- The details behind Black Honey: Coming up | Clinique The New Black
- A Black Honey FOTD and EOTD: The New Black – or, perhaps, the gorgeous new brown
- Long Last Glosswear and Almost Lipstick: Clinique Black Honey Lip Duo review
- Black Honey eye quad: Colour Surge Eye Shadow Quad review
- Black Honey blush: Gradient Powder Blusher review
Can we just take a moment to appreciate how head-over-heels I am for this collection? Because – I’m not usually a Kate Spade fan. Actually, I’m not really a clothing or accessories fan. But give me a couple ribbons, throw in some gold, and I’m as good as gone.
Sometimes I feel like Kate Spade is the Deborah Lipmann of accessories – there’s no such thing as too much glitter, and it is so possible to be whimsical and chic at the same time.
(The detail on her Curling Ribbon Bow headband; how cute is that?! God, I’m such a ridiculous sucker for folded metals.)
Just a quick new-product-mention for Ellis Faas’ new Ellis Clips. For those of you who liked the idea of the Ellis Holder, but weren’t thrilled about the prospect of toting around a heavy metal cylinder – these are the answer to your prayers!
The clips are sold individually ($2 / €2 / £2 apiece) and interlock, meaning you can roll up as many or as few Ellis pens as you’d like. Then, to use, you just have to slide out the pen(s) – no need to disassemble the chain of clips. I think it’s a bit brill, to be honest! But then, when did my opinion start counting for anything? :P
More photos »
At long last, this concludes our coverage on The New Black, Clinique’s Fall 2011 Black Honey collection. Or – well, I think this is it. Though sometimes I’m wrong.
In addition to the products reviewed on theNotice, the collection included Clinique’s High Impact Mascara and a Brush-On Cream Liner in, well, Black Honey. I’ll get around to reviewing the mascara eventually (it’s part of their permanent line), but I’m a bit petrified to try Clinique’s cream liners! They’re just always so well-received, and I can’t help but think “what if they don’t stay put on my lids?”
It’s not that I’d feel bad giving a popular product a negative review – it’s something I find myself doing all to often – but it’s just always so disheartening to try yet another eye product that won’t stay put on my obscenely stubborn lids. I’ll probably give them a go one of these days, but I plan on putting it off for as long as possible :P
Get more Black Honey
The product: Clinique Gradient Powder Blusher in Black Honey
Ironically, the product I was most excited for in Clinique’s Fall 2011 The New Black collection ended up being the one I liked the least. Which, okay, before you freak out – that doesn’t mean that I didn’t like it! I just, er, liked it less than expected?
I think the reason I wasn’t crazy about the Black Honey blusher is that it has a lot less of a gradient than I’d hoped it would. It’s still lovely – a bit plum, a bit brown, and a tiny bit peach – but it’s just… more uniform than you may think. As a cheek colour, the shade is far more universal than the traditional Black Honey lip colour (which I know can look rather “blah” on some skin tones), and the faint shimmer helps add more universality still.
Left: sponge pulled horizontally down Black Honey and horizontally on the skin, to display the gradient.
Right: sponge pulled horizontally down the blusher, but vertically down the skin, to display the blended effect.
(Did that make any sense whatsoever?)
I’m usually not a fan of shimmer in my cheek products, but these fuchsia flashes are so finely-milled – you really have to get right up to your skin (within 3-4″) and stare it down in order to pick out the shimmers. It definitely wears as a matte, not only in terms of all-day colour but also in the way it sits on your skin: the smooth, velvety texture buffs right in, and beauty junkies who typically avoid shimmery blushes (usually those with oilier skin or large pores) need not fret with this one.
I love the chic, sculpted cheek that this blusher creates so easily, but I hate the price tag – with taxes, it’s over $30 in both Canada and the US, and I feel like that’s a bit much for a Clinique blusher. You are paying for the gradient effect, though, so I suppose that it’s worth it if you’re really into gradient products! (This is my first, but I do think it looks quite pretty in the pan.)
