Lustrous

Make Up For Ever Lustrous Shadow Palette ($49.00 for 0.60 oz.) contains 12 eyeshadows in a mix of mattes and shimmers (actually, only three shimmers, which is a big deal for the brand's pre-made palettes!). It's new and limited edition for the holiday season, and as I noted in my sneak peek post, the brand made several mentions of the formula being new: “newest innovation” and “unique formula” and “formulated with 25 percent more pigment” and “be the first to try this new formula.” Reading through ingredient lists, the ingredient lists for M100 (matte black) and ME512 (gold) differed enough that it did seem like a new formula. I received confirmation via email from Make Up For Ever that the palette does feature a new formula that we will see in the future but no other details were shared at this time.

The colors, generally, lined up with the shades of the same number in the current Artist Shadow range, but there were new shades here and then the brand snuck in two shades that are actually blushes (matte red and plum). The three shimmery shades did not seem to be as silicone-heavy--not as dense, not quite as creamy--but they seemed easier to pickup with a greater number of brushes and a little more foolproof to apply to the lid if one is unfamiliar with the denser, more silicone-heavy textures. The mattes were slightly drier but more substantial, so they worked better on bare skin and tended to be more pigmented in a single pass (without sheering out) compared to the original formula, which I found better at building up color, but both were similarly easy to blend out for me.

The brand claimed that the formula features "intense color payoff, superior blendability, and unprecedented 12-hour wear." They were quite pigmented, blendable (not sure about "superior" but most shades blended without major issues), and long wearing, though the wear for me ranged between nine and ten hours. I imagine if some found the metallic formula in the original range to be too firm/dense, they'll prefer the newer shimmer formula. Similarly, if you prefer more buildable, silkier mattes, then you may find this drier, more substantial formula to be a miss. Functionally, I did not feel like it was a struggle by any means to use or to apply the eyeshadows in practice, but based on this sampling, it seemed like they were slightly below the performance of the Artist Shadow range has been in the past.

The packaging will likely be a miss for most; the eyeshadows are held inside a foam insert, which does slide within the tin, so it doesn't seem as secure, though the brand has used foam inserts in the past, so I'm not surprised to see it again in this year's holiday release.

Value

Going off of the pricing structure for their current Artist Shadow, which retails for $21.00 and contains 0.08 oz. or costs $262.50/oz. (I would expect any replacement formula to be similar in pricing unless the brand makes adjustments to the size, which they could definitely do, so please consider this a mere estimate of value.) The palette contains $157.50 worth of product.

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