Diorshow Fusion Mono #381 Millenium pt2

After putting Millenium to the test to see just how intense of a look it could deliver in my previous post, the following morning I wanted to see how I personally could get the most use out of it.

One of the ways I thought I'd be using it is as liner. I tried that the day after I got it as part of my every day look and I have to say, it doesn't work very well for that. It is a decently opaque shadow, but it's also very glittery, which I love, and considering it's not actually a dark colour to begin with, combined with the amount of light it catches, it just doesn't provide enough definition as a liner. I don't wear mascara on my lower lashes, but ever since I set out to use up four of the six eyeshadows (at the time) that I had laying around for years and years, coupled with my acquisition of the Eye Believe brush, I've been loving using eyeshadow on an angled liner brush to define my lower lash line. Even though Millenium on its own does not work for this, it actually works really nicely with the very shadow I've been using (up) for liner – an absolutely ancient, and needless to say discontinued, darker shade of the Dior duo in #455 Diorwild (I think, the writing is very faded). I'll be writing a separate post on these old shadows and other products I'm working on using up for various reasons, and going into the looks I've come up with that have made them at least bearable and even likable in some cases, but that's for a different post. On to the Millenium look.

Christian Dior Millenium in bright sunshine. 

All I've done is applied the cream shadow with a laydown brush all over the mobile lid and blended it up to the crease. I reapplied it in the center of the lid to try and build up the colour, but there's no point really. You pretty much get its full intensity at first swipe. I did apply it with a liner brush onto the lower lash line, because cream shadows are supposed to be great bases under powder eyeshadows and I wanted to see if that was true. I can't really see a major difference. In fact, the line came out softer than it usually does, since Fusion Mono does have a bit of glitter fallout. Nothing major, but on a line that thin it's a bit more apparent, so it sort of looks like a gold toned halo under the darker, swampy shade from the Diorwild duo I used as a liner over it. Because a rougher liner brush creates some fallout in the pan, I usually pick up the dark green crumbs in Diorwild with my laydown brush and apply a single tap of colour to the outer corner of my lid (reduces the amount of shadow mess in the compact), which is what I did here as well, blended into the crease. To finish off, I used a matte white eyeshadow for highlight.

After about six hours I can see some creasing, however, I can also clearly see that it's my mascara that's doing it, not the shadow. I'm quite confident it won't do this once I've moved on to a new, and hopefully better mascara (because the one I currently use, Noir Couture by Givenchy, transfers immediately from my upper lashes to the bottom and would transfer underneath my eyes if I wore a concealer, which never happened with any previous mascara I've owned). I don't use primer, so I can't comment on lasting power and intensity should one be applied first. I only go over my lids with a virtually dry foundation brush and set it with powder, before applying eye makeup.

This is only the third cream eyeshadow I've ever owned. The first was a million years ago (ok, actually something like 12) by Maybelline in a squeezy tube, the next (now discontinued) by Clinique in the same sort of packaging, and now the Fusion Mono. I'd been looking at Chanel's Illusion d'Ombre cream shadows for a long time, particularly Epatante and Emerveille, the green and purple toned ones, and just never took the plunge. When Dior came out with their version this fall, I was intrigued to see some of the colours echoed does of Chanel. There are plenty of swatches out there that compare the entire range of Chanel and Dior cream shadows, which is exactly what I did in the department store as well. They are different but similar enough to not need both, and I have to say I preferred the Dior ever so slightly over Chanel and since you get much more product in the jar for roughly the same price, it made the decision quite easy.

I'm doing my best to be careful and keeping the lid nice and tightly closed. It would be interesting to know if it's humanly possible to use these sort of cream shadows up without them drying up first (I certainly hope so!), because I don't think I've ever come across a post that would read “today I scraped out the last bits of my Illusion d'Ombre” or anything. Logic would say they've tested the product enough that they shouldn't provide you with a quantity that's impossible to fully use up with ordinary use before it spoils (the time you keep it open while you place your brush, finger or applicator into the product, at a rate that would take to completely empty the jar, is what I mean).

Anyway, I think Millenium is a gorgeous, complex shade of swamp/grey green with mostly gold, silver and pinky glitter, each of which becomes more prominent depending on the light you're in. It's a colour that looks particularly good on brown or hazel eyes, which of course is part of the reason I chose it. I know I personally will get a lot of use and wear out of it, both in everyday as well as special occasion looks. I want to see how it wears more thoroughly for about a month, before possibly investing in the other shade I'm lemming, the purple Hypnotique, but at this stage I'm 99% sure it will be my Christmas present to myself come December =).