Review: Chanel Illusion d'Ombre in #90 "Convoitise"

Definitely pricier than my usual fare, I picked up Chanel's Illusion d'Ombre from their recent Spring collection (mostly on a whim) the last time I was at The Bay. I have a real weakness for gold lustre eye shadows and this one looked particularly beautiful.

Convoiste, which translates to "lust" in French, is a very pretty true-gold color. I find a lot of gold eyeshadows/dusts have a tendency to either be too brown or yellow, but there is something pure, radiant and luminous about this shade.

 

A little less luminous and radiant is the price. You get 4g of product in this beautiful glass jar for $36.00 Canadian. Compare that to the $8-10 you spend on the same 4g of Maybelline's Color Tattoos or the $9-12 for L'Oreal's 3.5g LaColeur Infallible eye shadows, and it's a bit of a hard pill to swallow.

 With that said, this is Chanel with its great reputation for high quality and impeccable taste. Right?

Well... as much as I loved the color (and it is gorgeous), the texture and wear of this are a little disappointing.

  

  

 

The top two swatches are the result of me really working the product up on my index finger and trying to build it up as much as possible on the back of my hand. At most, that's the amount of opacity you can expect. The bottom swatch is the product worked a little more thinly along the hand.

Now, what I was more hoping for was, if not a more opaque color, then at least a really pretty highlighting shade for a brow bone or just a simpler lid. But the glitter is a bit too obvious for that, and while my eyelid looks pretty with this swept across it, there's no real "wow" factor here. The product does appear to be long-lasting, but it's hard to tell, given its sheerness.

Rating this is tough, because overall I did like it, but I feel as though the drug store has caught up enormously in the past few years, and there's no reason to spend $36.00 on this product when L'Oreal and Maybelline offer dupes for less than a third of the cost.

Overall, I give Chanel's Illusion d'Ombre in Convoitise a B-, with no plans to repurchase.

Have you tried any of the other Illusion d'Ombre shades? Tell me what you think below.