Anti-Haul: Mauve/Plum/Purple Eyeshadow Palettes
Despite the flood of new eyeshadow palettes in the past few years, I own just a few: Modern Renaissance, Naked2 Basics, a nine-pan custom theBalm palette, and a magnetic palette containing, among other things, slightly less than half (five shades) of a depotted theBalm Nude 'Tude. The newest palette in my collection is Modern Renaissance, which I bought in December 2016; the others are all at least three years old. Of course, by normal-person standards, this is a lot of eyeshadow. But by beauty-blogger standards (which is what we're using here, right? cool), it's almost nothing.
There are a few reasons for my (relative) restraint in this category. First, though I wear eyeshadow almost every day, I'm more of a wash-of-one-neutral-color person than a seven-different-shades-plus-liner-and-falsies person. I also prefer cream and liquid formulas to powders, especially in the current heat and humidity. And even if I were someone who made time to play with multiple eyeshadows every day, I doubt I'd own many more palettes than I already do, for the simple reason that the eyeshadow trends of the past few years haven't been kind to cool-toned people. Most orange, red, and warm brown shadows make me look ill, yet it's been difficult to find anything else.
However, the last couple of months have seen a trend toward purple and plum tones in palettes. This is very exciting for me: I'd be all over a palette full of plum, dusty rose, and mauve shades in matte and shimmer finishes, sort of a cooler-toned Naked 3. So far, none of the new offerings has embodied my ideal, but it's still been hard to resist settling for something not-quite-perfect. So in the spirit of not settling—and in the spirit of our much-missed Lady of Consumption Reduction, Kimberly Clark—I'm going to write up a good old-fashioned anti-haul for some of the palettes that have come out in recent months. I know I'm not the only one who's been wanting a purplish palette, so perhaps this post will help you as well. (All images taken from brand or Sephora websites; pardon the potato quality, but I wasn't going to steal from Temptalia, so.)
1. Natasha Denona Mini Lila Palette ($25)
This one grabbed my attention immediately. Five Natasha Denona eyeshadows for $5 each, when her ten-pan palettes retail for $95? In exactly the color range I've been looking for? Sign me up! And I find huge palettes overwhelming (more on that later), so the small size was appealing, too. The more closely I looked at the shades, though, the clearer it became that this wasn't exactly the color range I'd been looking for. First, the two browns are...weird. The matte brown has a yellow tone that doesn't harmonize with the purples and plums; it seems like a lazy attempt to placate the YouTube beauty gurus who need that WARM TRANSITION SHADE, damn it! I wish this shade were a cool pinkish brown, like ABH Buon Fresco, or a taupe. The shimmery brown is a little better, but still not cool-toned enough for my taste. For that matter, the three purple shades look odd together, even excluding the browns. You've got a practically magenta matte, a purple-blue duochrome, and a brownish plum matte. I just can't imagine many looks in which all five of these shades, or even a few of them, would play well together. It's kind of extraordinary that such a small palette manages to be so disharmonious.
Remember, though, I'm viewing the palette from the perspective of a pale, cool-toned person. Makeup Withdrawal just posted a review of Mini Lila, and it looks great on her because the browns read almost as nudes. If warm browns don't turn as orange on you as they do on me, this could be a decent option.
2. Anastasia Beverly Hills Norvina Palette ($42)
3. Lorac Pro Palette 4 ($44)
I've never tried anything from Lorac, mainly because I have a few irrational prejudices against the brand. First, "Lorac" is the founder's name, Carol, spelled backwards; that's lame. Second, Carol wants us to pronounce it as "luh-ROCK" instead of "LOR-ack." Sorry, Carol, but I'm not going to disregard the conventions of English phonetics for you. Third, Carol did a bizarre, tone-deaf Reddit AMA a few years ago. (I'd highly recommend reading the ONTD post I've linked; it's hilarious.) Fourth, I'm not sure what Lorac's overall concept is supposed to be, and that bothers me. The packaging is drab and boring, and there doesn't seem to be much imagination or creativity behind the products. Try harder, Carol!
