DIOR COUTURE GOLDS EYESHADOW PALETTE REVIEW (LES ROUGES OR HOLIDAY COLLECTION)

I’ve always admired Dior’s eyeshadow palettes. Whenever I would walk by one in a store, I would stop, swatch, and drool (away from the tester, of course). Then I would promptly sigh and walk away, all the while wishing I could bring myself to spend so much money on makeup. Most recently, I was attracted to the Les Rouges Or Holiday 2011 display.

The shadows seemed right up my alley – tinged with gold, but still fairly neutral. While in the store, 4 of the 5 shadows swatched like a dream on my fingertips. Thus, after years of pining, I finally caved and bought my first Dior eye palette: the 5 Couleurs Eyeshadow Palette in (554) Couture Golds.

After driving 90 miles per hour and nearly causing several traffic accidents (I kid, I kid.) I arrived home and excitedly opened my new treasure. The palette comes in Dior’s standard packaging: tucked inside a black velvet pouch is a navy blue lacquered case with “Dior” embossed in silver atop a pearly blue “CD” holograph. It contains 6 grams/0.21 ounces of shadow and cost $59.

Despite having a beautiful mix of colors, this palette was an utter disappointment. As I mentioned, most of the shadows seemed very pigmented and silky on my fingertips. It wasn’t until I tried creating a few looks with brushes that I realized I had been deceived.

Colors breakdown (from top left to right, center is last):

• Shimmery white with a hint of champagne. Buttery smooth and extremely pigmented.  Excellent for highlighting the inner tear duct and brow bone (although it did emphasize my need for a good tweezing). Blended easily.
• Shimmery bronzed gold. Buttery smooth and seemed pigmented when swatched, but poor color payoff when applied on the lid. Required multiple layers to have the shadow show up as expected.
• Matte espresso with gold and red microglitter. It appeared to have real depth and dimension in the pan, but was nothing special on the eye. Very chalky and applied unevenly.  Sheer and required multiple layers to create tolerable color intensity. Difficult to blend.
• Shimmery antiqued gold. Buttery smooth with excellent color payoff.  Blended easily. This was my favorite color of the palette, but it was a bit too similar to my skin tone (NW20 in MAC) to show up as intensely as I would have liked.
• Pale gold with gold microglitter. Extremely sheer and difficult to build. When applied, the gold is very faint and all that jumps out is glitter.  Prone to a lot of fall-out. Reminiscent of Urban Decay Midnight Cowboy Rides Again … for grown-ups.

Regular color intensity. White, bronze, espresso, antiqued gold, pale gold. (Yes, the pale gold is there. It's that sheer.)

Concentrated color intensity. White, bronze, espresso, antiqued gold, pale gold.

The looks that I have put together at home took so long and required extra work to make the shadows behave the way I wanted them to.  I don’t know too many women who have the time or patience to spend over 10 minutes on what should be a 5-minute eye.

And because all of the shadows looked pretty much the same on my lid (with the exception of the dark brown), the colors appeared muddy even without blending. Blending required an extremely light hand or else most of the color intensity disappeared, especially with the dark brown.  Also, even worn over a primer, I found that the colors faded over the course of a few hours. Christine from Temptalia rated this palette a B+, but I have to respectfully disagree. Perhaps this is more flattering on warmer skin tones because it brings out the golden nuances of the shadows? Regardless, this was an expensive mess on me.

Overall verdict: Beautiful in the pan, not so beautiful on the eyes.  For the damage done to my wallet, this palette should be of a much higher quality. Instead, it was a complete disappointment and will be returned.