Clarins have brought out a corker of a spring collection, including juicy sheer lipsticks, lipglosses, mineral powder, and the essential mineral eyeshadow quartet and pretty face powder. Today, we'll ignore the lip products (til a later date) and the powder, and concentrate on the two products which always make me sigh in a Clarins collection - the eye quartet and the embossed face powder.
Spring's eye quartet is surprisingly smoky, and is miles away from the usual ice-cream pastels usually released for spring. The Iris Blossom palette contains a shimmering taupe, sparkly white, matte grey, and sparkling deep purple. It's beautifully embossed with a stylised iris across the four pans, which is really pretty but thankfully not so ornate I won't use it.
Swatched on my hand as it's laid out in the palette. The colours are reasonably pigmented - the most pigmented is (unsurprisingly) the metallic taupe, the worst is the white shimmer- it's almost just shimmer particles pressed into a pan. Nice for a super-frosty highlight or a bit of inner eye action, probably too sheer to use on the lid. The matte grey shade is medium pigment, as is the rich purple. These colours are the kind I love to wear, and I can see myself getting a lot of wear out of this little palette.
Clarins embossed face powders have become a highlight of their collections. The Palette Eclat is surprisingly simple - the pale, peachy powder is embossed with a stylised iris motif with vertical lines of pink powder. According to the press release, it contains a light optimising complex to give the skin a beautiful, even tone bursting with radiance.
Apparently, it also reduces the appearance of wrinkles and imperfections - I'm not really sure how a powder can really manage this, but I'm imagining that the glow-giving properties are the key.
Swatched - the left most colour is the peachy base colour, the middle swatch is one of the pink bars, and the right is the result of running a fingertip across the whole palette. Admittedly, these are rather heavy swatches, but given the pigmentation and the shade of the powder, I think this is one for light to medium skintones only - and should always be applied with a light hand.
Both the Iris Blossom quartet and the Palette Eclat Face & Blush Powder cost £30, with the latter being limited edition. Find them on the Clarins website and in-store now.
Disclosure: PR sample
That powder looks gorgeous! But I have pale skin and I'm not sure it would work for me.
ReplyDeleteI'll be doing an FOTD with both products soon to see how it works out on pale skin :)
DeleteI am LOVING the powder!!
ReplyDeleteBeautiful & I love the eye palette and the fact that it's not overly shimmery.
ReplyDeleteAgreed - it's a subtle sheen rather than all out SPARKLE. Very wearable!
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