Bias aside, though, this isn't the palette for me. At 16 shades, it's the largest on this list, and I find large palettes overwhelming. How anyone uses those 35-shade Morphe palettes without developing decision fatigue in 30 seconds, I have no idea. And I feel like a broken record here, but this is yet another "purple" palette with a bunch of warm-toned brown shades. Most of the shades are around the same level of saturation, too, and I can imagine them blending into a muddy wash. Then there's that baffling matte black with glitter. I thought we weren't doing matte blacks with glitter anymore. Shame on you, Carol.
4. Lime Crime Venus 3 Palette ($38)
The problem with any Lime Crime product is, it's Lime Crime. When I first got into makeup, Lime Crime was notorious for the shady behavior of founder Doe Deere. I don't think many makeup consumers these days are aware of Lime Crime's sordid past, so here's an EXTREMELY long list of Doe's misdeeds, with receipts. (Selling repackaged pigments! Wearing a Hitler Halloween costume! Telling her followers to send nasty messages to Temptalia's personal email! Releasing an offensive "China Doll" palette!) As recently as 2015, Lime Crime's website was hacked and its customers' credit card information stolen, but LC did nothing about the problem until it became public. Doe has stepped back from the brand in the last couple of years, but I'd still feel weird buying anything from Lime Crime, even in 2018. They just seem generally unwilling to acknowledge, let alone make amends for, their many mistakes.
So there's that, but there's also the weird color scheme of this palette. I realize that weird color schemes are Lime Crime's thing, but what is that bright coral doing in an otherwise purple-toned palette with several muted colors? And a larger question: why do brands seem so eager to put bright blue-toned purples and brownish plums together in palettes? Those are two completely different color families, and I'm not crazy about how they look together.
5. Urban Decay Backtalk Palette ($46)
Oh man, was I ever excited about this one when I first heard about it. Urban Decay Vice Lipstick Backtalk, a dusty cool pink in the Comfort Matte formula, is one of my favorite lipsticks ever. It also happens to be the most popular lipstick in the massive Vice lineup (though as a lifelong hipster, I'm not super thrilled about this). As you can see, my tube of Backtalk is well-loved:
What could be better suited to my tastes than an entire palette based on Backtalk? Well, a lot of things, it turns out. The palette skews much warmer than I would have expected (WTF, the warm brown second from right, is aptly named). The quality of the eyeshadows also seems to vary: the shade Backtalk, i.e. the flagship shade of the whole palette, got a D- from Temptalia. And then there's the fact that UD chose to make Backtalk an eye and face palette. This is apparently the post in which I reveal all my irrational prejudices, so let me confess that I have a prejudice against products that try to do more than one thing. Some people might find it convenient to have three blushes and a highlighter attached to their eyeshadow palette, but it just makes the palette look bulky to me. And why three blushes? Most of us, I'd assume, already have at least three blushes that go with the color scheme of this palette. And, if three blushes are really necessary, why are they all medium pinks? I have so many questions, but knowing the answers would probably just baffle and frustrate me further. ANYWAY.
6. Viseart Amethyst Theory Palette ($45)
Let's end with the palette that comes closest to my ideal. Viseart (another brand I've never tried) released Amethyst Theory in April of 2017, which is several geological eras ago in beauty-industry time, but I wasn't aware of it before I started doing research for this post. To be honest, I'd probably buy this palette if it had good reviews. Unfortunately, the few reviews I've been able to find don't speak highly of the formula. Temptalia gave the palette a B overall, and one of the shades received a D-. I still want to swatch this next time I'm at a Sephora that stocks Viseart, but I certainly won't order it without seeing it in person. (Really, I'm just holding out for a ColourPop knockoff.)
From this survey of current palettes, we can conclude that brands just aren't ready to let go of the warm tones that have been selling so well these past few years. (The exception is Viseart, which I see as less trend-driven than the other brands in this post, though I could easily be wrong about that.) This means that we're seeing lots of palettes that feature an awkward combination of warm browns and cool purples/plums. I have a feeling that this transitional stage will be short-lived and the pendulum will continue to swing toward the cooler side of things. For now, all I can do is wait.
