“It’s the epitome of sexiness. It honestly makes you look so hot!” Only two minutes into hearing Huda Kattan talk about her new beauty line, GloWish, and I’m already hooked.
The concept for a more natural makeup edit came about in 2019. “My team came to me with the idea of weekend skin,” she tells me over Zoom from her home in Dubai. “It didn’t vibe for me at first because some people glam up on the weekend. I was the biggest devils’ advocate,” she says.
But much like everyone else, her relationship with makeup has shifted since then. “The last year or so, we’ve all changed. I don’t think beauty is the same for any of us anymore,” Huda nods. That’s how the idea for a more minimal take on makeup eventually piqued her interest.
Huda spends the next half-hour taking me through GloWish, which launches worldwide from 1st June. The jist? Imagine if HUDA Beauty and WISHFUL had a love child, GloWish would be the outcome. The makeup-skincare hybrid is loaded with a minimum of 80% natural ingredients and lets skin shine through while offering a subtle veil of gorgeous coverage. “It’s a cheat. Your skin looks so incredible, but no-one can figure out what’s on it,” she smiles. Even the name nods to the fusion of her two existing beauty lines. “I loved the idea of “glow” and “ish”. It has the “wish” from WISHFUL, which is why we capitalised the ‘W’, and it has the glow from HUDA Beauty and the makeup side,” Huda explains.
Kicking the franchise off, is the Multi-Dew Skin Tint (£32), a luminous skin perfector that will be available in 13 stretchable shades for all skin tones; and the Soft Radiance Bronzing Powder (£27), a silky marbled bronzer that will come in five shades to soak skin in warmth.
Huda’s wearing the collection’s first launches as we chat today. Ahead of finding out more about Multi-Dew, I was told “it’s not quite a tinted moisturiser, it’s not a BB cream and it’s unlike any other skin tint you’ve tried.” So what is it? The ultra light skin tint centres around glow first, with a little bit of pigment second. “We call it ‘easy-glowing'” Huda tells me. “But the thing that makes it the most different, is the staying power,” she says. “I was probably the least convinced about doing a skin tint because they tend to look like a mess after a couple of hours. That’s why I’ve always opted for something full-coverage and long-lasting,” Huda reveals. “We ended up playing around with product and it took us a while to find anything that was even interesting. But then, we landed on a formula that I was like ‘oh, this is good.’ It stayed put, it made my skin look healthy and gave this beautiful dewiness that was honestly like nothing I’d ever seen. I was like ‘OK I think I might be addicted to this,'” she tells me. “It doesn’t even look like you’re wearing makeup! It just looks like beautiful skin.”
She credits the inclusion of mica (a light-reflecting mineral pigment) with taking this product to the next level. “It gives skin a luminosity that you don’t want to take off. It is a very light coverage and it lets skin breathe. It’s stunning,” she says. “But it’s not oily so it doesn’t move. It gives a cream to powder finish.”
“A lot of tinted moisturisers cover up your face – they have a lot of pigment in them,” Huda points out. As a self-confessed cake-face, she notes the irony of creating a skin tint that’s more lightweight than most of the others on the market. “Working so much on my skin with WISHFUL, I felt like I was freeing myself. I’d never really been comfortable with celebrating my own skin. I felt like, why can’t we for once just like our actual skin? It was a challenge – especially on social media,” she says. “But once you get over that hurdle, it feels liberating.” Now that she’s become more accepting of her own skin – and all the work she’s put into her skincare over lockdown – Huda’s keen to show it off. “I still love to get glam, but the reason I do it is very different now. I don’t necessarily do it for the outside world anymore. I need to feel like I’m enjoying myself and I’m playing,” she says. “I can be natural, I can be a softer glam, I can be full glam. That’s what’s really important. We know we’re not limited to one version of ourselves. We know we’re much more complex. There’s beauty in that: celebrating that, owning that and not feeling limited.”
Since Huda’s known for putting her own unique spin on each of the products she launches (see: the lime fabric Chin Lift Mask), you can expect a few surprises. “A lot of tinted moisturisers don’t have great skincare ingredients. This has skincare ingredients that I’m obsessed with.” All of the products contain rose damascus oil which Huda calls the “biggest contributor to making my skin look better and fading my acne scars.” But the one she’s most excited about? “It’s the ugly bell pepper,” she declares – aka regular salad peppers that are misshapen or marked. “We work with amazing labs and one of the things they know about us is, we’re weird. When you find ingredients that you’re intrigued by, that you can’t stop thinking about and you want to know more, those are the times when we try to lean into things. We always want to offer something different to the space” she says. What’s so great about them? “They’re packed with antioxidants that are so good for your skin and they also offer blue-light protection,” she says. They’re more sustainable, too. “A lot of ugly bell peppers get destroyed which is shocking. I hate waste. So I love the fact that we’re taking these amazing vegetables and putting them to good use.”
In fact GloWish has some pretty impressive eco-credentials in general. The packaging is FSC certified, the ingredients are thoughtful and the tubes and brushes are made from post-consumer recycled plastic. “We’ve done a lot of sustainable things on HUDA Beauty, but we never shout about it. With GloWish we wanted to make sure we took a stance on it,” Huda says.
As for how to apply the skin tint. “Today I have it applied just over my cheekbones like a highlighter, but you can use it as a primer, or tinted moisturiser, or mix it in with your foundation. You can use it so many different ways which is why we called it Multi-Dew,” Huda notes.
The next phase is still closely guarded, but we did manage to extract a few secrets. “It’s building on the base. There’s some nice little ‘flushy’ items,” Huda hints. “But it’s very sexy. The first round is that bronzey sexiness and then we go really sexy!”
Be the first to try GloWish Multi-Dew Skin Tint
GLAMOUR is offering 25 GLAMOUR readers the chance to be the first to try the GloWish Multi-Dew Skin Tint once it launches on the 1st of June. To be in with a chance of winning, fill out the form below. Entrants must be based in the UK and the competition closes at midday on 24th June. Please only enter once. The prize cannot be substituted and winners will be noted by email and asked to fill out a subsequent form. Winners will be randomly selected and notified by 26th May.
To be in with a chance of winning answer the question below.
What award did Huda Kattan win at the 2021 Women of the Year Awards?
For a clue, check out our Q&A with Huda here.
For more from GLAMOUR’s Deputy Beauty Editor, Elle Turner follow her on Instagram @elleturneruk.