Black Honey blusher, applied
The verdict?
Ooh, I feel like I never reach verdicts anymore! I’ve been far too fickle as of late.
I was actually really impressed by the Black Honey Gradient Powder Blusher, and I love the effect it gives – that perfect, low-maintenance sculpted cheek. However, it would have been nice to have a more pronounced gradient, and I’d advise caution in application: particularly on fair skintones, I can see this getting a bit muddy if you tend to be heavy-handed.
If you fall in love with the shade, though, don’t hesitate! It really is a lovely product, all in all, and it won’t be around much longer. I haven’t been able to find a dupe thus far – I know there has to be one out there, somewhere, but Larie and I were just completely unable to track one down!
Keep reading »
A number of our readers asked for a FOTD featuring this lovely blusher, and for the life of me, I couldn’t remember which look I had used it in.
Turns out, I was just being a dolt & looking in the wrong folder. It wasn’t an upcoming FOTD that I had used it in; it was one that I’d already posted! Here’s an action shot of MAC Fever – I’ll try to feature it again soon (hopefully in a “how to wear super-pigmented cheek products” post, if I have time), but for now…
For more Fever, check out our original MAC Fever blush review and this Sephora Moonshadow FOTD.
So, I forgot to open up our last giveaway to comment entries again, because I’m really not all that clever. I’ve extended it until Wednesday night to make up for it; please feel free to get those entries (or extra entries) in between now and then!
To enter, make sure to comment on the original post and click the appropriate Rafflecopter button(s). Cheers, and good luck :)
(Can I post this on the same day as a Holiday Shopping feature? Is this a thing? That I can do? And you won’t hate me for it?)
(I’M GOING TO TO WITH YES.)
(Because heck, the world doesn’t just stop because Holiday collections slowly start coming out!)
And an added bonus: a few more $10 NARS duos!
|
|
(Check out part one of our Holiday Shopping series here!)
Dior
Dior (sets and palettes)
Laura Mercier
NARS
The product: Rock and Republic Eye Color in Alloy
The R&R line has already been covered to death on the internet (though by no means is this a bad thing!) so I’m not going to do a really detailed review of their eyeshadows. Needless to say, I think the formula is lovely; finely-milled and neither too hard nor too soft in the pan. If anything, I’d say it falls on the “dry” side of things (er, running on a scale of hard-as-rock to overly-buttery), which I like – there’s very little fallout, you don’t end up with a bunch of pigment dust on the pan, and yet it’s still quite easy to work with and blend.
Alloy is a intensely shimmery shade, verging on the line between yellowy-gold and melon. It does remind me of MAC Melon pigment, and would make a good lid colour or inner-eye hilight (particularly on darker skintones). I’m actually really impressed with it – at $7 (on HauteLook, at least at the moment), I’m very much tempted to pick up another few shades!
An aside about HauteLook: if you haven’t joined yet, here’s our referral link – not necessary, of course, but feel free to use it!
Worth the craze?
Surprisingly, I think so – they’re good eyeshadows, the shade range is great, and the packaging is super-luxe. I’d think twice before paying retail for them, of course, but at $7? Well, it’s rather difficult to go wrong at that price.
Talc, Squalane, Zinc Stearate, Silica, Boron Nitride, Lauroyl Lysine, Kaolin, Methicone, Methylparaben, Propylparaben. +/- Mica (CI 77019), Titanium Dioxide (CI 77891) Iron Oxides (CI 77491, CI 77492, CI 77499), Bismuth Oxychloride (CI 77163), Carmine (CI 75470), Chromium Oxide Greens (CI 77288), Ferric Ferrocyanide (CI 77510), Manganese Violet (CI 77742), Ultramarines (CI 77007), Yellow 5 Lake (CI 19140:1), Blue 1 Lake (CI 42090).