Yves Saint laurent Touche Eclat VS. L’Oreal Lumi Magic Illuminating Stick

So much has been said about L’oreal ripping off the idea of YSL’s best selling item – Touche Eclat pen. Given the fact that LOreal, sadly, owns YSL and a few dozens of other high end make up divisions, it must be said to their defense that they simply took an idea from one of their companies and implemented it into another, for a different price, trying out a different marketing approach this time around. But the main question that we, end users, ask ourselves, is there a difference between these two products? This is why I am making this post, to highlight the difference between two apparently similar products.

First difference is obviously the price, with L’Oreal costing about a quarter of Yves Saint Laurent’s Touche Eclat, so while you might be thinking over and over before forking out $50 on YSL, Lumi Magic Highlighter is there for just about $12 and you can often get it even cheaper if you follow the drugstores discounts in your area. However, in my humble opinion, this is where the difference to the advantage of L’Oreal ends, because the second thing that separates both is the selection of colors.

While YSL offers a rich palette of 10 shades to choose from, L’Oreal decided not to go wild and limit your choice to just 2 shades: light and medium. I have tried the light shade and must say it’s way too dark for fair skin (and I am not even the whitest person out there). Bering in mind that this is actually a highlighter, I would imagine you need to have at least a medium skin tone to wear the “light” shade, otherwise there is little point, YSL, on the contrary offers a very generous selection, some colors have pink undertones, some have yellow, and others are more neutral, peachy or even olive. The lightest shade is indeed VERY light, nearly like a shimmery eyeshadow highlighter, so matching the perfect the shade for your skin tone is a much easier task.

Neither one of the pens, I must add, is a concealer. They often mistaken with concealers, people use them for the under eye area and are disappointed with the results, because both have poor coverage. I do tend to favour the YSL more, because of the creamier texture, better luminosity and better staying power, but again — since they aren’t concealers, I don’t see much point in spending this much money on a mere highlighter, something you can easily achieve when purchasing a drugstore shimmery powder or eyeshadow.

To sum it up, it’s a well marketed, well promoted and heavily advertised product that you don’t really need to take up space in your makeup drawer. I wouldn’t recommend either one of them because YSL is way overpriced (considering that it’s a little useless…) and L’Oreal Lumi Magique is too dry, not shimmery enough and will probably miss out when it comes to skin matching.