The product: Marcelle Cosmetics Eye Shadow Trio+

   ↳ in Smoky Chestnut, Chocolat Vanille, Starry Night, Emerald Isle, Plum Envy, and Glacial.

Today, I have something very, very exciting to share with you: the entire range of the new Marcelle Trio+ quads (I mean, I’m calling ’em quads. If there are four colours, they’re quads. But I do respect the Trio+ name, because that fourth shade is tiny!). As a blogger, it’s rare that I see the entirety of any given line, so this is as much a treat for me as I hope it will be for you!

This one is super-long, so: swatches & shades / TL;DR

Marcelle Trio+ in Smoky Chestnut

The formula: With their new trio/quads, Marcelle promises intense colour payoff; a creamy, velvety texture; long-lasting colour; and an ultra-glitter accent shade (that’s the “+”!)

Unfortunately, while I think these look amazing in terms of layout and colour pairings, I don’t agree with a lot of these points. The colour payoff was okay (not super-intense) and the ultra-glitter accent shade was a big hit, but the formula was a little dry — I wouldn’t call it creamy, and it had a tendency to create fall-out.

Overall, I think I’d have liked to see a little more butteriness and adhesion out of all four shades, and at least one satin/frost in each palette (preferably the large pan) instead of four shimmers — I think for Marcelle’s consumer, this amount of sparkle is kind of overkill.

Marcelle Trio + in Emerald Isle

Marcelle Trio+ in Chocolat Vanille

The wear: Marcelle’s eyeshadows have always been a little dry and sheer, but the shimmer in these ones just didn’t “work” for me. It was too omnipresent and uniform in size, and it felt a little messy in combination with the wear time of these shadows — they creased on me within four hours overtop the best primer I own (and within two hours when worn alone).

In addition, when I wear-tested Chocolat Vanille, I ended up with glitter everywhere by dinnertime. There was a noticeable amount of fallout all the way down past the apples of my cheeks, and that’s just — that’s crazy, dude.

Marcelle Trio+ in Starry Night

Marcelle Trio+ in Plum Envy

The shades…

Marcelle Trio+ Eyeshadow swatches: Chocolat Vanille, Smoky Chestnut

Chocolat Vanille features a super-shimmery white (small triangle), a warm brown, a cool charcoal, and a sheer base shade (large triangle) that’s packed with gold shimmer. Smoky Chestnut features a less-intense peachy small triangle, a medium-sheer rust orange (upper), a well-pigmented taupey brown (lower), and a more-intense shimmery white large triangle.

Marcelle Trio+ Eyeshadow swatches: Starry Night, Emerald Isle

Starry Night may be the best quad out of all of these, and features a super-shimmery white (the yellow tones are negligible) alongside a well-pigmented yellow-olive and a soft black overlaid with olive shimmer. Its large triangle is a pretty light yellow with, again, plenty of shimmer. [Aside: my packaging on this one doesn’t snap closed.]

Emerald Isle features a dirty green with an entire universe of multi-coloured sparkle (small triangle), a crappy black with green sparkle (lower trapezoid), and a see-through large triangle of sparse white shimmer. Its upper trapezoid, however, is a dream: an intense, skin-staining jewel green with more gorgeous emerald green shimmer than should even be legal.

Marcelle Trio+ Eyeshadow swatches: Plum Envy, Glacial

Finally, Plum Envy features plenty of pink tones and three well-pigmented frosts. Its small triangle is filled with primarily pink multicoloured shimmer in a sheer pink base, and its trapezoid is made up of a dark pink and a pinky-plum. Its large triangle is a medium-opaque white-pink frost, and all four shades had good depth.

Glacial is full of translucent icy blues and whites, with a large triangle made entirely of shimmer: it’s almost invisible head-on. (Skip it.)

Marcelle Trio+ in Glacial

The verdict?

If you love super-sparkly shades, then these are going to be your new best friend, because they are sparkly. On the whole, though, they were kind of a letdown for me — which I hate to say, because Marcelle is one of my all-time favourite brands.

At $15.95 a pop, these are okay, but not great. There’s no use having four shades in a quad if they’re all either very-shimmery or super-shimmery (I’d have loved to see a pigmented satin-frost in there somewhere, or at least some shimmer flakes to mix things up a little), and 2-4 hours of wear just doesn’t cut it. They’re worth getting on sale if you really love one of the shades–the shimmery jewel green in Emerald Isle or the beautiful olive-charcoal in Starry Night come to mind– but overall, I say skip ’em. 

As for myself? I have a makeup look coming up with Chocolat Vanille, but in the meantime, I’m holding out hope for the new Marcelle Eye Shadow Duos.

Availability: $15.95 CAD at drugstores across Canada & online at Marcelle.com. (Order before Nov 23rd with the code NOVDOUBLE to get your order doubled for free — perfect for sharing with a friend!)

The bottom tray of a Marcelle Trio+ palette. I wish these came thinner, without the applicators!

The ingredients: see ’em