Honestly, since making that initial purchase, I have tried hundreds of different foundations, but this one is different. While that was my first taste of MAC foundations-my gateway drug, if you will-my real buzz came when I discovered MAC's Studio Fix Fluid SPF 15 Foundation (£27).

The aforementioned product was MAC's Studio Face and Body (£32), a brilliant beauty-insider foundation, but it's not the one that I'm here to talk to you about today. Finding foundations to match pale skin with yellow undertones was hit-and-miss, to say the least. As for my darker-skinned friends and family? Finding a suitable foundation shade back then was basically impossible-unless you went to MAC. Up until that point, the affordable high-street foundations that I used would always leave my skin looking too orange or too pink. At the time, it was the most expensive makeup product that I'd ever bought, but it turned out to be a serious game changer for me in terms of shade and formulation.

I'd saved up my wages from my Saturday job to make the pilgrimage, and I have to say, I was immediately hooked. I have vivid memories of visiting its Carnaby Street store circa 2006 to get colour-matched for a foundation after reading about how all of the top makeup artists had it in their backstage kits. Ask any beauty editor or product obsessive where they bought their first proper foundation and, chances are, it will have been from MAC.

Nc42 studio fix foundation