Pick Three: Cruelty-Free, Fair, Olive, Dry Skin. The Drugstore Won’t Give You All Four

Four filters, zero products

Hello, beautiful people! Today I’m talking about why there is no cruelty-free fair olive foundation for dry skin at the drugstore. The first foundation I ever owned, in the mid-90s, was the palest shade of a drugstore powder. It came in pink or orange. Neutral was not an option, never mind olive. Thirty years later, the drugstore shelf has 40-shade ranges, undertone codes and the word “olive” printed on boxes. Even so, there’s still no match for me.

I am porcelain olive: the palest shade in almost any range, with a desaturated cool yellow cast that turns gray next to pink and green next to peach. My skin is dry and sensitive. I only buy cruelty-free. Those are three facts about me, and I’d like to add a fourth: a drugstore price.

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No fair olive foundation at a drugstore price

I can’t have all four. I checked every drugstore line I could find on Dutch and UK shelves, then every UK and EU indie I could track down. Not one of them makes a hydrating fair olive foundation at a drugstore price. Instead, the brands that come closest are British and American indies at €25 to €50, and the ones that stay comfortable on my dry skin all day are Lisa Eldridge and LYS Beauty, at €33 to €50 each.

So this post is the audit: what fair olive actually means, what I can wear, the mixers that turn a near miss into a match, where each brand’s olive shades start, why brands build the cheap shelf for oily skin, and what I am asking KIKO, NYX, Nabla, and Revolution to make.

Three credentials, for anyone new here: I started writing about beauty in 2008, I have bought only cruelty-free beauty since 2012, and I have moderated r/PaleMUA since 2019. That’s eighteen years of helping readers find a shade match on this blog, fourteen years of reading animal-testing policies, and seven years of doing the same for very fair people on Reddit.

The quick verdict

TL;DR for the skimmers:

Cruelty-free, fair, olive, dry skin, drugstore price: pick three. No drugstore line in the Netherlands or the UK makes a fair olive foundation, and the UK and EU indies don’t either. The only guaranteed fair olive in Europe is a custom blend.
What I actually wear: Lisa Eldridge Seamless Skin Foundation 2.5 Olive and Luminist concealer Shade 3 for the perfect undertone, plus the LYS Beauty Triple Fix stick in LN1 as my daily base (not true olive, yellow olive adjacent). All three cost €33 to €50, and none of them comes from a drugstore.
The cheapest way to try: a yellow-leaning fair neutral plus a drop of blue mixer. Start with e.l.f. Soft Glam Satin 11 or 13 Fair Neutral (£9, with a 30-day shade refund), Catrice True Skin 004 Neutral Porcelain, or NYX Born To Glow in Pale if your skin is dry.
Why the drugstore can’t help: olive shades start at light-medium, and the long-wear mattes that fill the cheap shelf suit oily skin. Hydrating formulas are the first to go.
If cruelty-free isn’t your filter: L’Oréal True Match 1N Ivory or Maybelline Fit Me Dewy 115 or 118 plus blue, in a hydrating formula.
What I’m asking for: one fair olive shade each from KIKO, NYX, Nabla and Revolution, and a Lisa Eldridge foundation stick.

What “fair olive” actually means

Olive is a cast, not a depth. It’s a gray-green modifier that sits on top of warm, cool or neutral skin at any depth. So a fair olive is simply a very pale person whose skin looks muted next to a pink foundation and slightly green next to a peach one. Lisa Eldridge’s own copy for my reference tint shade, T1.5, calls it a light, desaturated olive tone that sits between T1 and T2. Desaturated is the word that’s doing all the heavy lifting here. I consider myself a porcelain muted / desaturated neutral cool yellow olive.

Why warm, cool and neutral all miss

The three standard labels all miss it. Warm goes orange on me. Cool goes pink. Brands build most shades called neutral halfway between those two, so they land too saturated and too peach. What works on me is neutral cool yellow, muted yellow, or what the olive subreddits call desaturated cool yellow olive. Pink and orange never work, at any depth.

