Last week, Tarte Cosmetics dropped its seriously hyped Shape Tape foundation line… and the internet was FURIOUS.
Tarte's Shape Tape concealer is the brand's most popular product, renowned for it's full coverage and seriously matte finish. The only drawback with the fan favorite concealer is the shade range wasn't *as* deep as it could be.
Fans were expecting a Shape Tape foundation with the same attributes and a more improved range — but when the Shape Tape foundation was finally released, it was a massive let down. The line only contained 10 shades, most of them very light, with only one "dark" foundation color.
As if that's the only colors people come in.
Beauty-lovers, sick of the lack of diversity in the makeup world, were left FUMING. So YouTubers Jackie Aina and Alissa Ashley blessed us with a double whammy of Black Girl Magic in a joint review of Tarte's pathetic Shape Tape offering. Prepare yourselves for one hilarious wig snatch.
Jackie Aina kicked off her Youtube review with a pretty bold statement: "Tarte doesn't care about Black people," she shared, using a clip of '05 Kanye.
Welp! From the looks of the brand's foundation shade range… and the people shared on it's official Instagram…
Then, Alissa Ashley joined her to swatch the shades on both their hands.
Things were looking iffy from the jump. Alissa Ashley was able to find a decent match and a highlight shade. Jackie Aina wasn't so lucky.
"I really don’t think I have a face shade in this new range," Aina shared.
“That’s terrible. That’s laughable," Alissa Ashley shared as she looked on.
Jackie Aina and Alissa Ashley also roasted TF out of the undertone situation.
"Who is Cheeto puff orange?" Jackie Aina asked about the Deep Honey shade. "This is Donald Trump's summer shade!"
"They're all so orange," Alissa observed about all of the swatches. "That's orange with a tint of brown."
"The undertone is brown. The *color* is orange," Aina shared.
Welp, way to get that backwards Tarte!
"If these oxidize, you're screwed," Aina said.
"Not gon' be shapin' or tapin'," she joked. "Not gon' be doing anything!"
Aina ended up selecting the lesser of all evils — the Deep honey shade from the hydrating line — to blend on her face. She was severely unhappy with the results.
"This looks like an orange filter," she said. "This is almost like a corrector."
Alissa Ashley couldn't do anything but giggle at how orange the foundation looked. Bless Jackie Aina's fancy camera lights — Alissa verified the color looked way more orange in person.
Please note: NO FORMULA should look like color corrector on anyone's skin tone unless it's actual color corrector.
Jackie Aina decided to mix two matte foundation colors on the other side of her face to *try* and get a decent shade match.
Before blending, it already looked like a color disaster ready to strike and poison.
The ashy final result had Alissa and Jackie serving Tarte MAJOR side eye.
"I just don't appreciate the blatant erasure of like a whole spectrum of people. It doesn't even look like they tried," Aina explained.
"They didn't," Alissa said. "If I were to read the shade names out loud right now, you guys would laugh."
For the record? The shade range names include a load of light references along with Deep Honey, Rich Sand, and Mahogany — names that falsely indicate deep tones. Meanwhile, the dark foundations were 50 shades of orange.
Mkay.
Jackie and Alissa have a theory about why Tarte — a MAJOR beauty brand known for super quality products — would release foundations disrespecting dark-skinned people this badly.
Simply put, Tarte *has* to be trolling.
"You guys are doing this on purpose," Aina guessed. "There’s no way you can’t know people would be upset about this.”
"Is this a marketing thing," she asked at another point in the video.
"That’s what it feels like," Alissa answered. "Like 'let’s piss them off to get more hype around it, and then we’ll make more shades later.’"
Hmmm.
The truth is Tarte has the research and development resources PLUS manpower to come way better with their darker foundation.
"Ya'll don't got no friends at the NARS lab?" Jackie Aina asked. "Like, you couldn't call them for some tips?"
"At this point there's literally no excuse," Alissa said.
Check out Jackie Aina and Alissa Ashley's full Shape Tape foundation review down below.
Jackie has some tough love advice for Tarte's dark foundation efforts in the future: Next time, just keep it!
"I think they would have just been better off making it very clear they didn't want to put the work into the dark shades and just excluded them altogether," she said.
"The two obligatory bare minimum shades you guys throw in is not going to cut it. I'm not buying it. I'm not using it. And I'm not recommending it."
Aina's advice doesn't go against everything she has always pushed about brands needing to expand their foundation ranges — because what's the point if the shades they *do* create, women of color can't wear them anyway?
Tarte can save their orange spectrum foundations for dark skin.
It's not even worth it. Women of color can keep their coins or spend them where they're not treated like throwaways.
