This is the third year out of four that Stila has come out with fall palettes that are longish, narrow, with three colors and a blush. Last year was the notable exception, where the palettes were round three part trios with a separate blush. Every fall the colors are beautiful and, in my opinion, richer and not as shimmery as their holiday and summer collections. Stila Fall is usually where I cave and buy several palettes.
This year, no matter how beautiful the palettes are, I just cannot buy them – the packaging is pretty, but velvet, which means that it will get easily wrecked with smudges of makeup if I use any of these palettes on a frequent basis.
The only one I am still considering buying is Laguna, which is a trio of blues. The middle shade is a more intense and pigmented version of Poppy, while the lightest shade is silvery blue and the darkest is a gunmetal dark silver grey. I would not use this palette often, so I could probably keep the outside unsmudged. I know some of you are wondering why that even matters, but my feeling is that packaging should be both pretty and durable. If the pretty velvet packaging of these palettes is going to get completely smudged, to me it’s not worth it.
The other two palettes are lovely, but I do think the Madagascar peaches and brown is too similar to past years, while the Moss greens could be a bit more vibrant. Bottom line, I really can only recommend the Laguna palette for its uniqueness. For neutrals, I really recommend the Front Cover Lookbooks. The palettes themselves are sturdier, and won’t get messy in the same way the fall palettes’ velvet will. If you are looking for greens, I would make your own 4- or 6-pan, using colors like LaDouce, Lame and Oasis. I am hoping my friend Hillary posts some of her favorite greens — she knows her greens better than I do.
I can’t quite believe fall is around the corner, but it does mean switching some colors in my makeup routine. In fall I tend to wear more pale gold eyeshadow, greens and coppers than my more beige eye look of the rest of the year. If anything, fall is more inspiring makeup-wise for me. Something about that back to school feeling I still get, despite being two years out of law school, and having no plans to ever go back to school.
A quick note on trends: it seems that this fall is a lot of polished neutral cheeks, deeper lips, and taupe or light gold eyes with lots of liner. Think Hollywook glamour. I am excited about the trend, but it won’t stop me from some of my favorite fall eye looks — one of them is using the Bobbi Brown Apricot Shimmerbrick on my eyes, with Clinique Egyptian liner.
General Disclosures & Disclaimers
