Chanel Shimmering Tweed Highlighter ($60.00 for 0.45 oz.) is the next level of limited edition, luxurious highlighters from Chanel’s Holiday Collection. If you’ve enjoyed Chanel’s Tweed Blushes, I can only imagine you’re particularly curious about this new item.

Chanel describes this highlighter as, “Holiday beauty furthers the fantasy with three delicately ‘woven’ shades of shimmering colour for cheeks and décolleté. Gold, bronze and copper tones cast a natural luminous glow on skin to highlight and heighten a festive effect. Unmistakably CHANEL: the powder’s imprinted surface, inspired by the iconic tweed.”

It’s a woven mix of metallic, paled down silver-gold (seriously, silver-gold), subtly shimmered fleshy-peach, and coppery-brown, while gold flecks permeate throughout the product. The entire effect is a shimmery golden-bronze color. For lighter skin tones, this can be worn as a light bronzer/blush, but for most, it’s just an excellent highlighter. It feels smooth, soft, and looks like holiday if it were a highlighter. It twinkles, shimmers, and glitters (but not in a disco ball way!).

Value wise, the price tag is steep no matter how you look at it. Even though you get a fair amount of product for your buck, it’s still more than a lot of us want to spend on a highlighter. In the end, it’s slightly pricier than Dior’s SkinShimmers, but not by much. This highlighter is $133.33/oz. whilst Dior’s is $122.86/oz. If you compare it against blush shades, Chanel comes in as less expensive than NARS ($156.25/oz.) and Smashbox ($184.62/oz.)–and significantly less expensive than even Chanel blushes ($300.00/oz).

Bottom line: I consider this a splurge item, but I wouldn’t wait too long, because it is limited edition, and it’s a product that’s easy to fall in love with. I still prefer my Dior SkinShimmers for everyday highlighting, because the shimmer is finer and subtler, but this is definitely going to be a go-to for special occasions! (Besides, Dior doesn’t have a SkinShimmer in quite this tone — Amber Diamond is a bit darker/more copper than golden as this is.)

• Product: 28/30
• Value: 8/10
• Ease of Use: 4/5
• Packaging: 5/5

Recommendation: For a beautiful holiday highlighter, consider Chanel’s limited edition Tweed Highlighter.

Availability: Chanel in October/November 2009

See more photos and swatches…

Chanel Shimmering Tweed Highlighter