Maybelline New York review

Maybelline started in 1915 when Thomas Williams noticed his sister Mabel mixing coal dust with Vaseline to darken her lashes. The company has been making mascara for 110 years and it is, by a clear margin, the thing it is best at.

The mascara case

Here is a claim this site is happy to make plainly: prestige mascara is, with two or three exceptions, a waste of money, and Maybelline is a large part of the reason.

Lash Sensational Sky High is the current best. It uses a flexible, slim, tapered brush with a fibre-containing formula that lengthens without clumping and holds a curl through the day. At around $13 it outperforms most mascaras at $30 and a fair few at $40.

The reason is not mystery. Mascara performance comes down to brush geometry and formula viscosity, both of which are cheap to get right and neither of which benefits from a luxury supply chain. L'Oréal's mass brands have enormous testing volume and iterate constantly, which is exactly the process that produces a good brush.

Great Lash, launched in 1971 in its pink-and-green tube, is still sold and still bought. It is, honestly, no longer the best — Sky High supersedes it — but it is a genuine piece of industrial design history and it still works.

The Falsies Surreal Extensions is the newer high-drama option and is also good.

Fit Me

Maybelline's other genuine contribution is organising a foundation range intelligently.

Fit Me splits into Matte + Poreless and Dewy + Smooth, and — crucially — the shade numbering is organised by undertone: the 100s are cool/neutral fair, the 200s warm, the 300s deeper, and so on. Once you know your undertone you can find your shade without a counter, which for a drugstore product bought off a shelf is exactly the right design.

The formula is good. It is a six-to-eight-hour foundation, not a twelve-hour one, and at around $10 that is a reasonable trade.

The weakness is at the deep end. Fit Me has deep shades and they are fewer and less granular than the light-to-medium band, with less undertone variation. It is better than it was in 2015 and it is not where it should be in 2026.

Fit Me Concealer is one of the best cheap concealers made — light, brightening, and good for under-eyes.

Super Stay

Super Stay Matte Ink is a liquid lipstick that genuinely survives a working day, meals included. That is the whole proposition and it delivers.

It is also drying — properly drying, in the way that long-wear liquid lipsticks that actually work tend to be — and removing it requires an oil cleanser and some patience. If you want comfort, this is not it. If you want a colour that is still there at six o'clock, nothing at this price does it better.

Super Stay 24H Foundation and Super Stay Vinyl Ink extend the same idea sensibly.

Where it is weak

Eyeshadow and blush. The palettes are the most forgettable part of the catalogue — adequate pressing, uninspired shade selection, and comprehensively beaten by e.l.f. and NYX at similar prices.

Transparency and ethics

Transparency at 7.0 — ingredient lists available, honest product claims, nothing beyond the required minimum.

Ethics also 7.0. Maybelline is a L'Oréal brand and is not cruelty-free; it sells in markets requiring animal testing. Stated rather than hidden.

Finding your undertone

Since Fit Me's whole design rests on this, here is the test that actually works.

Ignore the vein-colour trick — it is unreliable and depends more on how translucent your skin is than on undertone. Instead, hold a piece of pure white paper next to your bare face in daylight. Against true white, skin reads either yellow-ish and golden (warm), pink or red-ish (cool), or greenish-grey (neutral or olive).

A second check: think about which metals suit you, and which white you look better in. People with warm undertones generally look better in gold and in cream; cool undertones in silver and in pure white. Olive skin, which is common and badly served by most ranges, reads slightly green and will look sallow in shades that are purely warm or purely cool.

Once you know, Fit Me's numbering does the rest — the 100s and low 200s for fair, moving up through the 300s and beyond, with the numbering within each band indicating warmth. It is the closest thing the drugstore has to a system, and it is why this range is worth recommending over ones with more shades and no logic.

Price

$6 to $18. Mass-market pricing with the enormous practical advantage of availability — you can find this in a supermarket, a pharmacy and an airport, and you can match a foundation in person almost anywhere in the world.

The verdict

Buy Sky High. If you buy one thing from this review and you wear mascara, buy Sky High, and then stop buying prestige mascara.

Buy Fit Me if your shade sits in the well-served part of the range and check it in daylight if it does not. Buy Super Stay Matte Ink only if you have accepted the dryness as the price of longevity.