Glamorous as it is, working in fashion often comes with long hours and high pressure, meaning the industry’s busiest stylists, editors, and business badasses don’t have time for beauty products that underperform. Arguably one of a fashion human’s least dispensable beauty basics is her concealer—that stick, pot, or tube of miracles that allows you to camouflage dark sleepless circles and cover redness and irritation in a way that doesn’t crease or flake, stays all day, and kind of just looks like your actual human skin on your clearest, best-rested day.
To find out which concealers the most ambitious women in fashion swear by, we reached out to eight people—from Elle.com’s style director to the director of global buying for Net-a-Porter—and had them reveal their holy-grail products. Keep scrolling to see what concealers they swear by.
Harper’s Bazaar Digital Director Nikki Ogunnaike swears by this iconic liquid concealer. “This concealer is the truth, especially when it’s layered over some color corrector,” she tells us. “I don’t have terrible dark circles, but they exist, so this is one product that I use every day. Easy to swipe on, I apply and dab in with my fingers if I’m on the train or in the back of cab (don’t judge) or at home with a beauty blender if I’ve taken the time to actually do my makeup in the morning. It never creases and provides day-long coverage. It’s been my go-to for years!”
Musier Paris’s founder and creative director AnneLaure Mais Moreau is also a big fan of Nars’s Creamy Concealer ($30), but this little pot from Glossier is her pick on days when she doesn’t need quite as much coverage. The creamy formula leaves a “very natural” finish, she says.
Net-a-Porter’s Global Buying Director Elizabeth von der Goltz owes her bright-eyed, filtered complexion to this pore-smoothing formula, which, according to the brand, was “inspired by retouch pens used by professional photographers.”
Another of von der Goltz’s holy-grail concealers is this non-toxic formula, infused with rosemary extract and vitamin E–rich coconut oil, which create a hydrated “second-skin” effect.
Refinery29 Beauty Director and Gloss Angeles Podcast co-host Sara Tan is hooked on this concealer-eye serum hybrid, which is packed with skin-loving (though hard-to-pronounce) botanicals like crataegus monogyna flower and zingiber aromaticus extract to improve skin texture while camouflaging dark circles. (Elizabeth von der Goltz is also a fan of the stuff.)
Brother Vellies Creative Director Aurora James has a very specific two-step concealing routine: It starts with Clary Collections’s All-Purpose Balm ($17) as a base, followed by Dior Undercover in shade 041. “The balm helps things stay intact and looking fresh,” she says. “I’m obsessed with this Dior concealer—much needed under-eye help for those mornings after you’ve watched the sunrise.”
Writer and brand consultant Chrissy Rutherford’s favorite concealer is by KKW Beauty, which she wears in shades 13 and 14. “The color match is impressive, and the coverage is perfect whether I’m using it under my eyes or covering up a stubborn zit,” she says.
“My go-to concealer for serious coverage (meaning some hormonal acne has reared its ugly head) is Kat Von D’s Tattoo Lock-It Concealer,” says The Zoe Report’s deputy beauty editor Hannah Baxter. “It’s highly pigmented and glides on easily but dries down to an even coat of color. I apply it to the back of my hand first and dab my beauty blender before tapping it into my skin. A little goes a long way!”
The ultimate no-makeup makeup advocate, fashion business mogul Sarah Rutson actually uses this classic foundation as concealer. “The less physical makeup I can put on my skin the better,” she says. “I am lucky I don’t suffer from dark circles under the eyes, and even when I do, the worst thing for me would be to use cover-up as it gets into the little lines I have and makes me feel ‘caked,’ which I hate.” According to Rutson, “Perfection is never the beauty goal.” She finds that a light layer of Giorgio Armani’s Luminous Silk is “enough to cover any redness without an extra layer of cover-up,” especially when combined with her Biologique Recherche skincare products. This article was originally published at an earlier date and has since been updated. Next: Trust Us—Dark Circles Will Magically Disappear With These 21 Concealers