Have you picked up any of these palettes? What are you anti-hauling at the moment?
 |
| No, actually, this is a lot. |
There are a few reasons for my (relative) restraint in this category. First, though I wear eyeshadow almost every day, I'm more of a wash-of-one-neutral-color person than a seven-different-shades-plus-liner-and-falsies person. I also prefer cream and liquid formulas to powders, especially in the current heat and humidity. And even if I were someone who made time to play with multiple eyeshadows every day, I doubt I'd own many more palettes than I already do, for the simple reason that the eyeshadow trends of the past few years haven't been kind to cool-toned people. Most orange, red, and warm brown shadows make me look ill, yet it's been difficult to find anything else.
However, the last couple of months have seen a trend toward purple and plum tones in palettes. This is very exciting for me: I'd be all over a palette full of plum, dusty rose, and mauve shades in matte and shimmer finishes, sort of a cooler-toned Naked 3. So far, none of the new offerings has embodied my ideal, but it's still been hard to resist settling for something not-quite-perfect. So in the spirit of not settling—and in the spirit of our much-missed Lady of Consumption Reduction, Kimberly Clark—I'm going to write up a good old-fashioned anti-haul for some of the palettes that have come out in recent months. I know I'm not the only one who's been wanting a purplish palette, so perhaps this post will help you as well. (All images taken from brand or Sephora websites; pardon the potato quality, but I wasn't going to steal from Temptalia, so.)
1. Natasha Denona Mini Lila Palette ($25)
This one grabbed my attention immediately. Five Natasha Denona eyeshadows for $5 each, when her ten-pan palettes retail for $95? In exactly the color range I've been looking for? Sign me up! And I find huge palettes overwhelming (more on that later), so the small size was appealing, too. The more closely I looked at the shades, though, the clearer it became that this wasn't exactly the color range I'd been looking for. First, the two browns are...weird. The matte brown has a yellow tone that doesn't harmonize with the purples and plums; it seems like a lazy attempt to placate the YouTube beauty gurus who need that WARM TRANSITION SHADE, damn it! I wish this shade were a cool pinkish brown, like ABH Buon Fresco, or a taupe. The shimmery brown is a little better, but still not cool-toned enough for my taste. For that matter, the three purple shades look odd together, even excluding the browns. You've got a practically magenta matte, a purple-blue duochrome, and a brownish plum matte. I just can't imagine many looks in which all five of these shades, or even a few of them, would play well together. It's kind of extraordinary that such a small palette manages to be so disharmonious.
Remember, though, I'm viewing the palette from the perspective of a pale, cool-toned person. Makeup Withdrawal just posted a review of Mini Lila, and it looks great on her because the browns read almost as nudes. If warm browns don't turn as orange on you as they do on me, this could be a decent option.
2. Anastasia Beverly Hills Norvina Palette ($42)
This is the big one, of course. It's even featured on the cover of the Ulta catalog I received yesterday (side note: why is Ulta sending me physical catalogs? is it 1998?). I get a lot of use out of my Modern Renaissance palette, so I was excited to hear that ABH was making a purple-toned palette, but my heart dropped when I saw the first photos. Norvina has the problems of the Mini Lila palette on a larger scale: ABH just can't jettison those warm brown transition shades, and the overall color scheme suffers as a result. I think the lavender packaging has fooled people into seeing the palette as cooler-toned overall than it really is, but it's just Soft Glam with a couple of purples and plums thrown in. I'm also not a fan of ABH's metallic formula, which is too thick and clumpy for my textured eyelids, and this palette contains seven metallics. I love Volatile and Passion, though, and it would be cool if they were available as singles (they're not; I checked).
Also, do I really want an eyeshadow palette bearing the name of a woman who, when she received perfectly valid criticism about the Subculture palette, accused her customers of not being able to use makeup? Nah, I'm good.