The fair end makes it worse. The lighter the olive, the cooler and more muted it tends to read, while brands put their olive shades where they assume the demand is: light-medium and deeper. So brands split the palest rows of a range into pink and yellow, exactly as they did in 1996, and olive appears three or four shades down. And these lighter shades are too saturated for many people at the fair end of the spectrum; it’s like nobody made them to match an actual person’s skin tone, and they match a computer’s guess instead. A fair olive foundation is the shade brands skip.

My reference shades and how I match

My two reference shades for this post are Lisa Eldridge Seamless Skin Enhancing Tint T1.5 and About Face The Illusionist concealer F1 Olive. I judge everything below against them. One note on how I match: I have rosacea, and the redness makes my face look darker than my neck and chest. So I always match complexion products to my neck and chest so that everything reads as one skin tone, and that puts me at the palest end of any range. When a shade has the correct olive undertone, though, I can wear it a step or two deeper without the mask effect. That is exactly what I do with Lisa Eldridge Seamless Skin Foundation 2.5 Olive.

Lisa Eldridge Complexion Product Swatches

I took a quick outdoor swatch photo of the Lisa Eldridge Luminist Concealer in Shade 3, Seamless Skin Foundation in 2.5 Olive, and Seamless Skin Tint T1.5 Olive on my face.

Lisa Eldridge Complexion Product swatches, taken indoors by Cordelia Frost — Taken indoors next to indirect sunlight.

The above photo is the same set of products, just taken indoors next to a window in indirect natural sunlight.

What I can actually wear

Fair Olive Complexion swatches on fair olive skin taken outdoors

From left to right Cordelia has swatched About Face the Illusionist in F1 Olive, Unleashia 16N, LYS LN1, Lisa Eldridge Luminist 3, Lisa Eldridge Foundation 2.5, and Lisa Eldrige Skin Tint T1.5. — Fair olive complexion swatches taken indoors in indirect sunlight.

Cordelia is wearing Lisa Eldridge Seamless Skin Foundation in shade 2.5., which is noticeably darker than her neck and chest.

Five products get close to my skin, and none of them is a drugstore fair olive foundation. Three of them I wear happily: the Lisa Eldridge foundation and concealer, and the LYS Beauty stick that has been my daily base for years. The other two, though, are perfect shade matches in formulas my dry skin can’t wear all over, so one is a spot concealer and the other is in a drawer. I also included the Unleashia Satin Wear Healthy-Green Cushion in 16N Peach Fuzz, since it is another yellow olive adjacent foundation.

Product	Shade	Price (approx.)	Verdict on me
Lisa Eldridge Seamless Skin Foundation	2.5 Olive	about €50 / 30 ml	Love it. A shade or two deeper than my neck, but the undertone is perfect, and the correct olive cast is what lets a deeper shade work on me. Comfortable on dry skin all day.
Lisa Eldridge Luminist Buildable Fluid Concealer	3 (Olive)	€37	Love it. A great match, and I wear it daily and comfortably on dry skin.
LYS Beauty Triple Fix Blurring & Hydrating Skin Tint Foundation Stick	LN1	€33	My daily wear blurring foundation for years, and I love it. LN1 is yellow-olive adjacent: no olive undertone, but it works well enough. I wish it was olive.
About Face The Illusionist concealer	F1 Olive	€25	A perfect shade match. The formula targets oily skin and emphasizes dryness, so on me it is strictly a spot concealer.
Lisa Eldridge Seamless Skin Enhancing Tint	T1.5	about €50 / 30 ml	A perfect shade match and a formula I hate. It looks awful on my skin and emphasizes my fine lines and pores.

Everything else is a mixing project

Everything else in my drawer is a mixing project. The Unleashia Healthy-Green cushion in 16N Peach Fuzz only works with a drop of LA Girl blue stirred in to kill the peach, and I have done the same to half a dozen “neutral” bottles over the years. Blue fixes temperature and white fixes depth; the kit gets its own section below. Neither can make a formula comfortable.

