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.

In Defense of the Department Store Makeup Placebo Effect

My birthday is a week before Valentine’s Day, and then my boyfriend’s birthday is a week after that. So February is a bit of an insane time, hence the lack of new posts. I didn’t photograph my birthday weekend in Seattle because I’ve found over time that when I’m glued to my camera I get a lot of great photographs of a place I didn’t really experience myself, goofy and sentimental as that might sound.

In any event, it’s been three weeks of cheaper US alcohol, sub-par Seattle coffee (seriously, Seattle, Vancouver is kicking your ass) and makeup. Sorry, no-buy promise.

My boyfriend (possibly at my behest) bought me the Urban Decay Glinda pallet, I bought myself a L'Occitane hand cream (I did use up my Soap and Glory), and finally (here's the big one) I bought an eyeshadow quad and a cream eyeshadow from Chanel.

I regret next to nothing.

But finally owning some great high-end makeup again reminded me of something, something that this no-buy (or low-buy) promise has reinforced: Department store makeup isn’t universally better than drug store makeup. There are still plenty of products that you can buy at the drug store that rival anything you can find in a department store -- particularly when it comes to mascaras or glosses. But the placebo effect that high-end cosmetics create can't be ignored. I find that I treat my more expensive products better, which in turn means that I get more out of a Chanel compact than a L’Oreal one.

If you spend $60 on an eye shadow quad, you are going to use that thing to the bone – because otherwise, it’s an enormous waste of money. And you’re going to be incredibly careful in picking it out. On top of that, the lighting is better when you're testing it (so you get a better idea of how it actually looks) and everything in a department store has a tester.

But if you spent $7 on an eyeshadow quad, you might pick it up a little less carefully, and ultimately who cares if the colors don’t quite go? Then you buy another, because you really meant to get the brown one, as the purple one wasn’t really that practical. Oh, well, the highlight shade doesn’t go, but that’s okay. On and on. So before you know it, you’ve spent $70 on a pile of drug store eyeshadows, none of which are quite right, and none of which you ever end up using all that often.

This, as I’ve hinted before, is the genius of drug store makeup. You spend more money on more products that you like less. And then you treat those products more harshly, causing them to break or get dirty faster, meaning you throw them out more frequently.

I would say 75-90% of the time, I wind up not liking the color/texture of a drug store product as much as I thought I would. Compared to 5% of the time with high-end. So I wind up buying an armload of eyeshadows because I'm still looking for *the* taupe or *the* green. Whereas my one Chanel eyeshadow quad is perfect. Everything about the way it looks is perfect. And maybe that's psychosomatic, but ultimately aren't cosmetics supposed to make me feel better?

Mirror, Mirror: Chanel's New Collection Takes its Beauty Cues from Versailles

 According to Canoe, Chanel's newest line (created by the legendary Peter Philips) will be a capsule collection inspired by the palace of Versailles. Says Canoe:

Packaged in the classic Chanel compact box, the concealer is designed to transfer the pomp and splendor of life in the royal household into modern life, and is embossed in relief with an architectural detail from the famous Château. Pink lipstick, eyeshadow and blusher complete the collection.

 When I first heard this, I was at least hoping that it would be taking its cues from the beauties who lived inside the palace -- namely the infamous Marie Antoinette who, according to her portraiture, loved an enormous amount of rouge and blue eyeshadow -- but instead it just seems like it's affecting the packaging, while the cosmetics inside are essentially whatever Philips wants them to be.

I'm sure it'll look pretty, but it seems as though more thought could've gone into this. Why not some let them eat cake pink gloss, poor circulation blue eyeshadow, a highlighting powder inspired by the sparkling tears of the poor or free-flowing neck wound red lipstick?

The collection is due out on December 1st of this year. Decapitation is optional.

Video of the Week: Lisa Eldridge's Ultimate Guide to Red Lips

Lisa Eldridge is a renowned makeup artist currently repping for Chanel, which means she's responsible for making Keira Knightley look beautiful for big premieres and events. Elridge's work, as you've seen on Knightley for the past few years, is gorgeous (picture below).

Thankfully, she often posts videos of how she achieved particular looks, including the one below. But what I really love is her red lip guide. First, because she starts by saying she doesn't much believe in the "rules" when it comes to red lips, and also because she shares my belief that red lips look best "out of context" -- ie. with a sweater and jeans rather than a full-on gown.

Those obsessed with the teeny-bopper makeup gurus should really be watching the fantastic Elridge instead. Why take tips from a kid who's worked a make-up counter when you can listen to a seasoned and talented artist?