NARSissist Loaded Eyeshadow Palette

At the moment, every blogger and their dog is banging on about the Urban Decay Naked Heat palette and I admit, it IS a beauty.  But feast your eyes on this.  This is the NARS NARSissist Loaded eye shadow palette (£55 from Space NK) and it is completely beautiful.  Comparisons aside, what do I think of this?  How well has it slotted into my makeup palette collection?

The packaging

As you would expect from NARS, the packaging is to die for.  Both the box and the palette itself are mirrored gold with a huge NARS logo on the front.  It’s beautiful, if a little impractical when carrying it around in your makeup bag because it gets so smudgy.

The other thing I love about this palette is the size – it isn’t as wide as the Naked palettes, which means it fits more easily in my makeup bag and is easier to carry around.  It also goes beautifully with my Unfiltered II cheek palette.

I also like it how they’ve put a bigger gap between the pans than in the original NARSissist palette because it means there is less chance of blurring the shades together.

The colours

The colours in this palette are just so perfect for me.  I’m all about the bronzey browns and this palette is full of warm shades that I love.  Every single one is wearable every day and I’m pretty sure I’ve already used them all.

My only complaint on the shade range would be that the black (bottom right) is a bit of a blue black rather than a true black, which doesn’t sit quite as well with the other colours.

The swatches

Windsor is the ideal nude for me – it’s a perfect match to my skintone and makes a great base.  Foix, Castille and Alnwick are gorgeous orangey, reddy browns that are still very wearable.  Privilege, Splendor and Versailles are all deep metallics that deepen any combination of the other colours.

I love them all – which looks like your favourite shade?

The pigmentation

I had read online that the texture of the shadow was a bit chalky, and on the whole, I totally disagree with this. The metallic shades in particular are really soft and deeply pigmented – as you can see on the swatches.  The paler matte shades are also very blendable.

Where the palette falls down a little bit, somewhat surprisingly, is on the darker shades.  I had to work at these to get colour on my finger and even then, you can see that Montaillou (the dark purple brown) is patchy.

The joy of the NARS eye shadows is that you can wear them wet or dry, but I have yet to try these colours wet.  I would like to though, because I do get fall out when using them dry.

Cruelty free?

Very sadly, after I had bought this palette, NARS have declared that they are going to sell their products in China, and so will test them on animals.  I’m really gutted because I was just getting into NARS products and I had my eye on the Orgasm lipstick, but now I won’t be bothering!

What’s your favourite shade in the NARSissist Loaded palette?

♥ JH

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