Makeup Break-Up: Sigma Brushes

The Honeymoon Phase

We had some good times. When I first got my Sigma brushes, I loved them. I started out by purchasing the dupes of the MAC 165 and 138 (just called F165 and F138 – not sure their new names?). They were great and I loved them! Then I received the face & eye kit from Sigma to review. I told you all about it. I was a huge fan. I completely stand by that review because it is precisely how I felt about those brushes at the time. My opinion of them has since changed. 
The First Red Flag

Some time after my initial review, I also did an overview of my face brushes. At that point, my F30 powder brush was shedding regularly, but I was putting up with it. The F45 buffer and F50 were still going strong and working well for my purposes. My eye brushes from Sigma were still holding up just fine as well. So because one brush was giving me problems, I wasn’t willing to throw up my hands with Sigma all together yet. It could’ve just been that one brush was slightly defective.
More Flags, Lingering Denial

I hope you all saw my review update on Sigma brushes from the end of May, where I let you all know that my F50 and F45 had begun to shed as well. It was at that point that I got in touch with Sigma and let them know about the issues my brushes were having. They sent replacements free of charge, which is really nice of them and I very much appreciate that! Their customer service is fantastic, I will always give them that. But… that doesn’t change the fact that 3 of the 6 brushes in the kit were inferior and breaking down without much stress on them. So far so good with the new face brushes.
The Last Straw

I have a MAC 224 brush that I absolutely adore. That style of fluffy brush is good for blending shadow, contouring the nose, highlighting, and I also love it for applying and blending concealer. The point being, I use the brush a lot. So when I got the E40 blending brush I knew it would fit right in to my makeup arsenal. Except now it sheds like an absolute bitch. The hairs it’s shedding are tiny, too– about the same length as an eyebrow hair or shorter. And okay, picking a hair out of your foundation or blush is one thing, but I do not tolerate stuff shedding in my eyes. And it was many hairs. 
I was thinking to myself, okay, these are supposed to be professional quality brushes. What is professional about having to pick hairs out of anything?! What working MUA has time to deal with that bull while working on a model or client? I’ve used my Sigma brushes on clients before, before they started dying on me (the brushes, not the clients, thankfully) and I would have been really upset if they’d shed all over someone else. That’s when I got angry at the brushes. 
I threw my E40 in the trash. I won’t need to replace it because I have the MAC 224 and a couple of Stila #9 brushes. Now I’m just annoyed. I don’t like something that calls itself professional quality when clearly experience tells me it’s not. I don’t like feeling like an idiot for raving about something that later turned out to be inferior. I take my reviewing very seriously and now I feel dumb even though I couldn’t have known it would go like this. Even though the replacement brushes have been performing fine, the experience has left a bad taste in my mouth. I do not plan on adding to my Sigma brushes at all, and finding replacements for the ones I have as soon as possible because I don’t want to use products from a company that makes me feel dumb. 
Moving On

I’ve mentioned MAC and Stila brushes in this post as alternatives to Sigma, but let me also recommend some other great brushes. 
Crown – I’m sure you’ve heard of Crown, but they’re an inexpensive, oft-raved about company that I’ve never had any problems with at all. The brushes from Crown I have live up to their raves.
ELF Studio – For only $3, the flat topped powder brush is ridiculous. As in, incredibly awesome. I still use it on the daily.
Morphé – I believe the owner of Morphé is related to the owner of Crown? That’s what I heard. Anyway, these brushes are also really fabulous. I have several eye brushes from them.
Royal & Langnickel – Talk about luxe. Even their travel brushes feel like luxuries!
Edited to Add: I thought I should also mention a couple of things:

– Sigma did reach out to me via Twitter & Email to see if they could replace the brushes I’m having problems with. Nice of them to offer but I won’t be taking them up on it.

– The older brushes I have, the ones that had MAC numbers, are still holding up great and working just fine. 

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