sepia - The Seventh Sphinx

There are two eyeshadow palettes I’m particularly looking forward to using for autumn, I think you’ll immediately see why.

The Sleek Sunset palette has those warm, rusty tones I’ve been banging on about for ages, and a great Mediterranean blue (if you want to try that bold pop of blue under the eyes à la the Marc Jacobs show, which I definitely do*). Nicely priced, too. The Dior Earth Tones palette (discontinued now but there are similar ones) is a lovely example of those muddy olive and burgundy tones I like so predictably every time I come across them. Rather staggeringly priced. Beautiful in application, though, quite a sumptuous formulation, and I’m feeling no pangs about it.

I never get tired of browsing great masses of colors, individually or in combination, and deciding which I like best, which I am drawn to the most. I think I will not disclose how long I spent trying to find the Dior palette once it had been chosen. Or once it chose me, as it so often seems.

*Experimentation is salutary.

If you’re curious, I’ll likely apply them with one or more of these favorite eye brushes.

Top to bottom: Sigma tapered blending brush, MAC 217, bamboo bdellium 785 (best value blender here, and so soft, though the Sigma brushes are well priced, too), Paula Dorf sheer crease brush (current favorite), Sigma E20, essence of Beauty crease brush (from the little drugstore crease duo), e.l.f. contour brush, e.l.f. eye shadow “C” brush (this is such an incredible value*, I think the blush brush is fantastic, too).

*essentially I believe in spending over $10 for a good blending brush (once you use a good one you understand that you aren’t going back to whatever you did before…however you don’t need this many. Only one. Or, for convenience, two, where one stays largely clean throughout the process for additional blending while the other deposits the color. Oh, just go watch Lisa Eldridge, OK?), but not for a flat shading brush.

All kitted out like this, you’d think I’d wear eyeshadow more often.

I intend to work on that.

I know I am not alone in often resorting to subpar formulas for the sake of a tremendous color. That is what makeup really comes down to, for me, a straight issue of color. Do I love it? Do I want it? Is it worth it?

Color has powerful effects on us! Or can have. There are studies. I have immediate, often visceral responses to colors, for good or ill.

I’m debating this eyeshadow palette right now, the Kat Von D ladybird palette, just for the sepia color on the end. I hardly even wear eyeshadow! I have no money to waste! But this color…it is exactly, exactly the color I have been looking for. I just want to gaze at it and marvel at it. And maybe I would wear it! If I had that perfect color…(is how it goes in the brain).

You see, on the far right, what I mean? That rusty, burnt sienna color? I have seriously been looking for a sepia eyeshadow like this for years! The rest of the palette is nice, too, conveniently.

Helllooooo…

I have been thinking about makeup this way constantly lately, as a tool for controlling color–hills and valleys of color, planes and angles of color–, and the paradigm works every time. A nice simplicity to it.

Uhh. Where was I? Oh, yes.

Ideally, though, you don’t have to compromise with the formula, and in NARS Heatwave (called ‘semi-matte’ and accordingly matte but not in that unfriendly way) we see a happy confluence of form and function. A brilliant, almost neon red*(which sometimes plays a heavily saturated neon coral) that performs exactly how you would hope. At least, exactly how I hoped. If I’d had it at the time, I would have included Heatwave with my earlier red-orange/orange-red picks.

I was in no way disappointed, and perhaps you begin to gather how particular I am.

*Wearing it here.

Tag: sepia

autumn palettes

on the lips: NARS Heatwave lipstick