This is a review of the Japonesque concealer brush, which I will compare to the Sigma F-70 concealer brush.

I really wanted to like this brush as it seemed like an interesting shape and overall idea, although when I saw it online I wasn’t sure how it would work with liquid concealer. I kinda thought that would fall into place once I got it, or maybe (since it’s such a weird design for a concealer brush) that the company would have put instructions on the back or at least said what sort of concealer it was good for in the product listing.

When it arrived, I opened it up and put it side by side with my Sigma F-70 concealer brush, which is my single favorite make-up brush in the universe, it’s got the perfect firmness and soft texture, and it applies concealer fantastically well.

I still wasn’t clear on how the Japonesque concealer brush could be used to actually apply concealer. So I got my color corrector pallette, which had cakes of semi-solid color corrector and concealer, all of which had the texture of lipstick, and I swirled my brush.

It refused to pick up any product at all.

I tried again, for longer. The tiniest bit of product got onto the bristles, and when I tried to apply it to my face it refused.

It looks like a brush but it doesn’t act like one.

Thinking that it might do better with liquid concealer, I tried it with the Mac Pro-Longwear concealer. Oh God, bad idea, don’t try that, it makes a huge mess. And it still doesn’t really apply it to the face. When I look at the brush, it screams “powder brush” so I don’t understand how it’s supposed to work with concealers, which are almost always liquid. It doesn’t have the flat base or bristle texture for buffing a product into skin, either. It would probably work well as a blusher brush for a very small face, i.e. a 6 year old child. I’ve tried it with the Body Shop powder foundation (which I sometimes use as a concealer) and it left a huge unblended shapeless blob of product that was far too big for the area I was trying to conceal.

The thing is, in order for something to be called a concealer brush, I feel that I should reasonably be able to use it to… I don’t know… apply concealer. So regardless of how well it might work for applying some other type of make-up, I paid £10 for a concealer brush that doesn’t apply concealer (it’s $13.30 in the US). I will have to buy another Sigma F-70, which is really annoying because of the amount of money this Japonesque brush cost, it was almost the same price as the Sigma F-70 and I seriously don’t have a use for it.

So, since I just had a bad experience with the Japonesque precision lash curler, I’m going to take Japonesque off my list of companies to buy products from, because two in a row is just disgraceful at the prices they charge for their products. I’d expect better from a £1.99 drugstore make up brush.

100% do not recommend.