I’ve come to a point where sparkly inner corners and foiled lids are wearing off me; especially when on days with bad eye bags (were they ever good?) and God-gifted hooded eyes, the more I illuminate them, the more disastrous they look. It wasn’t easy to hunt for a matte eyeshadow palette in this glitzy world of beauty, but I think I may have just did. The Stila Eyes Are The Window Shadow Palettes come in 4 sets of 12 eye shades: Mind, Body, Spirit and Soul. The only all-matte assortment was “Mind” and, although these were launched late last year, looking at the scheme of eye shades this palette has to offer tells me there is more to it than meets the season.
A Stila All Matte Eyeshadow Palette Review
The Stila Eyes Are The Window “Mind” eye palette presents you 12 beautiful all-matte shades in both cool and warm hues. From light pastels, to peaches and plums; and from taupes, to persian grey and almost coal – this palette seems to relate a lot with meekness, sophistication and austerity.
Packaging
The palette is a sleek gorgeous gold case that offers a reflective mirrored finish for your easy gussying up if you’re way pressed for time to even open it up. The size is a little big to bring along, but you’ll appreciate its size when you flip it open for the mirror inside.
Price
SGD$69.00 each available at Singapore Sephora stores.
Shades
The 12 shades in this palette are namely (from top down per column), Brilliance, Imagination, Genius, Understanding, Instinct, Observation, Wit, Perception, Reason, Thinker, Creativity and Intellect. This assortment of all matte eye shadows carries you from day shades to night’s. If you group them in rows, they are actually color families of trios. Below are the swatches of the Stila Eyes Are The Window Eye Shadow Palette.
Stila Eyes Are The Window Eyeshadow Swatches in “Mind”
Color Payoff & Texture
This palette is a little over my head when it comes to consistency, and by consistency I meant both the texture of each shade and the regularity of the pigment across the 12 shades. Some shades are not quite as pigmented as I’d expected; take Reason for example, as dark as it seems it needed to be laid on a second time to build the color up; while some like Instinct has taken me by surprise by its striking first dab on the skin. But here’s the saving grace for those shades that need a little help in inking – these eye shadows can be applied dry or wet. I’ve done a quick video on the swatch reviews so you have an idea what I was talking about here.
Verdict
The Stila Eyes Are The Window Eye Shadow Palette is a collection of muted warms (think dusk not dawn, think filtered not rich toned) and industrial cools inspired by Urbanism; very similar to the Urban Decay Naked Palette if you’d ask me, except of course, no shimmers and bronzy specks in this one.
I’ve played with this palette for a while now and I must say my most used would have to be the terracotta shade in Perception simply for its warmth that is not as loud as it appears to be. On the eyes, it is pure peaches and cream. The plum shade in Thinker is excellent for lining the upper waterline for a sophisticated smokey eye makeup (black eyeliners for smokey eyes tend to be grungier), while that peach soda shade in Wit is the perfect crease color for fair to medium skin tones. To my own surprise I find the darker shades more versatile than the lighter pastel ones in this palette. Even the shockingly-different-from-the-pot-color Instinct ends up on my brows as a hair filler (no kidding).
The eye shadows are not chalky; I don’t experience the same kind of mess that I did with my Marc Jacobs Plush Eye Shadow Palette (Lolita) of which the shadow powder dusts out more than they get picked up. The powders in this Stila eye palette are easily blendable and stick well to the eyelids (notice how I picked up Perception in excess in my swatch video and the powder just stays on there without falling off). Stila has made its name credible on this one.