‘Tis the season to sparkle, and the Clarins Holiday 2016 The Essentials palette* ($62) is here to help you do just that. This year’s limited-edition holiday palette is a beautiful collection of rosy neutral shades that includes three mattes, six satins and one iridescent shadow to glam up your Christmas party makeup look.
In true Clarins fashion, this palette is not only beautiful to look at and fun to use, it’s also a treat for your skin. The shadows are formulated with annatto oil, which makes them super soft and comfortable to wear.
This is one for the sparkle lovers, there’s no doubt about it, but the matte shades certainly hold their own. They’re beautifully neutral, super pigmented, and a treat to blend.
While most of the satin shades are pigmented, soft and blendable too, I’ve found the consistency of shade 4 and 7 to be a little stiffer than the others and not as easy to work with. I’ve also experienced a lot of fallout with some of the satin shades and found a couple of them to have very chunky glitter. Chunky glitter is not my thing, but if you’re a sparkly unicorn, this will be a good palette to pick up before it disappears forever, though I have to say that for the price, I was a little bit disappointed with the overall quality of the palette.
The palette comes in a very pretty cardboard case engraved with gold flowers, and it features a good-sized mirror and a brush. The brush is a nice addition and surprisingly good quality considering it comes with the palette, but I personally prefer a larger, fluffier brush when blending out eye shadows. Though there’s nothing wrong with the packaging itself, I do find it lacks the festive touch that tends to attract me to limited-edition Holiday collections.
CLARINS IS GIVING BACK
Nothing is better than treating yourself and knowing that you’re doing something good at the same time. This year, Clarins’ mission is to protect the Amazon rainforest’s rich ecosystem. The Essentials palette comes with a code that you can enter on the Clarins website to activate the plantation of a tree in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest.
Good to know, right? Not that you need a reason to treat yourself or your makeup-loving loved ones…
TL;DR?
I love the cool-toned rosy shade selection and I’ve been using the matte shades a lot, but overall this year’s holiday palette is just a liiiiittle bit too much sparkle for me.
The Clarins Holiday 2016 The Essentials Eye Make-Up Palette online on the Clarins website or at the Bay.
*PR samples featured