Notice what the three comfortable ones have in common: a British or American indie brand, and a price between €33 and €50, which is four to seven Catrice foundations. Not one of them sits on a drugstore shelf.

The mixers: how I turn a near miss into a match

Since no drugstore makes a bottle for me, I keep a small kit that corrects the ones that come close. It’s four products doing three jobs.

Blue cools. The LA Girl Pro Mixing Pigment in Blue and a Mehron cream stick foundation in Pastel Blue both cool off a foundation that pulls peach or orange. The Mehron stick is the one I use for blending into cream and stick bases. A little goes a long way.
White lightens. I keep the LA Girl white concealer for taking a shade down a step without changing its undertone. I used to use the LA Girl white foundation mixer for the same job, and the concealer works just as well.
Mint adds green. I also keep the LA Girl concealer in mint. A touch of it adds the green that no “neutral” shade carries, which is the actual olive part of fair olive.

All four can make a foundation a better match for fair olive skin. None of them can make a formula comfortable, and that’s the other half of the problem.

Mixer Swatches

Fair Olive Color Correctors that I use to fix my foundation to match me by Cordelia Frost — From left to right: LA Girl Pro Mixing Pigment in Blue, Mehron cream stick in Pastel Blue, LA Girl concealer in Mint, and LA Girl concealer in White.

Here are swatches of my fair olive color correctors.

LA Girl Pro Mixing Pigment in Blue (sold as PRO.color Foundation Mixing Pigment)
Mehron cream stick foundation in Pastel Blue
LA Girl concealer in Mint (HD Pro Conceal, Mint Corrector)
LA Girl concealer in White (HD Pro Conceal, Flat White Corrector)

The blues are extremely pigmented, especially the Mehron. You only need a tiny dot of product to shift a foundation.

Fair Olive Concealer Swatches

About Face the Illusionist concealer in F1 Olive
Lisa Eldridge Luminist concealer in Shade 3
Haus Labs Triclone concealer in 01 Fair Neutral
Rare Beauty Positive Light Undereye in Light

Prior to finding out that I have a fair olive skin tone, I used Haus Labs Triclone concealer in 01 Fair Neutral to conceal around my face and Rare Beauty Positive Light Undereye in Light to brighten under my eyes. I now use Lisa Eldridge Luminist concealer in Shade 3 the most of all my concealers.

The drugstore audit: where olive starts

Every drugstore range I checked labels its first olive shade at light-medium or deeper, so there is no fair olive foundation on the shelf at all. Nothing sits at T1.5 depth. Below is where the word olive first appears in each line, and what the pale end offers instead (all €5 to €20). First the cosnova brands, then KIKO, Revolution, NYX and e.l.f.

Catrice and essence

Brand and line	First shade labeled olive	Depth it sits at	Palest shades on offer	Formula
Catrice True Skin Hydrating Foundation and High Cover Concealer	039 Warm Olive	medium, between 033 Cool Almond and 040 Neutral Hazel	001 Neutral Swan (concealer; sold as 001 Neutral Fair in some markets), 002 Neutral Ivory, 004 Neutral Porcelain, 007 Cool Nude, 010 Cool Cashmere, 018 Cool Rose	“hydrating” in the name; users describe it as fast-setting and drying
Catrice HD Liquid Coverage	034 Medium Beige, “medium beige with olive tones”	medium	002 Porcelain Beige (very light, neutral), 005 Ivory Beige (fair, warm), 010 Light Beige (fair/light, neutral)	matte, 24h, waterproof; Catrice says best for normal to oily skin
Catrice Invisible Cover Cushion	050N, “a tan shade with neutral olive undertones”	tan	012C	matte, 24h oil control
essence Stay All Day 16h and Pretty Natural	none in either line	n/a	Stay All Day 08 Soft Vanilla (disappearing from retailers), Pretty Natural 010 Cool Porcelain	Stay All Day: matte, water- and transfer-proof. Pretty Natural: hydrating, 31 shades, zero olive

KIKO, Revolution, NYX and e.l.f.

