Milani Soft and Sultry 12-Pan Eyeshadow Palette ($20.00 for 0.48 oz.) contains a mix of neutrals, taupes, and deep gray/black hues. It has “smoky eye” written all over it. For someone who regularly uses eyeshadow primer and prefers to build up some of their mid-tone shades, I think it would work just fine, but my experience was that several of the matte shades were a little too powdery to remain pigmented in practice, had some fallout, and overall, the formula used in the palette was shorter-wearing than average. Used over primer, they lasted longer (12 hours), but they did show fading/creasing sooner than better formulas, even over primer.
Marc Jacobs Beauty The Big O Omega Eyeshadow ($29.00 for 0.13 oz.) is a soft, peachy-brown with warm undertones and a matte finish. The texture was a smidgen dusty with this shade, though it had good pigmentation and adhered well to bare skin without sheering out too readily. I didn’t have any trouble blending out the edges, and it didn’t seem to turn the other, deeper matte shades grayish when I blended it into them. It lasted well for eight and a half hours on me.
The formula promises "12 hours" of wear with "high-impact, crease-resistant color." The matte shades were very smooth and finely-milled that they felt almost cream-like, though they were definitely a powder. They were pigmented and most shades blended out easily over bare skin with eight to nine hour wear. The shimmery shades were creamier, a bit more silicone-like by touch, but they weren't too dense or too thick, so they didn't emphasize my lid texture and still applied well with brushes. They lasted between eight and nine hours on me and were typically quite pigmented.
Milani Pure Passion 12-Pan Eyeshadow Palette ($20.00 for 0.48 oz.) is a warm-toned neutral palette that leans plum/copper with a mix of shimmers and mattes. The shimmers performed quite well–nicely pigmented, blendable, and easy to use–while the mattes were blendable, some were powdery and sheered out or needed a primer underneath to work well. I did find that most shades wore a bit shorter than average on their own, and even over primer, they showed noticeable fading/creasing after 12-14 hours of wear (I don’t normally see significantly signs of wear with primer).
Bad Habit Mystics 10-Pan Luxe Eyeshadow Collection ($24.00 for 0.63 oz.) includes 10 eyeshadows with six shades designed to be wet or dry with a brush and four shades designed to be used with fingertips. The latter four weren’t described to be used wet/dry, but it is the type of formula I’d expect to use either way, so for reference, I swatched those dry/wet. I don’t recommend using the matte shades wet as it seemed to make them harder to use–more prone to patchiness and difficult to blend out.
The matte eyeshadows were extremely powdery and felt thin, which made them have a ton of fallout when applied, have poor adhesion to the lid, and skip when blended as the color adhered unevenly and often disappeared when I tried to blend the color out. They had poor wear and lasted six to seven hours at best.
The Baked Powder shades were the easier shades to work with in the palette, but they had a drier, more loosely-pressed texture that made them more prone to fallout both during application and later on during wear, but they were pigmented, adhered evenly overall, and stayed on for seven to eight hours before creasing. The more shimmery Pressed Powders were dry, almost gritty in texture, which resulted in uneven application applied dry and they had to be used with a dampened brush just to be workable. These were harder to blend out and had some fallout as they dried down. They wore for six to seven hours on me.
I would say that the quality of the Bad Habit palette in general was disappointing — not worth the upcharge (worst palette I’ve tried from them) for their “Luxe” formula, which were some of the worst eyeshadows I’ve worked with this year.
Is Bad Habit Mystics a Dupe for Pat McGrath Subliminal Palette?
This palette looks extremely similar to Pat McGrath’s Subliminal Palette at a glance, but Bad Habit’s version performed significantly below the Pat McGrath palette. The Bad Habit matte eyeshadows were incredibly powdery and more prone to sheering out with some lifting or being challenging to blend out. The shimmery shades in the Mystics palette were chunkier with larger particles, so a shade like Illuminate ended up being brighter than the Pat McGrath version, but then a shade like Karma looked faded and lacked the vibrancy of Pat McGrath’s Blitz Blue. Bad Habit’s Essence wasn’t similar to Pat McGrath’s Lilac Dust in finish nor undertone. Bad Habit’s Altered State was significantly more shimmery than Pat McGrath’s Substance. You can view a side-by-side comparison between Pat McGrath Subliminal Palette vs. Bad Habit Mystics Palette. The shades more complex in Pat McGrath’s Subliminal palette are: Pale Gold 002, VR Violet, and Astral White; about half the palette are more basic neutrals. They are duochrome shades, and you could likely find more dupe possibilities with indie brands (like Fyrinnae) if you’re looking to replicate some of the effect of the Subliminal palette at a lower price point.
Makeup Geek Apple Pie Eyeshadow ($6.00 for 0.06 oz.) is a medium-dark, coppery brown with warm, red undertones and a matte finish. It had good pigmentation that was buildable to opaque coverage in one and a half layers. The texture was soft, slightly dusty but applied evenly and blended out nicely on the lid. It wore well for seven and a half hours on its own.
Natasha Denona Camel Eyeshadow Palette 5 ($48.00 for 0.40 oz.) is a new, neutral palette that features three matte finishes and two shimmery shades. It’s a warmer-toned palette, though it had more muted, yellow undertones across the mattes that made it less typical. Frankly, the tones seemed exactly like what I’d expect to see from palette called “camel!” The five shades worked well together, and I felt like it was easy to get a very diffused and blended crease/transition area with the gradient of mattes. The two shimmers are quite different, so they can create their own gradient by blending the two together. The only “downside” to the palette was that Dune was described as sheer and wasn’t, so that was why the rating dropped.
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