I own many singles and many palettes so you can imagine how excited I was to see they had revamped their collection for Spring 2013. Gone are the small circle trios replaced by square trios. The runway collection and carribian collections are gone as well all replaced with romantic cities of Europe like Florence and Paris and beautiful colors selection that NYX is famous for. I'm not a big color person. I mostly find myself rockin' neutrals but I am a sucker for pinks, purples, plums and burgundy and that's what attracted me to the 2 palettes I'm going to tell you about.
For starters the first palette I will discuss is a 5 shadow palette from the Love in Florence collection and its called the Prima Donna. There are 3 large square shadows at the top and two long strips running horizontally across them at the bottom. There is a nice array of colors. You got your Creamy taupe colored highlight, a glittery black in the middle for your outer corner shade and a mid tone shade that a magenta / plum hybrid with very subtle small flecks of pink sparkle. The top horizontal strip is a beautiful shade of burgundy with some subtle iridescent sparkle and a beautiful neutral taupe below that. Just the type bright and unique colors you'd come to expect from NYX. The package is cute with a little bow on the side.
I was back in Ulta the other day when I noticed a second palette with even more gorgeous shades of purples and pinks. What attracted me to this palette was a the beautiful peach tone that has hints of gold glitter. I thought it was a unique shade and complimented the purples in a very fun and unexpected way. This palette is from the Love in Paris collection and there are 9 squared shades in it. On the top left a gorgeous dark purple, then a beautiful bubble gum pink, on the right of the top row is this really pretty lavender shade with flecks of pink and silver glitter. The middle row is a nice shimmery pearl, a beautiful electric purple, and a sort of muted taupe colored purple. The bottom row is where you will find that amazing peach tone, a pinkish taupe and of course a satin shade of black.
All of the shades in both of these palettes are shimmery to some degree. Some are satiny, some a very shimmery and some even have some bigger chunks of glitter.
So, now that I've explained all the colors lets get down to the nitty gritty. When I tried to do a look with the first palette here the Prima Donna Palette I noticed that the midtone shade was not going on with as much intensity as I expected. All of the shimmer seemed to have fallen off the brush leaving me with a very matte, washed out version of the color on my lid. As I added more and more color I noticed that they all seemed to come off more subdued then they appeared. I found it strange and was thinking maybe it was my imagination. I am just so used to NyX colors coming out of the palette with strong pigmentation that really didn't need to be built up so much. These shadows just didn't seem as intense as some of my others in my collection. I felt as if I had to put a lot of work in to get the intensity that used to come so easy from NYX. It bothered me so much that I thought to myself they must've changed the formula or something. I dug through my collection for an older palette so I can see if the ingredients looked different and sure enough they were! In the older palettes the first ingredient on the list is mica and the second is talc. On the new ones it has been switched! The older palettes also contained Mineral oil as the third ingredient the new ones its Magnesium Stearate followed by Dimethicone. In fact all of the ingredients are completely different and I most definitely noticed a huge difference! I am no chemist so I don't know what exactly these ingredients are but I do know NYX has changed their formula and its not for the better in my opinion!
I couldn't believe that a few ingredients switched up would make such a difference in the quality. I watched a review of the new palettes on one of my favorite beauty bloggers , Emily Eddington of Beauty Broadcast hoping she felt the same as me. She is usually spot on with her reviews and I have purchased many of the products she recommends and gives good reviews on. She didn't mention any big difference. I thought to myself maybe it's just that one palette so the next time I was in Ulta I picked up the second Palette from the Love in Paris Collection and to my dismay it was exactly like the first! Not pigmented and harder to work with! Nooooo say it ain't so!
I had to do a little more investigation so I went through my entire NYX collection finding older shades that are as close as possible to the newer shades and started swatching them side by side for comparison. I got as close as possible and to my suprise there was a HUGE DIFFERENCE as you can see in my picture below! I didn't swatch every single shadow only the ones I had a very close dupe for. On the left hand side of the pic are the shadows with the old formulation. They come off so smooth, velvety and pigmented right off the bat, the second seemed very flakey and sheered out.
I have to say I am pretty upset by these findings. NYX has always been my go to brand for fun and affordable shadows that are of good quality. This new formula is disappointing even with a primer. That's not to say that I will completely boycott NYX eyeshadows but I definitely won't be purchasing anymore palettes unless I find the colors to be unique and unmatched by any other brand. I'm also not saying that you absolutely can't work with these shadows. They are buildable and with a little patience and some elbow grease you can still get an intense eye look! It's just going to be more work and more time consuming! Some of them seem better pigmented than others. I find these newer palettes very inconsistent. You can see in my photo that the older formula was way more consistent across the board. All of the colors I swatched were from different palettes and singles I own. If I had to recommend these palettes to people I honestly wouldn't unless you were really interested in the colors. I would however tell them to opt for the single shadows or try to find some of the older palettes online. I don't think they changed out the singles just yet so there may be some hope!
I'd really like to know if anyone else feels this way about the new NYX eyeshadow formula or if its just me!?
Thanks for reading!
Y'all come back now yer hear!