Brand and line	First shade labeled olive	Depth it sits at	Palest shades on offer	Formula
KIKO Full Coverage 2-in-1 Foundation & Concealer	O50 Olive 50	light-medium	N01 Neutral 01, CR05 Cold Rose 05, NR0 Neutral Rose, N10 Neutral 10	satin-matte, medium to full coverage; KIKO says ideal for normal to oily skin
KIKO Unlimited 24H Matte	3.5 WO Warm Olive	medium	shade 1 (the lightest row)	matte, 24h
Revolution Conceal & Define / Conceal & Hydrate	F5.7, “light/medium skin tones with an olive undertone”	light-medium	F0 pure white (a mixer), F0.2 fair light-yellow, F0.3 fair yellow, F0.7 fair light-neutral, F1 fair neutral	Define: demi-matte. Hydrate: the dry-skin version, now discontinued
NYX Can’t Stop Won’t Stop	9 Medium Olive, about MAC NC30	medium	Pale, Light Porcelain, Fair, Alabaster, Porcelain	matte, waterproof, 24h. Born To Glow, the radiant sibling, uses largely the same shade names, so its olive also starts at Medium Olive
e.l.f. Camo CC Cream, Soft Glam Satin Foundation and the Camo concealers	none in the foundations; the only olive in the whole complexion range is Deep Olive in the 16HR and Hydrating Camo concealers	deep	Camo CC: Fair 100 W, 120 N, 125 C, 140 W, 150 C. Soft Glam: 10 Fair Cool, 11 Fair Neutral, 12 Fair Warm, 13 Fair Neutral, 14 Fair Cool, 15 Fair Warm. Camo concealers: Fair Rose, Fair Warm, Fair Beige	Camo CC: medium-to-full coverage, SPF 30, £15; e.l.f. sells it for dry, oily and combination skin. Soft Glam: satin, medium coverage, £9. On Kruidvat and Trekpleister shelves since May 2025, with a 30-day refund on a wrong shade

The pattern and the nearest neighbors

The pattern is identical across brands. Brands split the pale end into pink and yellow, or “cool” and “neutral”, and olive appears three to five shades down. Catrice even prints “neutral olive undertones” on a shade description, for a tan cushion shade. The vocabulary exists; the shade doesn’t.

If you are fair olive and want to try anyway, the nearest neighbors are a yellow-leaning fair neutral plus a blue mixer:

Catrice True Skin 004 Neutral Porcelain (a reviewer puts it next to L’Oréal True Match 1N Ivory), the True Skin concealer in 010 Cool Cashmere (a fair olive favorite, since Catrice’s “cool” reads muted rather than pink) or 018 Cool Rose, and Revolution F1, which an olive-specialist makeup artist named as a favorite for light-cool olives.

NYX’s fair row is worth a look too: Pale, Light Porcelain, Fair and Alabaster, in Born To Glow rather than the matte Can’t Stop Won’t Stop if your skin is dry. Pale, a white ivory with a yellow undertone, used to match my skin tone. The cheapest way to run the experiment is e.l.f., on drugstore shelves since May 2025: Soft Glam Satin 11 or 13 Fair Neutral at £9, or Camo CC Cream Fair 120 N at £15, plus your blue mixer, and e.l.f. refunds a wrong shade within 30 days. None of them is olive, and apart from Born To Glow and the two e.l.f. bases, all of them are matte or demi-matte. That’s the real problem, and it gets its own section.

Why the drugstore is built for oily skin

Long wear and hydration are formulation opposites, and only one of them fits on the box as a number.

