Let’s start with a disclaimer of sorts: although I am fascinated with smokey eyes (and have done a tutorial about it), I am still pretty clumsy when it comes to it. That’s perhaps because for years I looked and looked for a formula that would work for me, but never quite found it. I tried everything, from kohl to eyeshadows, cream crayons and other tools: nothing really worked and I pretty much always end up looking either way too done up or like a really sad raccoon (which is a really cute look… on a raccoon).
Things have changed though… Just before I flew off to California last month, I received which is the latest eye make-up offering from L’Oréal. Anything that comes straight from the mothership can’t be bad, so I dutifully packed it in my make-up bag, set on spending a few hours of my holiday playing around with it. Little did I know those few hours would be spent on the beach, with the Pacific ocean as a soundtrack to my smokey eye initiation.
So let’s talk shop – as I said, I packed the palette in my make-up bag and before I even tried the product, I was into it just because of the packaging: it is sleek and compact, feels nice and sturdy, with a big mirror and a good brush. It feels actually quite luxurious for a drugstore product (it costs £14.99) and this is definitely a plus.
Opening it up, you have ten shades, from the lightest beige (which to me looks like it has a slight rose tint to it) all the way to a charcoal grey. Some shades are matte, some shimmery. Basically with those ten shades you pretty much have all bases covered when it comes to eye shadow, so that’s pretty economical. When this arrives, I promptly donated most of my eye shadow collection to friends as this selection is enough for me.
I know I talked a lot about smokey eyes earlier in the post and this is definitely a good tool to put together a smouldering yet natural look without too much effort, but the way I ended up using the palette was a couple shades at a time, to change my make-up routine a little every day. The darker hues are perfect to be used as a subtle liner while the lighter ones make great primers/unifiers. I am also really into the shimmery tones as brightening accents in the inner corners of my eyes. If like me you have issues with dark circles, this is a great little trick for an instant lift.
The large mirror is perfect to really see what you are doing, or can also be used as a spy mirror. In my case, I used it to look at the ocean!
Look 1 – First colour on the entire lid + lightest brown in the crease + shimmery beige rose in inner corner.
I really enjoyed the brush that comes with the palette, great for smudging and applying.
Look 2 – Charcoal grey on the entire lid + beige blended in at the corners + brown on the waterline.
