A black woman has shared pictures of her disastrous makeover at a beauty parlour – with foundation that did not match her skin tone.
Ashley Curtis, who is African-American, asked for a ‘glam session’ at an Ultra Beauty store prior to a maternity photoshoot.
But the results were so poor that she washed the whole thing off and hastily employed a different make-up artist before her shoot.
The $45 (USD) makeover involved a range of products, including the choice of three tones of foundation.
Ashley, a mother-of-two from Birmingham, Alabama, USA, said: “I trusted her, but the foundation she chose did not match my skin tone.
“She said it would lighten up, because when I first saw it, it was quite a lot darker than my complexion.”
When Ashley saw the end result she was stunned at how different she looked, and not in a good way.
She said: “I was in shock.
“I told her I have to wash this off my face, and she said ‘no I can fix it,’ and she started putting face powder over the foundation.”
“I said ‘this isn’t going to work, and she apologized.”
Ashely says none of the other make-up artists in the store noticed the inappropriate shade of foundation either.
“None of them commented or saw anything wrong with it,” she said.
Ashley happened to bump into the manager of the Ulta store as she was leaving, and told him that the foundation did not match her complexion and asked if she had to pay.
After seeing Ashley’s face the manager waived the fee for the makeover.
Ashley, who ended up looking stunning for her maternity shoot, posted the ‘before and after’ photos on Twitter, and received thousands of reactions from shocked social media users.
@Whiskey_Andrea, wrote: “This is awful. Don’t call yourself a makeup artist or try to work in the field if you aren’t going to bother to work with and learn about every skin type and tone! On a more positive note, your pictures turned out gorgeous!”
Ulta Beauty even reached out to Ashley, tweeting: “Hi Ashley, please send us a DM with the store location and your preferred contact number so we can assist.”
She contacted them back and said they were “very apologetic”.
Ashley continued: “They told us they do know how to work with black skin and someone should have caught it.
“They also said that I can come by any time and they would be glad to assist me.”
An Ulta Beauty spokesperson said: “Guest satisfaction with our services is a top priority.
“We are aware that Ashley had an unsatisfactory experience with a makeup service, and was not happy with the results.
“Our store leadership team has spoken with her directly. We are committed to ongoing artistry education and makeup services trainings across the organization, as we never want to hear that a guest has had anything less than a great in-store experience.”
The lack of make-up products and expertise for black skinned women has been a hot topic in the beauty and modelling industries for many years.
Superstar Rihanna told MTV when promoting her Fenty make-up line in 2017: “In every product, I was like, ‘There needs to be something for a dark-skinned girl! There needs to be something for a really pale girl! There needs to be [something for] someone in between! There’s so many different shades …You want people to appreciate the product, and not feel like, ‘Oh, that looks cute — but it only looks good on her.'”