Lunasol Velvetful Eyes in 01 Deep Bordeaux Velvet

Backstreet's back. Alright?

It's been a long adjustment but I'm finally starting to think about writing for fun again instead of just for school. And I bought a camera charger. And I'm getting excited about fall makeup.

I also got this, the best haircut of my life,
now sadly replaced by a very subpar haircut

One of the first fall makeup collections I've seen in this hemisphere has been Lunasol's. I scarcely paid attention to Lunasol last year, but my aesthetic must be changing because... well, you'll see.

Lunasol is a Kanebo brand known for lots of refined microsparkle that gives a wet look and relatively sheer pigmentation. And beige. This is the brand that gave us a quad named Beige Beige... which has three beiges and a midtoned brown. Three. Beiges.

To compare it to others in the Kanebo canon, Lunasol has more varying textures, as a rule, than KATE, which usually pairs a glitter topcoat with shimmers-to-frosts. KATE's microsparkle is generally pretty tonal, while Lunasol's microsparkle can get quite complex and multitonal. The color palette of each palette (ahem) is generally far more intuitive than SUQQU's unexpectedly delightful combinations. (Not to mention all the attention Lunasol gives to variations of beige.) And, while SUQQU palettes generally have a range of finishes, Lunasol tends to the heavily shimmery and sheer. While SUQQU collections are consistently exciting to me, I find Lunasol's collections far more uneven. (Three-Dimensional Eyes? Pretty great, if there's a color you like--the 3 light shades and 3 dark shades in different finishes are really helpful and consistently satiny-good. Spring 2013's Vivid Clear Eyes? Pretty boring.)

It takes a special effort on Lunasol's part to intrigue me, I think, but the shadows really do perform well, in my experience. They feel smooth and last well (through my rigorous routine of naps, school, humidity, that jog that I tell myself I'll take.) The deeper shades, especially, tend to have an almost murky, in-between-colors kind of thing going on, usually with contrasting microshimmer, and I can dig it, since I have figured out, thanks to Kate, that my weird in-between coloring (what's my hair? red? ash or chesnut? what is that blonde doing there?) really loves weird in-between colors (like taupe.) The contrasting microsparkle really sets Lunasol apart from KATE and keeps me interested in the line despite disappointing collections. And of course, the name Lunasol evokes an attention to light details, and when Lunasol gets it right, they really do.

This fall, Lunasol released four shades of a new quad called Velvetful Eyes. The shadows are molded to look like rippled cloth and what drew my eye instantly was the textural variation--it's not just sheers and glitters. The second thing I noticed was the only-slightly-consumptive, droolworthily autumnal Deep Bordeaux Velvet, a deeply alcoholic duo of satin shades paired with a shimmery rosy beigey purply rose and a microsparkle palest petal topcoat.

This picture is lamentably inadequate: first, the lightest shade should be pink and very sparkly. Secondly, the whole thing should be a bit redder and murkier. (Haru has a scan here.) 

Still trying to capture that this is indeed wine and not just grape...

Lunasol is marketing that these sets will achieve "monotone makeup with the deep luster and depth of velvet" but what I really want you to see here is that these aren't variations on one hue; they're variations on a color theme, bordeaux, and the finish is roughly darkest/mattest to lightest/blingiest.

Here I've swatched the four colors, which, due to lack of daylight, appear more brown and less interesting, along with the lightest, sheer sparkly shade over the darkest purple. 

My lack of photography skill means I can't pick up the subtleties in the sheer, palest pink microglimmer (I can see blue, fuchsia, pink, lime, and gold); molten rose-beige-mauve (so much less cheery than it appears in the pictures!) with microshimmer that mimics the glimmer of the lightest shade; a mid-toned mahogany satin with perhaps the most subtle shimmer interplay; and finally, deepest merlot satin with the sparsest pink, blue, and green microshimmers. 

Trying desperately to represent that the lightest color is indeed glistening pink, not white

All in all, I think this is a lovely fall quad. It's squelched my lemming for THREE's Star Guitar, which appears to be a bit warmer and perhaps rustier.