Destination Nudes Eyeshadow Palette

2 Reviews

1. 

   joyfulTortoise1

   Reply

   Probably up there with my biggest wastes of money on makeup this year. I think there are probably cheap drugstore brands that could outperform these chalky, dusty, messy, hard to blend shadows. The palette looked beautiful in the store, with a nice selection of colors, especially a soft, silvery gray-green. I do remember swiping a bit on my fingers and being satisfied with the pigmentation….so what happened between then and when I got this palette home and actually tried applying the shadows?

   Takes forever to build color. A little better coverage with a damp brush, but that shouldn’t be necessary. Some of the shades are very patchy. I was able to blend them out, but even with a primer, by the end of the day, the shadows had faded considerably. I will keep it, maybe try it with some different primers, or use it for days when I just want a single swipe of something simple on my lids….but mostly, I’m thinking this was 58 bucks down the drain.

2. 

   wakefulPlover1

   Reply

   This was my biggest makeup disappointment of 2018. I’ve loved the Lune+Aster products I’ve tried so far, and when I saw this palette, I thought it was made for me–a beautiful selection of mostly light-to-medium shades with a great mix of matte and shimmer shadows. So I took the plunge and ordered it, despite the fact that I rarely buy palettes. What I got, for $58, was something not even of drugstore quality. Here’s why:

   – I’ve never owned a palette in which the shadows were not in pans in the palette. In this palettes, the colors are just square tablets of powder glued loosely into the component, and they fall out easily. I was fortunate that the few that fell out when I turned the palette over to read the label on the back didn’t shatter. For the price, I don’t expect to have to deal with unprotected tablets of shadow potentially falling out. (The palette itself is cheap blue plastic, but it is sturdy and has a large mirror.)

   – The matte shadows, with the exception of the cream shade in the upper left corner, are chalky, crumbly, lightly pigmented, and difficult to apply and blend. The shimmer shadows have a somewhat better texture, but touching a brush to the shadow creates a great deal of kickup in the pan, which then spreads across the other shadows. Application is a nightmare of fallout. (I don’t use a damp brush because I don’t like an intense look, and the shadows should apply well without it.)

   – The pigmentation varies wildly among the shades, as does adherence and staying power. (I wore them over Lune+ Aster’s Primer, which I love.)

   – Oddly, every single shadow has a pink undertone. (I swatched them all on my arm and looked at them in daylight because I thought it couldn’t be possible. I was wrong.) This may be desirable for some, but pink-undertoned shadows make my eyes look tired and are generally unflattering.

   Needless to say, I have returned this item. This is a great concept–the shadows are arranged in vertical rows by geographic name, which makes it easy to coordinate a look–and the shades would be beautiful without that insidious pink undertone. Perhaps Lune+Aster rushed to get this out for the holidays, but if that’s the case, it was a grand mistake. I’d love to see similar shades, without the pink base and of great quality, in the future. The shades (in in the component) really were beautiful and many were unique, which appealed to me, as well as the fact that there weren’t a lot of dark shadows that I would not use (my eyes are deep-set, so crease colors are useless to me–I have enough natural shadows around my eyes). I understand that their other palettes are great quality and they’re pretty and practical; however, this experience has, sadly, made me wary of the brand. (However, Lune+Aster is BlueMercury’s house /owner’s brand and, to their credit, they’ve left my review and several similar to it up on their website.)