FOTD feat. YSL Couture Palette 3 Afrique etc...

Today I wanted to do a quick post, that's a bit of an all in one: haul, first impressions and face of the day. I only just got the items featured here last night and was very excited to play with them come the morning. I was a bit agitated, putting it lightly, about a multitude of political news, topics that affect everybody, some more directly than others, and was overcome by a cocktail of fear, anger and helplessness, which kept me up most (all) of the night. Needless to say I was in rough shape when I got up, thoroughly tired, but the prospect of getting to play with these new things after brushing my teeth and making a hot glass of lemon water, were motivation enough to get out of bed after all. Some of these products had been on my wish-list for ages, so expectations were high. Others were a relatively fresh infatuation. Let's see how they performed, shall we.

In order of application, the first new item I tried was the Shiseido Sheer Eye Zone Corrector in 102 Light Clair. I'd wanted this for a long time. I was going to get it right before Shiseido colour cosmetics suddenly disappeared for over a year, but opted to try the Natural Finish Cream Concealer instead. Despite it having many rave reviews, I couldn't make it work for me, at all, and rather regretted not choosing the clicky pen type concealer instead. Now, it was finally back, and I was determined to get it.

I'm always on the hunt to improve upon my go-to, the YSL Touche Eclat, which I like, but I feel like something better is out there too. Despite nearly every cosmetics company making an under eye brightening pen like it, my choices are limited due to colour selection. Simply put, they're all too dark, so by design they cannot be brightening on my complexion, and the YSL is. The Shiseido looked like it might be too. The fact that it has a softer, wider brush, costs less and comes with 3.8g of product, while the YSL has 2.5g, were all compelling reasons to give it a shot.

It took 180 clicks for product to finally come up (yes, I counted). Upon application, the concealer is indeed just light enough to suit me, but as I was also dotting it around blemishes and marks to see how it performed there, the colour under my eyes had changed. The best way to describe it is a stick of butter that's a pale yellow and a solid consistency while in the fridge, but that becomes a darker, translucent brown when it hits a hot pan. When the Eye Zone Corrector came in contact with oxygen, the oils and the warmth of my skin, the pigment turned a much deeper yellow and looked much more sheer and glossy than originally. It's not as reflective as the YSL, which I wouldn't mind, but I feel like the presence of those light bouncing particles is what makes the Touche Eclat usable to me in the first place. After one application, I'm not entirely sure if my issue is that it didn't cover the blue darkness under my eyes well enough, or if it made it look worse because the concealer is too dark. I have to play around with it more, but my initial high hopes were sadly not met.

The other Shiseido product I tried for the first time is their Pureness Matifying Compact Oil-Free spf 16 in 20 Light Beige. They didn't have 10 Light Ivory, but based on other Shiseido complexion products, foundations and concealers, I suspect the difference between these shades would have been marginal. This was another product I'd been wanting for a while, because I'd come to the conclusion that a pressed powder was the only way to re-apply spf throughout the day, if you wear makeup. I really wanted something like this for vacation or just summer in general.

Again, this is a much loved product, and my expectations were high, but I'm not sure how I feel about it. It's not at all what I'd expected. While I knew the compacts had pigment, I thought it would be more sheer, more like a powder, but this is definitely a powder foundation, with proper colour and coverage. This makes it more apparent that the shade is very dark for me, it's almost like a very natural bronzer. I think I'll be able to work around that though. I'll just go for more bronzed looks and will make sure to bring it down to my neck and chest, which isn't just vanity, but is actually a good thing, since we tend to forget to apply any Sun protection there.

Another concern though is that over liquid foundation, for me, it feels quite heavy and looks a bit cakey. It's a very soft powder, so it looks rather messy in the pan too. Finally, I didn't find it to control oil well at all. I was shiny immediately after application and throughout the day. I tried using the powder on it's own again a few hours on to combat the shine, with little effect. Finally after ten hours I used a good 3 sheets of blotting paper to relieve the oily discomfort. All in all, I'm still not sure how to get the most out of this powder. The selling point will be how well it actually protects against UVA/UVB damage in practice, and if it performs well, it's definitely worth continuing to try and work with it.

