Review - Charlotte Tilbury Bar of Gold

First released in 2013 as a limited edition, the Bar of Gold highlighter is now back in stock! This highlighter has become a cult favourite among collectors, mainly because of how stunning it looks! 
Charlotte Tilbury is well known for her high end products and beautiful packaging. The products look astounding and the items I have tried from her range have all performed really well. It's nice to find a brand that has eye catching packaging and that works like a dream too.

If you Google reviews on the Bar of Gold, probably the first thing you will notice is people saying that it is smaller than expected. It. Is. Tiny. Absolutely miniscule, especially for something that retails at £32. The packaging is also cardboard, which I have seen quite a few complaints about. Ideally I'd like to see this in a plastic or metal component, but it's not the end of the world for me that it's in cardboard. Here's a comparison with a Charlotte Tilbury Lipstick box:

See. Tiny. Good job it's highlighter and that you don't need to use much of it at a time!

On to the swatches! Here is a finger swatch (top) and a brush swatch using the Illamasqua highlighter brush (now discontinued, but I'd compare it to the Morphe M510 if you want an idea of the brush used). No primer, NW10 skin:

I was worried that this would be too dark for my skin, as I tend to find gold highlights too warm toned and dark for me. I was very pleasantly surprised, however, to find that this is very much a white toned gold shade on the skin and looks great on us ghost faced girls (and boys, of course)!

If you're expecting Instagram levels of glow, then this highlighter is definitely not for you. It gives a really pretty, subtle glow to the cheekbones. I'm sure it can be built up, but I really don't think it's necessary with a product like this. I don't have a picture of me wearing this highlighter so I threw some on this afternoon and took a quick picture - please excuse pretty much everything about this picture!!

That's a shadow, not muddy contour I promise!

I really do enjoy this highlighter for day to day use, and I will get a lot of use out of it. I can't see this working well on anything darker than a medium toned skin though (although I'd love you to prove me wrong, please tag me in your swatches on Instagram), and as I said before, if you like the whole "glowing to the gods" Tin Man look then this is definitely not for you. I think it's a great little item for a makeup collector as it's fast becoming an iconic piece of makeup and it's bound to sell out again this time around!