This year, I've been waiting impatiently for the holiday collections, but only few seem to excite me. On the luxury side of make-up, I was interested in the Dior and Tom Ford collection and because Tom Ford is hard to get by, I went with the Dior eyeshadow palettes. Fun fact: since 2014, the Belgian Peter Philips is Creative Director for Make-up. He also is a friend of Raf Simons.
The palettes retail for a staggering € 66. You might wonder why someone would pay this much for only five shades, when you can get the new Huda Beauty palette, which has 18 shades, for about € 60? Well, those big palettes don't excite me at all! They always seem to need to include certain neutral matte shades, which I already have plenty of and there are colour I don't want. The thing about smaller palettes is that they are very convenient. You don't have to think a lot, because you only get about five shades, but at the same time, I never find them boring. I also like that they are in a way linked with the current fashion collections of the brand. They also spark more joy, just because of the brand ;)
Anyhow, let's get into these two gems!
The two palettes are called Celebrate in Gold and Party in Colours.
Celebrate in Gold
In this palette, you get five very elegant neutral shade. They all have a baked gelée formula, but they have different finishes. The most left swatched shades have a beautiful and refined glittery shine. I especially love the middle taupe shade. Then you have a darker chocolate brown, with a harder texture and more of a satin finish. very nice in the crease or for a quick smokey eye. And Lastly you have a nicely pigmented black. You can effortlesly create a look with only this pamette, without the need of any matte transition shade. They all blend effortlesly, which I find typical for a baked gelée formula. And another nice advantage is that they are lovely when used wet. It reminds me of the Nars NARSissist Dual-Intensity palette.
My favourite look is a simple 'smokey' eye with the taupe on the lid and at the height of my iris, a llittle bit of gold.
Overall, I definitely love this palette a lot and I wil get tons of use out of it! I'm glad I have this to replace my Nars palette.
Party in Colours
Here we have the fun counterpart of the neutral palette. They also have the same baked gelée formula as the previous quint. The pink, silver and gold are very vibrant shimmer shade and thanks to the texture, they look elegant and sophisticated. I think this texture is great for all ages and will never look garish. The green is probably my favourite shade. It's a deep green duochrome, with a somewhat warm purple base. Very unique!
Then the blue... Not what you would expect. It's, more matte dry in texture and hard pressed. It's more difficult to pick up on a brush and less opaque in pigment. I do think it looks really nice in the crease and I don't see it as a complete dud. You just need to do some more effort if you want to achieve a deep, rich blue. I suggest working with a cream colour base.
This is a lovely palette if you are looking for a companion palette for your neutrals. The pink thows me off a little bit, but that is purely personal preference.
The look I created with this palette is done on top of the nude look from the other palette and I softened the pink with the gold, which makes it less vibrant than it actually is.
As a final note, I just want to tell you that I'm a littele bit thrown off with the promotional picture (right pitcure abouve) I found on the Dior Make-up Instagram. The green and silver seem accurate, but Dior is selling you a very different blue than the one in the palette and where the fuck do you see a purple?! They don't even sell a purple eye pencil in this collection! I think brands shoud portray their products more realistic and more correct. If you, as creative director have to use other products to realise your vision, it's like saying that your collection isn't good enough. You're promising something to your customers you can't deliver.
Let me know what you think in the comments!
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