Now for the pièce de résistance of this post, the YSL Couture Palette in 3 Afrique. I went from deciding I might possibly want this palette to actually having it in less than a week. Truth is, I'd been wanting a neutral palette for a while now, and my top contender was the Dior 30 Montaigne. It seemed like the perfect one, with a highlight, pink all over the lid shade, a taupe, a matte brown and a deep brown. Something I look for in palettes, which I generally rarely buy, is a selection of different colours and finishes, not one colour and three pearly highlights, which look different in the pan, but are indistinguishable on the lid. Also, these were colours I didn't have, since the ones I have all are a variation of pinky-mauve-purple, which I've recently found myself incredibly fed up with.

As a whole, I'm quite disappointed in the performance of eyeshadow, low and high end. Everything seems to be too sheer, shiny, creases too easily and fades too fast. While I loved the idea of the Dior palette, I can guess what the performance would be, as I have an old duo, a new single and three cream shadows from them. It's an incredibly beautiful item, but based on previous experience, the colour payoff and wear would be less than average, and I know this, so there would be no one else to blame but myself when the initial high wore off and the barely there, creased looks would make me resent it.

So, I wanted to choose something from a company I didn't own yet. The new YSL quints had caught my eye when they first came out with their Mondrian design, but for some reason I wasn't drawn to them then. I think it's because some of them are guilty of having too many similar colours, so at a glance, the display would leave me uninterested. This one, Afrique, has the most colour variety of the line, and has some of the neutral shades I don't yet own, as well as warmer alternatives to the daily looks I've been looking to spice up. I swatched it, Chanel's Tisse Vendome and Dior's 30 Montaigne. All three had some over-lapping colours, but the YSL seemed to have everything, while also being the most pigmented. Thus, I chose it.

I wasn't sure what I was going to do with the look, but I ended up using all five shades. The lightest shimmery yellow in the inner corner, the pinky-peach over the inner two-thirds, the copper in the outer corner, the plum as a lower-flick starting from the iris, and the bronze blended into it on the lower inner-third. I like how it turned out, and I'm glad to see you can wear every shade in the palette at once, but I doubt I'll be doing that again. The next looks I try will definitely focus on the bronze and plum, as those are the colours that are the most unique to my collection.

YLS claims these shadows are crease-proof for up to 12 hours. I checked for creasing every once in a while and only when I went to remove my makeup after 13ish hours, did I notice there was indeed some creasing. Now, my main lid colours were light and creasing is less noticeable with them as a rule, so it'll be interesting to see how the darker shades perform when they're not merely an accent. The look faded slightly by the evening, but it was a hot day, I ran around, cooked in front of a blazing hot stove, exercised and had a nap, so overall I'm really impressed with how it held up. I did see dark product build-up in the lines under my eyes, but I'm not sure if that's the shadow or the mascara at fault, which I'll talk about next.

The final new piece of makeup in this look is the Maybelline Lash Sensational Mascara. I got this based on a couple of reviews that seemed to suggest this was a tubeing mascara, much like my beloved Kanebo 38C, meaning it was water resistant but removable with hot water. The look you get isn't at all like the Kanebo Volumising 38C, which also has a curved wand, the Maybelline gives a more demure, fluttery lash, kind of like Chanel's Inimitable Intense, which is one of my favourite mascaras. It has a rubber wand, like the Chanel, but the bristles are very soft and don't hurt the eye. I particularly like the convex side of the brush, where the bristles are longer, which is really nice at combing through the lashes.

The look was natural and didn't appear to smear too much. When I went to remove it with water, this is where I have to say it is not like the Kanebo. While some parts of the mascara did indeed come off in little flakes, most of it melted off like dye as per an ordinary mascara, leaving black rings around the eyes which needed to be removed with an actual eye makeup remover. The Kanebo comes off almost entirely in flakes, leaving very little staining of product, nothing that cannot be wiped off with toner or just more water. The Maybelline was easy to remove with a makeup remover, but that makes me wonder how water-resistant it is in practice. I'm actually very pleasantly surprised by it, even though it isn't a dupe for my beloved Sensai, I am eager to keep playing with it.

So, that was my look and my two cents on these four products. Hope you enjoyed the rambling and had a lovely Saturday =)!