Becca At-A-Glance
Strengths: The foundation and concealer shade range is spectacular; excellent eyeshadows; good lip gloss; several outstanding brushes; one of the shimmer powders are exemplary.
Weaknesses: Foundations with sunscreen that do not list active ingredients; the loose shimmer powders; poor cream eyeshadows; average mascara.
Australian import Becca is a complete line of color cosmetics from makeup artist Rebecca Morrice Williams. As the story goes, Rebecca, like so many women, was having difficulty finding the perfect foundation. It seems her professional experience making up women of varying skin tones and preferences shared one truth: all women wanted perfect skin. That’s hardly a beauty revelation, but it’s nevertheless what set Williams on her path to creating what would become the Becca line.
A founding principle of the company was that the foundation and concealer shade range would feature colors for all women, regardless of skin tone. For the most part, that has been admirably achieved with a beautifully neutral yet extensive selection of foundation and, yes, concealer, shades for all skin tones, from porcelain to ebony. Coinciding with Rebecca’s mission to offer complexion-enhancing shades for all women was her goal of creating a “deliberately un-made-up look.” Unfortunateley, she wasn’t as successful in that regard. That’s not to imply these products aren’t worth considering, because most of them are—and some are exceptional. What I mean is that the texture and finish of the foundations, concealers, loose powder, and other items won’t convince anyone you’re not wearing makeup—nor do they feel weightless, as described. Someone with oily to very oily skin wouldn’t be pleased with the foundations from this line, and the concealer, for all its positive attributes, isn’t meant for use over blemishes. It’s also troublesome that a handful of the complexion products advertise an SPF number but lack active ingredients, making them unreliable for daytime protection.
Surveying the rest of this line revealed that Williams just didn’t do her homework for foundation shades. The eyeshadows are amazingly silky, there’s an effective long-wearing eyeliner option, an enticing pressed shimmer powder, and the range of lip gloss shades is formidable. Lastly, almost all of the makeup brushes from Becca are aces, and the options plentiful, especially for eye designs. It seems good things have been brewing Down Under, and unlike Australian competitor Sue Devitt, Rebecca Morrice Williams’s Becca collection has a lot more to offer and does so at a lower price point.
Becca is available in the United States at specialty boutiques and from their Web site.