Reader Mail: Korres or Smashbox Primer?

We’re so desperate for Reader Mail that we had to steal one from the comments area, from last week’s celebration of all things Korres.

Do you like the Korres primer better than Smashbox photofinish primer? I’m trying to decide which one to buy.

Unbelievably, we have a wealth of information available regarding this question—because primer is our favorite beauty product, and we own both of these, one Smashbox and the Korres as well. We also have an answer: They are quite different. The Korres feels to us more like a moisturizer, while the Smashbox formulation—at least our bottle of it—is quite dry. (It’s so dry that we’ve actually wondered if our bottle would have failed quality control.) What this means is that the Korres feels really nice going on, but the Smashbox looks like it more successfully evens our skin tone and minimizes pore size.

That said, we still go with the Korres. All Korres products are free of parabens and a grocery list of other synthetic things—Smashbox isn’t, as far as the website reports. We’ll say this: Under make-up, maybe we’d go with Smashbox, since it makes things all nice and even. As a one-step moisturizer/foundation/everything, Korres is our choice.

Smashbox Photo-Finish Color Correcting Primer, $38

Korres Face Primer, $28