Urban Decay are the undisputed Queens of eyeshadow palettes – I’m sure everyone can remember the mass hysteria surrounding the Naked and Naked 2 launches? Yes I will admit I stalked House of Fraser and Debenhams online daily. They are now taking it one step further by completely overhauling their eyeshadow line and releasing a ‘Build Your Own Palette’* option!
Unlike their previous palette options the ‘Build Your Own Palette’ allows you to do exactly that. Complete with a custom Good Karma Shadow Brush and the perfect nude eyeshadow, Walk of Shame, which is exclusive to this palette, this mirrored palette includes five empty spaces for you to pop in your favourite Urban Decay shadows. The great thing about this customisable option is that you buy the shadows in single form in their own individual packaging, you then just pop out the eyshadow platform and then slot them into the space. No ‘depotting’ here! It’s a nice and flexible option as you can flit between having them in the palette or using them just from their single pot.
To coincide with the launch of the new palette, Urban Decay have completely overhauled their eyeshadow line. Now with 68 shades in satin, shimmer, sparkle, duo-tone and matte formulas the line now includes all-time favourites, must-haves from the matte and duo-chrome collections and shades previously only available in palettes. The new eyeshadows have been reformulated to have a more richer and dense colour, a smoother more uniform pigment and longer lasting wear. For my palette I chose the shades, Roach, Baked, Midnight Cowgirl, Sin and Toasted. You get 1.5 grams of product and the little touch that got me is the colour coordinated sticker on the back of the pot that corresponds to the shade – cute!
So my thoughts? Well firstly the design of the palette is gorgeous, it’s about the same thickness as the previous Naked palettes but more of a square shape and I love the Rorschach-inspired pattern. I’m also a fan of the fact that there are six shadow spaces, I’m not a huge eyeshadow wearer but when I do I think that six is a nice number, especially when you add eyebrow shadows into the mix. The idea of having a nude shade in every palette is a nice touch as well, you can never have too many neutral shades and Walk of Shame is the perfect matte shade for my all over lid colour. It’s also pretty nifty how flexible the palette is and how you can chop and change from having shadows in the palette and in pot-form. Now onto the negative – the price. The ‘Build Your Own Palette’ which contains six eyeshadow slots, the Good Karma Shadow Brush and the Walk of Shame Shadow will set you back £14, not bad. However each of the shadows also costs £14, bringing the total cost of filling a palette to £84. Making it about £15 more than if you were to fill up a palette with six MAC eyeshadows (if that option existed). However I guess with any customisable makeup option they are always going to be higher price and something that this system offers is the fact that the eyeshadows can be used in the palette or on their own with is something that MAC doesn’t do.
So what do you think? The ‘Build Your Own Palettes’ and the reformulated eyeshadow range will be available from Debenhams and House of Fraser stores and then online at Debenhams, House of Fraser, Beauty Bay, Look Fantastic and HQ Hair from May 8th in the UK. You guys in the US are lucky, it’s all available already from the US Urban Decay website. So will you be building your own?
*PR Sample
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