After the neutral eyeshadow palette worldwide hysteria that Urban Decay conjured up with their launch of the original Naked palette, it was about time for the drugstore to catch-up. It took four years to be exact, but finally in the UK the first of this new-wave, not-too-pricey, chocker block with bronzey eye goodness offerings has arrived; say hello to the L’Oreal La Palette Nude in Rose. I discovered this when a gaggle of beauty lovers had congregated round a new display in my local Boots. In the centre of this beauty junkie swatch-a-thon was the La Palette Nude and without a moments hesitation in it went to my basket. 10 shades of neutral shadows with a drugstore price tag was enough for my interested to be piqued…
Back at home the testing began. And here are my findings. First up the packaging is nice. It’s plastic, secures well but isn’t too difficult to open, there’s a huge mirror inside and the pans are a decent size and shape to fit your brush into. I love the colours too. The shade name Rose indicates that things are going to be a little bit pinky, but I find that there’s more of a mauve undertone that runs through the colours and the addition of a purple as the darkest shade makes a change from the bog standard matte black. Speaking of mattes, here is where the palette runs into some problems – formula. The palette is split with 6 shimmers and 4 mattes. The shimmers are great; buttery, smooth and soft – though darker skins may struggle with the pigmentation levels of some of the colours. It’s the matte colours that are the problem. They can just come off a little streaky and uneven. How I get around it is by using the shimmers all over the lids and using the mattes in the crease which is where I find the whole streaky problem disappears.
The palette comes in at £14.99 which doesn’t make it the cheapest palette on the block, but for 10 shades housed in a practical way and with some shades in there that make it a bit different from the stereotypical neutral line-up I think it’s justified. In fact that dark purple looks seriously good as a liner (worn above with my other favourite shade, 5th from the right).
There’s a waiting list at Boots.com and it appears that for the meantime it’s a Boots exclusive so that’s where you want to be hunting. Personally my local Boots had a tonne – waiting list sch-mating list, eh? A solid palette, but there’s room for improvement. I can’t wait to see what the new wave brings next…
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