Urban Decay – The Beauty Swatcher

Urban Decay…. sigh.

So a few weeks back, I wrote a post about how I felt Urban Decay is a bit overrated these days. Everyone loves them, but me? Not so much.

Imagine my surprise, when I find myself at Macy’s with a little bit of money to burn and face to face with the Urban Decay Naked Cherry collection. I’m all like “Damn, it’s sooooo pretty!” and as much as I tried to resist, I went home with the blush kit, 1 lipstick and even the freaking setting spray.

Out of principle, I left the eye palette right where it was.

I was pretty excited to try these beauties. It’s not just the packaging, which is all smoky and sexy, but also the red tones in this collection. They just scream fall and holidays to me. From a marketing perspective, the release is perfect because people are naturally gravitating to these colors this time of year.

However, as usual for Urban Decay, this is not a perfect collection.

The metallic lipstick called Devilish ($18), that I picked up is actually quite nice, which is what we come to expect from their Vice lipstick collection. It is a bright pink that layered over darker shades is an excellent topper, but even on its own is a stand alone. The glittery particles are super fine and don’t appear chunky at all and if metallics are your thing, then I totally recommend this one.

I wish I can be as positive about the Highlight & Blush Palette ($34) as I am about the lipstick. There is a light peachy/ pink highlighter that is quite nice and I actually enjoy, but the matte blush and icier highlighter are just not worth spending the money on this kit.

The strawberry (I know this is a cherry palette, but it looks more ripe strawberry to me) colored blush looks beautiful in the pan, but it takes a Herculean amount of effort to get this to show up on your cheeks. I even switched to a stiffer brush to try to pick up some more product, but then was like, “why am I trying so hard?”. It should not take this much work to apply some damn blush!

The other highlighter is actually also a very pretty cooler toned one with a pink shift, but it was flaky in texture and, overall, I just don’t like my highlighters to be that white. Also, I didn’t find it to be very blinding as the color suggested it would be.

The setting spray is a Cherry inspired version of the Urban Decay All Nighter ($15) spray and it’s supposed to smell like cherries, but all I got was the same weird after smell that you find in their regular one. I don’t know if it’s just me, but the All Nighter has this stale glue smell after you apply it that drives me crazy, although I do think it performs very well.

Overall, I don’t think it’s worth all the hype. With so many berry toned beauty products in the market right now, I think you can skip these items for now.

Anyone else picked up any of the UD Cherry line? What do you think?

Let me know in the comments below.

Till next time, my friends!

Maritza

If you read my recent post on makeup brands everyone loves, but I don’t, I mentioned that Urban Decay was seriously slipping. A brand that I lived for and looked forward to all their releases, is now trying to compete with Colourpop’s weekly release schedule.

A good example of my theory is the Back Talk palette that came out this spring. The shades are completely up my alley with rich mauve and berry tones, which are actually quite perfect for fall. However, as much as I LOVE the colors, I hate how these shades perform, which is why it sat in my makeup cart collecting dust for about 4 months.

However, life is all about forgiving, so I decided to give this palette a second chance. We all tend to go into things with preconceived notions of how things will perform based on reviews we read or hear, so maybe now that the hype has died down, its time to come to my own final conclusion.

Yeah…no. Still not a fan.

The four cheek colors are BEAUTIFUL and actually perform great. Double Take is a creamy, soft pinky mauve that I would buy all on its own. Cheap Shot is a deep berry, really beautiful, I imagine, on darker skin tones. Low Key is a summery peach shade which I use as blush topper and Party Foul is a pink champagne highlighter that gives a lovely lit from within glow.

All the Cheek products are high quality. When you swatch them, they are creamy and smooth to the touch, which is the first thing you notice is missing with the eyeshadows.

The mattes are ok. BackTalk by far performs the best and has the most staying power. WTF completely faded away by the end of the day and 3 Sheets is so close to my skin tone, that I can’t tell what it did, but it’s a beautiful base on me.

The shimmers were the worst! Bare is similar to Party Foul in color, but no where near close in shine. Curve, Shade and 180 are more of a satin than shimmer and I’m not quite sure what is the best way to use them because I really want them to SHINE, but not even with setting spray.

Attitude is by far the most shimmery of them all and the most pigmented. It’s a shimmery strawberry shade and lovely. You need to use a bit of setting spray to get it to its full potential, but even with that it fades pretty quickly.

Overall, the shadows are pretty disappointing, however, not as disappointing as the way this palette was structured. With this slim, removable mirror separating the cheek from the eyes, it’s the stupidest design. You can’t snap the palette shut without the magnetic mirror, but I always take out the mirror when using the palette because it so slim it’s useless to me, so on more than one occasion I lost track of the mirror under other stuff and couldn’t find it right away.

Double Take, Low Key and Party on the Cheeks. 3 Sheets, BackTalk, WTF and Bare on the eyes.

Urban Decay, let’s stick to a basic palette design. Honestly, I think most of us would appreciate it.

Back Talk was on sale in Sephora for $38 last time I checked, however, it’s so similar in tone to the Naked Cherry that maybe it’s worth investing in that for the eye shadows.

Till next time, my friends.

Maritza