The chemistry and the claims

A long-wear base runs a low oil phase. It carries pigment in volatile silicones that evaporate on the skin, then locks it down with film formers. A formulator’s Q&A on building an olive-toned long-wear foundation puts it plainly: a formula rich in non-volatile oils works against transfer resistance. The Society of Cosmetic Chemists’ journal notes that virtually every color cosmetic with long-lasting claims contains a film former. So those films feel like nothing on oily skin and like a tight mask on dry skin. The emollients that make my skin comfortable are exactly what a 16H claim has to leave out.

Brands can test “16H”, “24H”, “waterproof” and “transfer-proof” with an instrument and print the result on the box. “Doesn’t cling to dry patches by 3 pm” is not a claim anyone can put on packaging. So brands build the hero products to win the printable test: Catrice HD is 24h, waterproof and, in Catrice’s own words, best for normal to oily skin. essence Stay All Day is water-, mask- and transfer-proof. KIKO’s Full Coverage 2-in-1 advertises 16-hour wear. NYX named its foundation Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, and e.l.f. puts 16HR in the name of its concealer.

The customer and what gets cut first

My read after eighteen years of watching this shelf: the drugstore foundation buyer is a young adult, and young adult skin leans oily. Department stores sell dry and mature skin “anti-aging” formulas at department store prices. The cheap shelf caters to the face it expects to see.

When a drugstore brand does make a hydrating foundation, it is the one that disappears. Revolution’s Conceal & Hydrate, the version the brand itself called particularly beneficial for dry skin, now shows as discontinued on Lyko and has vanished from Superdrug’s site. essence also quietly pulled the palest shade of Stay All Day, 08 Soft Vanilla, while customers on Lyko were asking for it back. Catrice’s True Skin has “hydrating” in the name and a review thread full of the word drying. One of the few hydrating drugstore foundations that have survived, essence Pretty Natural, has 31 shades and not a single olive among them.

Put the two halves together and the result is predictable. If you are olive, you get a longwear matte. If you are dry, you get a hydrating formula in pink, yellow or “neutral”. So if you are fair, dry, olive and cruelty-free, you leave the drugstore with nothing and go home to order from a British or American indie at four times the price.

The UK and EU indie check

Yes, I checked the indies too. One brand prints a light olive label (Vieve, and it starts at “light”, not fair). Another brand exists specifically for olive skin (EX1), yet it bottoms out around light-medium. Everyone else puts olive at medium or deeper, or not at all. The only guaranteed fair olive in Europe is a custom blend.

The closest calls: Vieve, EX1 and Sculpted by Aimee

Brand (country)	Line and price	Olive at fair depth?	Notes
Vieve (UK)	Skin Nova Complexion Balm, 24 shades, £34 to £36	Closest in Europe: 125 Light Neutral Olive, “light skin with a subtle olive cast”. The range opens at 100 Light Cool.	PETA-certified cruelty-free and vegan. Skincare hybrid with niacinamide and beta glucan. Reviewers say it runs warm and lacks very fair shades. Mine is on order; verdict to follow
EX1 Cosmetics (UK)	Invisiwear Liquid Foundation, 16 shades numbered 1.0 to 18.0, £12.50	No. Fair olives have been saying so for years: the old lightest shade F100 was “a bit too dark and pink”, one reviewer places it near NC30, and r/OliveMUA’s verdict was “light and pink, not olive at all”. A fair olive reviewer mixes 2.0 and 4.0 to get there	The only olive-specific brand I know of in Europe, built for olive skin that tans. Oil-free, luminous finish.
Sculpted by Aimee (Ireland)	Second Skin Dewy, Satin Silk, Natural Glow, €25 to €32	No olive label. 0.5C Blanc to 2.9C at the fair end are pink, golden or neutral; the brand’s own tip sends neutral olives to 3.5N Light Plus	Dewy version carries SPF 50; the brand has discontinued the matte one.

I ordered Vieve Skin Nova Complexion Balm in 125 Light Neutral Olive to see if it will work for me, as I don’t own very many true olive complexion products.

