Norvina Vol. 2

Anastasia Norvina Vol 2 Pro Pigment Palette ($60.00 for 1.575 oz.) is a new, limited edition palette that features an assortment of hues from fuchsia to cyan blue to black in a range of finishes from frosted to matte. The matte formula is drier, somewhat powdery, though not necessarily prone to fallout, but they layer poorly with each other--when I applied one shade and went to blend it with the one next to it, it would lift and erase what was under it. This resulted in patchy, uneven application or a barely-there crease color. They were products that swatch great as single shades but combined poorly often, though not all the time and not consistently poorly at that.

The shimmers were drier and more firmly-pressed in the palette, and they did not pick up well with dry brushes nor did they apply that well (even layered). They were better with fingertips or a dampened brush, as this helped the product adhere more smoothly to bare skin and helped the color look closer to the way it appeared in the pan.

I loathed this palette's performance over Anastasia's eyeshadow primer, which wasn't a major surprise as the primer is quite dry and prone to emphasizing lid texture/skin texture/skin flakiness that I didn't even know I was, apparently, riddled with. So, pairing a primer that makes my eyelid area look worse with drier eyeshadows obviously didn't pan out for me--but I wanted to try it since a reasonable expectation would be that these would pair well with the brand's primer. It was marginally better over my personal go-to primer, Smashbox 24HR, but it's not a palette I'd comfortably use as "success" was still middling in results for me.

Lastly, while the brand specifically aimed for a "chaotic" arrangement, Anastasia is a brand that is known for putting together cohesive, interesting color stories, and the palette could have been arranged in such a way as to inspire people to try new combinations while still making more sense visually for more people. It would also have been nice if the pans came out (like Natasha Denona's palettes) so that people could rearrange the shades themselves. Here's Vol. 2 rearranged by rainbow order, and here's Vol. 2 in a more "quad" like format.

A part of me feels like the palette was arranged this way to try to camouflage the overlap that existed in the palette. While certain shades swatched and appeared slightly different in depth or marginally different in undertone, when applied next to each other, they lost that definition entirely, which I think showed that they were too similar to have in the same palette.

A2, B3, and C5 look almost the same applied as they all darken slightly, so B2 lost that vibrancy that made it pop in the palette. E1 retained slight variation compared to E3, but they were surprisingly similar in action. B5 and C2 also ended up looking the same applied and blended out over bare skin as well as primer; the only way to get the brightness out of B5 would be to use it over a white base, I think.

A lot of the shades lasted decently--seven to nine hours--without primer, but they were hard to apply and often churned out disappointing looks, so while the shades had pigment, and the formula didn't fade away to nothing in a couple of hours, it really felt far worse than the rating indicates. (The pigmentation and longevity scores held up the overall scores quite a bit.) Eight of the 25 shades also performed at B+ (87%+) or better, which kept the average above low C/D territory.

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