The MAC 187 is a quintessential makeup brush, every makeup artist has one, or a comparable one and it's great for a variety of uses. I got mine a few years ago during MAC's 20% off friends and family sale, I couldn't justify paying full price for it, it retails for $50.50 CAD. Before buying the MAC 187, I bought several dupes, in hopes that they would please me enough, to not have to buy the real thing, every one of them came up short. I bought the Quo skunk brush and several from Coastal Scents, none of which I liked. However, Sigma has a dupe which is very close and just as good as the MAC 187, this is the. The Sigma brush sells for only $16 US, I know it sounds too good to be true, but I will try and show you with this review.

I have both sigma & MAC! But for the price sigma is a better deal and you can get alot more that you could with MAC. I only buy individual brushes though instead of the brush kits because some of the brushes are kind of a waste and i would probubly use once or twice a year. The bristles for the Sigma one are a smidge longer, and it's a little more rounded in shape whereas the MAC one is a little more tapered (at least to me). Both have stiff bristles, good for blending colour in the crease and outer corner of the eye, or applying a bit of colour on the lid (if you don't want to pack it on). Sigma Makeup Brushes vs. MAC Brushes Make sure you check out my standalone review for Sigma Brushes, which considers them on their merit and by themselves, not as an alternative to MAC. This is built into the Mac OS X and available in many Mac 'native' text editor like textmate, textwrangler, bbedit, etc, even the system's TextEdit can do that. Meanwhile Vim can do column selection with the blockwise-visual (CTRL-V is the default shortcuts).

When I first bought the new MAC Pro Longwear foundation, I used my Sigma F50 to apply it because I had the sneaking suspicion that a foundation that is supposed to last 15 hours may possibly stain my brushes. And because my MAC cost so much, I was willing to sacrifice the Sigma instead. And as you can tell from the pictures, it will be really easy to tell which one is the Sigma because the bristles are slightly stained (I hope this comes out!). I washed both brushes before this review to see how they dry and the Sigma one dried much faster. I suspect this is because the white bristles on the Sigma are thinner than the MAC, you can tell this in the picture above, the MAC seem thicker, possibly less of them and the Sigma looks more dense. There was no dye running out when I washed the Sigma brush, I have read people have this problem, did not happen with mine. During use, the Sigma did shed a few hairs, but it stopped after several washes.

And here is another shot, I tried to show these brushes compared at as many angles are possible. The bristles look the same here. Bob levitus to present working smarter for mac. The black bristles fray out in both of the brushes. The Sigma has natural and synthetic bristles just like the MAC does. So in conclusion, I like having both these brushes. I think the Sigma is slightly floppier and the MAC is a bit more firm.

For application, I find they both do the same job. For those of you looking for a cheaper alternative to the MAC 187, the Sigma one is the best for the price in my opinion.