The Ordinary, Mádara, Lumene and Neve

Brand (country)	Line and price	Olive at fair depth?	Notes
The Ordinary (Deciem)	Serum and Coverage Foundation, 36 shades, £6.40	No olive letter. 1.0 N is very fair neutral; the yellow shades (1.2 Y) only start at light	Vegan and cruelty-free. The cheapest very fair neutral in Europe, and a semi-matte
Mádara (Latvia)	Skin Equal Soft Glow Foundation SPF 15/20, 10 shades, about €30	Only 60 Olive, “a neutral shade for darker skin with olive undertones”. 10 Porcelain and 20 Ivory are neutral	Ecocert, vegan, cruelty-free, hydrating and dewy. Mineral SPF in every shade
Lumene (Finland)	Blur 16H, Natural Glow Fluid, Invisible Illumination, €30 to €42	No olive label. Built for pale Nordic neutral-beige skin: 00 Ultra Light, 0 Light Ivory, 0.5 Fair Nude. One fair/olive reviewer calls Blur 16H a perfect match	Vegan and cruelty-free per the brand. Nearly every base carries SPF
Neve Cosmetics (Italy)	Flat Perfection, about €17	No. Fair Neutral is the floor	Matte; Italian reviewers call it drying. Vegan, no animal testing

Nabla, Beauty Pie and the custom route

Brand (country)	Line and price	Olive at fair depth?	Notes
Nabla (Italy)	Art of Skin Foundation Stick, 10 g, about €29	No. First olive shade is NO30 in the medium range, medium tone with a neutral olive undertone	Vegan and cruelty-free. Soft-matte, medium coverage; sold through Beauty Bay
Beauty Pie (UK)	Everyday Great Skin, membership pricing	No olive label; 25, 50 and 100 are the very fair shades	Membership model
Dcypher (UK)	Custom AI-blended foundation, from £28 at launch and higher now	Yes, by definition. A fair cool olive on r/OliveMUA got a match after one free remake	Matte, Natural or Radiant finish; ships internationally; formula reviews are mixed.

The short answer (and Laura Geller)

So the short answer to “have you checked the indies” is yes, and the fair olive foundation does not exist there at drugstore money either. Vieve’s 125 is the only one with a light olive label in the UK indie world, and it costs about €40. Meanwhile, the custom route costs about the same and gets you the shade, with no promise about the formula. Lower down the price ladder, The Ordinary and Lumene will sell you a very pale neutral for €7 to €35, and you supply the olive yourself with a drop of blue.

Two more brands readers ask me about. Nabla is in the table: the Italian vegan brand does make Art of Skin Foundation Sticks, but the first olive label is NO30, medium tone with a neutral olive undertone. Laura Geller is American rather than a European indie, but Cult Beauty carries it, so it counts. I reviewed Baked Balance-n-Brighten earlier this year: a gentle, skin-friendly powder foundation with no match for me anywhere in the range, and Porcelain reads warm pink on me. To do my due diligence, I checked again for this post. There is still no fair olive in the lineup, though they did release a new shade called Ivory. I haven’t had a chance to try it, but since Laura Geller describes Ivory as a fair neutral, I’m not convinced it’s an olive. Laura Geller’s olive shades are Golden Medium (for medium to olive skin) and Sand (for olive to tan skin), in the middle of their range.

FAQ: fair olive foundation questions I get every week

These are the questions that land in my inbox and on the subreddits most often, with my short answers.

How do I know if I’m a fair olive?

If the palest shade in a range is your only option and it still reads too dark or too orange, start here. Warm shades go orange on you, cool shades go pink, and most “neutral” shades look peachy. Next to a pink foundation your skin looks gray or green, and next to a peach one it looks green. Peach blush goes orange on you fast, while pink, berry and purple flatter you. If most of that sounds familiar, read Do I Have Olive Undertones? How to Tell for the full test.

What is the difference between fair olive and fair neutral?

