamy, slides on well and, as Smashbox claims, is “super blendable” thanks to the sponge blender. I think my favorite part about it is how well it just kind of melds with the skin instead of just sitting on top of it, so it gives an actual glow-from-within look and not a I-just-threw-glitter-on-my-face look.
It looks almost white on my face and will probably actually look white on anyone with darker skin than mine, which might be a turnoff for some, especially warmer-toned folk. But if you have fair/light skin, this would be a very nice subtle highlight, or if you’re darker and like yourself a super dramatic strobe, this is definitely something worth investing in! As for my mom, she’s paler than me so it doesn’t come off nearly as disco-ball on her, which she likes. I hope Smashbox releases more strictly-highlighter shades because this really is a nice cream highlighter formula.
You can buy the L.A. Lip & Cheek Colour sticks here for $29. It comes in this highlighter shade as well as four blush shades that would probably function better as lipstick than this one.
Lipstick Asian 