Rose Gold Remastered

Huda Beauty Rose Gold Remastered Eyeshadow Palette ($65.00 for 0.59 oz.) is a new, permanent palette that's a reformulation of the original Rose Gold palette. All the shades are updated, but there are some shades that have been removed and/or updated for this palette. The matte eyeshadows were more pigmented and easier to blend out than the original formula. I didn't have any noteworthy issues with them--a few could have been more pigmented but were buildable, and I didn't struggle with any of the shades. About half of the palette was good, but the other half was more inconsistent and problematic.

The shimmer formula is completely different (except Moon Dust, which was more like a typical shimmery, powder eyeshadow), and I don't know that that's better or worse--I actually think that the shimmers come out better on the lid, but the formulation isn't like a traditional eyeshadow and really does have to be used with fingertips. Some of the shimmer shades seemed to work with stiffer, flat synthetic brushes (pressing, patting, and pushing motions were best). The shimmer eyeshadows felt more like a cream-powder hybrid (that felt more like a cream than a powder in the end). Like a lot of cream eyeshadows, fingertips tend to apply the most coverage and do the best for diffusing and blending edges, but that obviously yields less precision if one wants to use more than one shade on the lid.

I've seen chatter about the shimmer eyeshadows being hollow, but I didn't find that to be true--they seemed denser and reactive like a cream eyeshadow, e.g. if I pressed on it or pushed at the surface, it left behind an indent and stayed that way. I didn't have any pan showing in any of the shades I used despite swatching and using the palette multiples times. More of my shimmer shades were raised along the edge of the pan (almost like they were overflowing) with a slight indentation in the center (almost like the product settled as it set).

What I'm most concerned about is whether the creamier shimmer shades will dry out over time, as there were a couple that I found much harder to work with (fingertips, brushes, etc.) as they felt noticeably drier/thinner compared to other shades. I worked with MAC 242s for the shimmers for the looks shown above. They are harder to use than the typical shimmer eyeshadow, though they seemed to stay more reflective and foiled--but one could just use a metallic, powder eyeshadow with a dampened brush to achieve the same result with less effort. The brand stated that the "metallic shadows can be applied easily with a brush," which I don't think is that accurate--only a couple worked well with brushes--and that this statement is more reflective of the formula: "for a more amplified finish, apply using your finger." (Notice how they mentioned finish, not color payoff, which suggests that it would be more metallic with fingertip application, not more pigmented.)

The brand would have been better off releasing a palette of just the Melted Metals as a cream eyeshadow palette to be used with fingertips or include a specific applicator for best results because marketing the formula as "easily" used with a brush is just not the case. If I was just patting on some of the shades on the center of my lid with my fingertip, they would be a lot easier to use, but when almost half the palette is like that, you lose a lot of the cohesive value of having so many in a single palette.