It comes down to saturation. Most neutral shades sit halfway between pink and yellow, so they land too saturated and too peach on olive skin. Fair olive is that same depth with a gray-green cast and the color turned down. So the words to look for are “desaturated”, “muted”, “cool yellow” and “neutral olive”, and the rows to try first are the N rows in ranges coded N / W / C.

Can I mix a drugstore foundation to make it olive?

Yes, and that is how I wear most of the “neutral” bottles in my drawer. Start with a yellow-leaning fair neutral, then add a drop of blue to kill the peach, a touch of mint for the green, and a little white if you need to lighten it. Mixing fixes temperature and depth, though. It cannot make a long-wear matte comfortable on dry skin.

Which cruelty-free drugstore shade should a fair olive try first?

The cheapest experiment is e.l.f., because they refund a wrong shade within 30 days: Soft Glam Satin 11 or 13 Fair Neutral, or Camo CC Cream Fair 120 N if you want SPF, plus your blue mixer. After that, try Catrice True Skin 004 Neutral Porcelain, Revolution F1, or NYX Born To Glow in Pale if your skin is dry.

Is there a cruelty-free fair olive concealer at the drugstore?

Not one with olive on the label. The closest are the Catrice True Skin concealer in 010 Cool Cashmere, which fair olives pick because Catrice’s “cool” reads muted rather than pink, or 018 Cool Rose, and the e.l.f. Camo concealers in Fair Beige. The only true fair olive concealers I own are prestige: About Face The Illusionist F1 Olive, which stays a spot concealer on dry skin, and Lisa Eldridge Luminist 3.

Is Lisa Eldridge worth €50 for a fair olive foundation?

For me, yes, because 2.5 Olive is the only foundation that gets my undertone exactly right and stays comfortable on my dry skin all day. At two pumps a day it works out to €12 to €17 a month. Before you buy a full bottle, order the samples and email the brand for a shade match, which is what I tell everyone to do. My full review is here.

Is Vieve 125 Light Neutral Olive fair enough?

I don’t know yet. It is the only light olive label from a UK or EU indie, but the range opens at 100 Light Cool, and reviewers say it runs warm and lacks very fair shades. Mine is on order, and I will update this post with the verdict.

Where do fair olives compare notes?

r/OliveMUA, r/Fairolives and r/PaleMUA, which I moderate. Many of the shade matches in this post came from those threads and from readers here, so leave yours in the comments too.

FAQ: the non-cruelty-free answer

I don’t normally cover brands that aren’t cruelty-free, and I’m not about to start reviewing them. But this question arrives every time I write about shades, so here is the plain answer for readers who don’t share my line. L’Oréal Paris and Maybelline belong to L’Oréal; Bourjois, Rimmel and Max Factor belong to Coty. (NYX and e.l.f. are cruelty-free and sit in the main audit above.) So none of them meets my standard.

If cruelty-free isn’t your filter, is there a fair olive foundation for dry skin at the drugstore? Still no shade labeled olive at fair depth. What you do get instead is two things the cruelty-free shelf doesn’t offer: hydrating formulas with deep shade ranges, and “neutral” shades that fair olives actually wear.

True Match, Fit Me Dewy and Healthy Mix at the fair end

Product	Formula and skin type	Fair shades to look at	What fair and light olives report
L’Oréal Paris True Match, 48 shades, SPF 16	Satin, hyaluronic acid, fragrance-free; the product FAQ on Etos says yes to dry, sensitive and older skin	0.5N Porcelain, 1N Ivory, 1.5N Linen (European numbering: N neutral, C/R cool, W/D warm)	The N shades read yellow-neutral rather than pink. Olive guides point to the N and W rows, and a Catrice reviewer matched True Skin 004 Neutral Porcelain to True Match 1N Ivory. Medium olives call it the most diverse drugstore range going
Maybelline Fit Me Dewy + Smooth, SPF 18	Hydrating, light-to-medium coverage; Maybelline sells it as ideal for normal to dry skin	102 Fair Porcelain, 105 Fair Ivory, 110 Porcelain, 115 Ivory, 118 Light Beige, 120 Classic Ivory (the Dutch range is shorter)	Fair and light olives gravitate to 118 Light Beige and 120 Classic Ivory in Fit Me; 115 Ivory is the yellow fair option. Numbers do not carry over from Matte + Poreless: users report 110 runs about three shades darker in the Dewy formula with a different undertone, so swatch again
Bourjois Healthy Mix and Healthy Mix Serum (Coty), 16 shades	Hydrating; Bourjois builds it for dry to combination skin	50 Rose Ivory, 51 Light Vanilla, 52 Vanilla, 53 Light Beige, plus the newer 49.5N	An olive-specialist makeup artist names Healthy Mix N49.5 for light-cool olives, a light olive calls 53 Light Beige perfect, and a dry-skinned olive calls the Serum the best base she has tried. The floor is the catch: very fair reviewers find even 51 Light Vanilla too dark

