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Comments
· January 11, 2008 1:30 PM by
Colleen Shirazi
· January 11, 2008 1:35 PM by
Dain
· January 11, 2008 2:07 PM by
Colleen Shirazi
· January 11, 2008 6:11 PM by
Dain
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Posted by Dain, Friday, January 11, 2008 7:13 AM (Eastern)
All things considered, my eye is better trained than my nose.
NARS is my favorite line, so I am very loyal and quick to sense any and all subtleties within the brand. The lipsticks and foundations could do with reformulation, and I'd love a vivid cool pink multiple (they're all so warm), but the powder products simply reign supreme. I was browsing the spring 2008 collection, Shanghai Lily, and was disappointed by how uninspired it was: three bestselling shades reordered into different formulations and bland eyeshadows, though the new lipcolors have somewhat more interest. I can hardly blame François Nars for this outcome, for he is lounging about on his private island and allowing celebrated makeup designer Ayako to take over the reins of creative development. But may I be frank? NARS has lost its luster. Even the most basic shades have unique brilliance, which makes them stand out from the crowd—to whit, All About Eve (I also kind of love how so many classic NARS are named after great films).
Here is my picture of the duo.
As you can see, both are beiges, shimmery, so therefore, more specifically, champagnes. It is easy to make the assumption that they are boring; I assure you, they are not. The left is milky, somewhat peachier with a very subtle satin finish. As for the right... The best fleshtone highlight in all of existence. PERIOD. There are positively dozens of champagnes on the market, but not a single one has the multidimensional shimmer of All About Eve. Not only are the shimmers themselves of different size, which imparts a diffused, candlelit glow without resorting to overfrostiness, they are also several different colors, mostly beige, silvery, pink, lilac, gold, and even green. The finest shimmer, as even as fine satin, is a pearly beige, and it provides the base. A little more sparse are ever-so-slightly larger flecks of the more exotic colors mentioned above. None of this is obvious, it is purely my own observation, but this is what makes such a soft color so remarkable. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of optics may remember that white light, in fact, is composed of many colors. That is exactly what All About Eve imitates: light itself.
Sole caveat: I do not know of anything comparable for deeper skintones. Maybe the famous Shu.
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January 11, 2008 1:30 PM,
I'm thinking of getting this actually. Right now, the subtlest shadow I own is...Island Fever. It'll sound nuts, but the blue shade, applied very lightly, looks better, and shows less, than any other shadow I own.
January 11, 2008 1:35 PM,
It doesn't seem like a worthwhile purchase, because one thinks, "oh, it's just a shimmery beige, big whoop, I could manage that for so much cheaper", but I have tried all over to find one that has the same quality, and I'm pretty good at hunting down colors, if I say so myself, and there just isn't anything like it. The nearest I found was a Chanel Soft Touch, and it wasn't really near, just nicely diffused, and considering they're singles, more expensive.
January 11, 2008 2:07 PM,
Honestly, I think that's just it with Nars. That's what you're paying for.
I got their Mambo eye pencil a while back, just to try a Nars eye pencil...it was something like $19. Ugh! And I'd already read Nars eye pencils were hard. People don't seem to rave about them, the way they do Nars blushes, eyeshadows, even the lipsticks...
Yet I ended up using only this one pencil. It's incredible, it goes with everything. It looks like a plain old deep brown eyepencil, the kind you could buy for $4 at the drugstore. But it has these subtle purple and red notes in it. It goes with green shadows, blue shadows, orange shadows, lilac shadows... Amazing.
January 11, 2008 6:11 PM,
Lesse if this doesn't publish the comment.
Ja, similar thing with Malibu too, I dare say. It looks like nothing, but it's perfect on.
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