Update, 8/17: I swatched Norvina at Ulta last weekend and was really disappointed in the matte shades. Not only are most of them even warmer-toned than they appear above, but some of them are also very patchy and/or powdery. From left to right, we have Soul, Incense, Love, Volatile, Passion, and Eccentric:
Bias aside, though, this isn't the palette for me. At 16 shades, it's the largest on this list, and I find large palettes overwhelming. How anyone uses those 35-shade Morphe palettes without developing decision fatigue in 30 seconds, I have no idea. And I feel like a broken record here, but this is yet another "purple" palette with a bunch of warm-toned brown shades. Most of the shades are around the same level of saturation, too, and I can imagine them blending into a muddy wash. Then there's that baffling matte black with glitter. I thought we weren't doing matte blacks with glitter anymore. Shame on you, Carol.
4. Lime Crime Venus 3 Palette ($38)
The problem with any Lime Crime product is, it's Lime Crime. When I first got into makeup, Lime Crime was notorious for the shady behavior of founder Doe Deere. I don't think many makeup consumers these days are aware of Lime Crime's sordid past, so here's an EXTREMELY long list of Doe's misdeeds, with receipts. (Selling repackaged pigments! Wearing a Hitler Halloween costume! Telling her followers to send nasty messages to Temptalia's personal email! Releasing an offensive "China Doll" palette!) As recently as 2015, Lime Crime's website was hacked and its customers' credit card information stolen, but LC did nothing about the problem until it became public. Doe has stepped back from the brand in the last couple of years, but I'd still feel weird buying anything from Lime Crime, even in 2018. They just seem generally unwilling to acknowledge, let alone make amends for, their many mistakes.
So there's that, but there's also the weird color scheme of this palette. I realize that weird color schemes are Lime Crime's thing, but what is that bright coral doing in an otherwise purple-toned palette with several muted colors? And a larger question: why do brands seem so eager to put bright blue-toned purples and brownish plums together in palettes? Those are two completely different color families, and I'm not crazy about how they look together.
5. Urban Decay Backtalk Palette ($46)
Oh man, was I ever excited about this one when I first heard about it. Urban Decay Vice Lipstick Backtalk, a dusty cool pink in the Comfort Matte formula, is one of my favorite lipsticks ever. It also happens to be the most popular lipstick in the massive Vice lineup (though as a lifelong hipster, I'm not super thrilled about this). As you can see, my tube of Backtalk is well-loved:
What could be better suited to my tastes than an entire palette based on Backtalk? Well, a lot of things, it turns out. The palette skews much warmer than I would have expected (WTF, the warm brown second from right, is aptly named). The quality of the eyeshadows also seems to vary: the shade Backtalk, i.e. the flagship shade of the whole palette, got a D- from Temptalia. And then there's the fact that UD chose to make Backtalk an eye and face palette. This is apparently the post in which I reveal all my irrational prejudices, so let me confess that I have a prejudice against products that try to do more than one thing. Some people might find it convenient to have three blushes and a highlighter attached to their eyeshadow palette, but it just makes the palette look bulky to me. And why three blushes? Most of us, I'd assume, already have at least three blushes that go with the color scheme of this palette. And, if three blushes are really necessary, why are they all medium pinks? I have so many questions, but knowing the answers would probably just baffle and frustrate me further. ANYWAY.
6. Viseart Amethyst Theory Palette ($45)
Let's end with the palette that comes closest to my ideal. Viseart (another brand I've never tried) released Amethyst Theory in April of 2017, which is several geological eras ago in beauty-industry time, but I wasn't aware of it before I started doing research for this post. To be honest, I'd probably buy this palette if it had good reviews. Unfortunately, the few reviews I've been able to find don't speak highly of the formula. Temptalia gave the palette a B overall, and one of the shades received a D-. I still want to swatch this next time I'm at a Sephora that stocks Viseart, but I certainly won't order it without seeing it in person. (Really, I'm just holding out for a ColourPop knockoff.)
From this survey of current palettes, we can conclude that brands just aren't ready to let go of the warm tones that have been selling so well these past few years. (The exception is Viseart, which I see as less trend-driven than the other brands in this post, though I could easily be wrong about that.) This means that we're seeing lots of palettes that feature an awkward combination of warm browns and cool purples/plums. I have a feeling that this transitional stage will be short-lived and the pendulum will continue to swing toward the cooler side of things. For now, all I can do is wait.
Have you picked up any of these palettes? What are you anti-hauling at the moment?
Comments
Post a Comment