The method is the same

So even without my filter the method is the same: a pale neutral-yellow (True Match 1N or Fit Me 115/118) plus a drop of blue. The difference is that the non-cruelty-free shelf hands you a hydrating formula to do it in, and the cruelty-free shelf does not.

Will you review any of these? No. You can find reviews on YouTube, Reddit and elsewhere online.

The price of being an edge case

The olive shade tax is real, and at two pumps a day it is a running tax as well as an upfront one. A 30 ml bottle of Lisa Eldridge foundation lasts me roughly three to four months, which works out to €12 to €17 a month. By comparison, a €7 Catrice bottle used at the same rate costs about €2 a month. So I pay roughly seven times the drugstore rate for my base, I have to find €50 at once to do it, and I never get to impulse-buy my base with the groceries.

Part of the premium is geography, not formula. The brands that bother with a fair olive foundation are British and American, so a Dutch buyer pays for shipping and, since Brexit, UK import charges on top. Still, EU-based stockists soften that: Niche Beauty in Germany carries Lisa Eldridge, Space NK’s Irish site lists About Face in euros, and Cult Beauty ships Vieve in euros. For most of what is in this post, Space NK and Cult Beauty are where I send people.

None of this is about rarity. Very fair skin with an olive cast is common across the Near East, West Asia, the Mediterranean and Central Europe, as one Sephora forum poster put it while asking brands to notice. Instead, it is about where brands think the volume is, and a slow-selling SKU survives on a 40-shade prestige range because the other 39 shades pay for it. At €7, on a drugstore shelf that has to turn every few weeks, nobody makes it.

So yes, my skin tone is a prestige skin tone, because the only brands that carry it are the ones that can afford to.

What I am asking for

A fair olive foundation is one or two SKUs per brand, not a new range. Specifically:

KIKO Milano: Olive 05 or Olive 10 in Full Coverage 2-in-1. The scale already starts at 01, and this is the brand I would most like to see do it. I’ve found so many great products from this brand since I started exploring them, such as their eye primer, eyeshadow sticks, eyeliners, and mascara.
NYX: a fair olive under 9 Medium Olive in Born To Glow and Can’t Stop Won’t Stop. The fair row already has five shades, so give one of them the green cast.
Nabla: an olive at NO10 depth in Art of Skin Foundation Stick. You already have olive at NO30, and the formula is vegan and cruelty-free, so make a porcelain olive option please.
Revolution: an olive at F0.5 to F1 depth in Conceal & Define, and bring back a hydrating formula. The 50-shade range was built with F0, a pure white mixer. Add the green.

On top of that, I would absolutely love to see Lisa Eldridge add a blurring stick foundation to her lineup! I’d love to have an easy, daily wear olive foundation stick that blurs imperfections, covers redness, and is hydrating for dry skin like mine.

Finally, a request for readers. If you are fair olive, tell me in the comments what you wear and whether it survives dry skin. Drugstore, indie, prestige, mixed, anything. I will keep a running list at the bottom of this post, and I keep a weekly watch on new cruelty-free fair olive foundation launches, so I will update this page when something finally lands.