Olivia Rodrigo and Kate Hudson Both Love Exa Beauty’s High Fidelity Foundation, So of Course I Tried It

• Quality: 18/20
• Longevity: 18/20
• Ease of Application: 20/20
• Efficacy: 19/20
• Color: 15/20
• Total: 90/100

I’m not one to voraciously devour celebrity news, but one thing I *can’t* get enough of is a peek into a leading lady’s (or gentleman’s) handbag. Though I’m not really on TikTok, my YouTube homepage is littered with Vogue’s “In the Bag” videos and GQ’s “Ten Things [Insert Famous Person] Can’t Live Without.” As much as I like to think I can’t be influenced, Olivia Rodrigo may have convinced me that the Bearaby weighted blanket and Stanley tumbler *might* be cool, while Alexa Chung, Jacob Elordi and Joe Alwyn all affirmed my intuition that analog photography is trendy. (Though I’ve been doing it for over a decade.) As such, it’s only logical (ha!) that the former put the Exa High Fidelity Foundation ($38) on my radar when I watched her Glossier GRWM. Then, I saw Kate Hudson use it on TikTok, and I’d be remiss not to trust the leading actress in one of my favorite romantic comedies of all time. If there’s one thing I am in perpetual pursuit of, it’s a good foundation. Thus, if these two looked stellar wearing it, then I had to see what it was all about. Read on for my review of Exa’s High Fidelity Foundation as I wore it through several humid days during a New York City heat wave.

The PureWow100 is a scale our editors use to vet new products and services, so you know what’s worth the spend—and what’s total hype. Learn more about our process here.

Exa is owned by the clean beauty retailer Credo. Thus, it adheres to the retailer’s Clean Standard, created to uphold transparency, sustainability, safety and ethics in the cosmetics industry. The Credo Clean Standard includes The Dirty List, which comprises over 2,700 restricted chemicals linked to health and environmental issues. That encompasses things like cancer, hormone disruption and environmental toxicity. Exa prioritizes eco-friendly packaging and inclusivity, which is showcased in their High Fidelity Foundation, available in 43 shades.

This summer, New Yorkers are living through a sauna of hell, and so this foundation has truly been put to the test. I wore it over the course of three days in extremely different conditions: Outside during a Fourth of July picnic during a heat wave, working from home taking intermittent walks around the block and to the office, and on days when there was a heat advisory. Using the PureWow100 rating scale, I evaluated the foundation’s efficacy, longevity, quality, color and ease of application. When testing, I applied the foundation over my normal skincare routine and used a setting spray to keep everything in place. 

• Shade: Hannah 490 
• Finish: semi-satin
• Coverage: medium  

The Exa High Fidelity Foundation provides medium coverage with a dewy, satin finish. Just a dab on each cheek did wonders for covering up a field of blemishes, and you can easily build up to a heavier coverage. The winning element for me was the fact that it wasn’t drying around my T-zone, which is one of my biggest pain points with foundation. Overall, Exa knocked it out of the park—so much so, that it’s going to usurp the other foundations I’ve been using. I like to buff it in with a brush (with Jenny Patinkin’s sustainable brush set, $150), but you can also apply it with your fingers and it’ll blend in seamlessly. I was also impressed by the fact that I barely needed concealer under my eyes—a step that I usually never skip. It was basically perfunctory at this point.

After wearing the foundation on a hot, humid day, I was pleased to note that it didn’t transfer too much. However, I would probably stick to my usual makeup routine (Typology concealer, Sweed Miracle Powder) during the summer and save this for all the other seasons, or for occasions when I know I’ll be stepping from car to air-conditioned room in a blink.

My only major concern is the color. The shade range is EXTENSIVE, which is a huge plus, but can make it challenging to find your exact match. For that, I would advise going into a store to test the shades as I found them to be rendered inaccurately on the website—and I’m typically pretty good at guessing my shade based on photos. Also, your skin tone totally affects how the foundation shows up. In the photo above, both my friend and I swabbed the same color (on her, the upper right by her pinky knuckle bone), and it was like two different shades. Similarly, she tried two other shades that appeared quite dark on me, but looked quite light on her. While I did eventually find a shade that matched my skin well, it was a whole process to get there.

Though the process of finding the correct shade was a bit convoluted, once I found a good match, I was totally enamored with Exa’s foundation, scoring it 90/100 on the PureWow100 scale. Of all the foundations I’ve tried, this one has performed the best based on my personal criteria. It doesn’t flake around my nose and mouth and keeps my forehead looking polished, even after a long, hot day. (By the end of the day, my usual foundation looks some horrid combination of cakey, dry and glistening. Not the case here.) The fact that it’s also about $10 less than what I’m currently using doesn’t hurt, either. Overall, I think it’s a good buy if you’re into the dewy, satin look, and prefer a weightless formula that gives you no-makeup makeup aesthetic.