Following on from my anti-haul blog, I'm reviewing the palette that was number one on my list when I first started writing it, the first palette release from PLouise - a brand owned by Manchester based makeup artist, Paige Louise.
Paige has worked as a makeup artist for several years and now runs her own academy, where she and her team run physical and online courses at various price ranges. If you have an Instagram account and an interest in makeup, then you are sure to have come across her or her work at some point.
This palette launched in January and I could not have been less interested. I am not a fan of this brand in any way, shape or form. I dislike their signature look and the public persona of the brand owner. I'm not going to bang on about why I can't stand the brand, because I want to review this palette fairly and not turn this into a rant about the brand. I will say though, that I wanted to hate this palette!
I had heard so many good things about the quality of this palette, and while I was telling myself that the fans of this brand will not say a bad word about it, even if it sucked ass, I also started having serious makeup FOMO! What's a girl to do in this situation?
I'll tell you what - buy a second hand palette! That way I get to try it, pay less than retail for it and since it's already been purchased, I am not giving my money directly to the brand or increasing their sales. Well, that's what I told myself, anyway.
So, the palette came and it was in good condition. The packaging bored the life out of me, but I get what they're going for - sleek and professional looking, a bit like Mac or Illamasqua's packaging style. It's a black cardboard palette with rose gold writing and a slipcase to match. I couldn't be less inspired by the way this is presented. But, I must tell myself that not everyone thinks that they're a unicorn trapped in a human body, not everything must be covered in glitter and some people actually like sensible things.
The inside of the palette isn't much more inspiring I have to say. Yet another sea of warm tones, I honestly think I'm going to poke my eyeballs out with a blending brush if I see one more palette with these colours, I am so done with this trend!
However, this is what is trending right now, of course it makes sense to bring a warm toned palette to market for your first release.
There are ten matte shades and two shimmers. I do like a palette to have more mattes than shimmers, and this comes with a matte white which always makes me very happy as I set my eyeshadow primer with white every time I do my makeup (yes, I know that's not how she teaches you to do your makeup but I am not interested in that, thanks). And I do love a good red eyeshadow. But is this red good? Red shadows are notoriously difficult to formulate, to the point that not many brands even bother to release them. Sugarpill Love Plus and Illamasqua Daemon are both excellent reds and I was curious as to whether the fangirls were right and this really was on par, quality wise with those.
I applied these shadows directly to my eyes before I swatched them, and I'm glad I did. This palette swatches terribly. I swatched this the same way I do everything - over primer, using an Illamasqua flat brush for the shimmer shades and a Wayne Goss flat brush for the mattes, building up the colour to my desired opacity. As you can tell, some shadows were quite patchy, and they took an awful lot of building up. I didn't have any problems at all on the eyes though, I actually found that they applied and blended very nicely.
These shadows are quite finely milled and very tightly packed, they do feel slightly dry to the touch (although I didn''t find that this affected the use) and there is little kickback in the pan. I experienced no fallout when applying this to my eyes.
I used the shades that appealed to me in this palette - Plouise, Sunkissed, Burnt, Queen, Charm, Martini and Slay. They blended really well and the red shade, Queen really was very pigmented and the colour payoff was excellent. I do think this shade is almost as good as Sugarpill or Illamasqua.
I would have liked to have had a little more colour intensity from all of the shades, however the shadows oxidised on my eyelids quite quickly after taking this picture and gave me the sunset eye I was looking for!
All in all, while I do think that this palette performs well, the colour selection has been done to death and I would never touch the browns in this, so essentially it's been just a very expensive red eyeshadow for me. I have already sold this on because I will never use it again, but if the brand ever released a palette of bright colours then I'd definitely try that out too. For now, though, I am going to stick with my beloved Sugarpill shadow which cost me £8 and didn't come with a load of boring colours I'll never use.
