Products that go into my professional makeup kit, must be a few things ; first up, it needs to be a good quality item above anything else. You need to have products that will perform, clients will love and that will last on the skin for hours on set. Secondly it needs to be kit-friendly AKA something that is sleek, won’t smash or un-do easily (MAC Pigments gaaaaaaaa) and won’t take up too much space. This Maqpro Foundation Palette by Jan Sewell is a new and welcome addition as it ticks a lot of boxes.
First up MAQPRO is a french makeup brand focusing on professional makeup artist products of a high quality. They are always listening to makeup artists’ needs over the general consumer and are constantly bringing out new shades and products to meet demands and requests. It’s a relatively small company, family-run and only available from just 3 makeup pro shops in the UK, with one being my favourite, PAM (precious about makeup) in London, which is where I head to get the majority of my kit products and niche MUA brands. If you love makeup or need some new kit additions ; GET TO PAM! It is a teeny little unassuming shop, not far from Goldhawk Road/Shepherd’s Bush brimmed full of makeup magic…brands you know and love (MUFE/ BeautyBlender /Kryolan /Japonesque/ Z Palette) and smaller pro brands perhaps you don’t (MUD/ Kett/ Skin Illustrator / Temptu).
These 6-colour (they also do 3/6/10/36) foundation palettes from Maqpro are one of the most well-known products from the brand and makeup artists love them ; wonderfully slimline, a huge selection of palette shades to choose from and reasonably priced at £34.50. Maqpro will often team up with great makeup artists from film, TV etc and to custom-make ‘their’ palette. Past collaborations have included Julia Carta, Wayne Goss and this one I have is created by the amazing Jan Sewell. Jan is a much celebrated makeup artist in the film industry and her resume includes The Theory of Everything, X-Men & World War Z so she knows her sh*t, basically.
The thing I love about these Maqpro palettes is that they are super quick and easy to work from and the cream formula gives a nice, build able coverage and they work as cream colour not just foundations, so you can highlight, sculpt and contour with them too. I often have 2 or 3 of them open on my makeup table which cover all skin tones and needs. The clear, hard plastic packaging make it easy to select options and shades easily without having to open up every palette. You can
custom-blend an enormous amount of skin tones from this one palette by
mixing them together ; there is a nice blend of both pink & yellow
tones. C1 is a great highlighter cream and CR is handy greenish/ochre tone which is a perfect for colour-correcting tone for redness, blemishes and scarring.
Like I said these are more a pro-foundation so are specifically designed for a working makeup artist on-set in terms of design, packaging, formula and wear.They aren’t skincare infused every day foundation that will do blah-de-blah and blah-de-za to your skin…they are your good old ‘proper’ foundations that are designed with the makeup artist in mind. However beauty lovers and makeup enthusiasts may like these also if you like your coverage, contour, possibly highlight and corrector in one nifty palette ; this also depends on the colour combo you choose and your skin tone but they do a huge range of different mixes to choose from. Check them out on PAM’s website here.
