Tower 28 is entering the foundation game.

Launching Aug. 20, Swipe Serum Foundation, $36, is the brand’s biggest launch to date and its first foundation. It also marks the first global launch for the brand, with it debuting at Sephora in the U.S., Canada, U.K. and the Middle East and at Mecca in Australia.

Amy Liu, who founded the beauty brand in Santa Monica, Calif., in 2019, said she wanted to formulate a foundation that would work on eczema, psoriasis, acne and other skin conditions.

“What I set out to do was to make something that could cover my skin issues, not make my skin worse, but then also at the same time not exacerbate the way my skin looked,” she said.

While the formula is derm-approved, non-acnegenic, non-comedogenic, passes leading acne-safe checkers, and is made with triple-filtered water, the hero ingredient is portulaca extract, known for its anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties to help prevent breakouts and keep skin calm. 

In a clinical study, 94 percent of participants with sensitive skin agreed it did not break them out after one week of wear. 

Developed alongside celebrity makeup artist Delina Medhin, who has acne, the brand studied real people with real skin variations to ensure true representation across all 36 shades.

“When she asked me to work on it, I was like, ‘I have to make something that’s going to work for me.’ She said, ‘OK, but it also has to work for people who have eczema.’ That’s her thing. So we had to create this very specific kind of blend where it was moisturizing enough for a person with eczema, but it was dry enough for a person with acne,” she said. “We did over 60 iterations of it. We wanted to create something that didn’t exist.”

The brand declined to provide estimates for the launch, but industry sources forecast around $30 million in retail sales.

The launch campaign has been in the works for some time: Last year, Tower 28 ran a full-page ad in The New York Times in honor of Eczema Awareness Month that served as an open casting call to the brand’s sensitive skin community. The models featured in the Swipe Serum Foundation campaign were selected through that initiative, reinforcing Tower 28’s mission to create a safe space for sensitive skin.

“Every time we were doing photo shoots, my team would work with the modeling agency, and they would send me these models to recruit, and every single time it was always a girl that had perfect skin. So instead we were like, OK, why don’t we put together an open casting call. We got over 4,000 responses, and we ended up taking 70 of them and putting them in this campaign,” said Liu. 

The foundation will launch alongside the Big Blender Brush, $28, and the Baby Blender Brush, $18, Tower 28’s first tools.