Going through the Taupes: Kate Dual Blend Eyes in BK-1

 One of the cool things about going through my taupes is rediscovering some that I had forgotten about (as well as finding ones I could go without; Bloom Slate, a murky grey, went straight to the purge pile after I swatched.) KATE Dual Blend Eyes in BK-1 was a pleasant rediscovery.

It has two shades: a puttyish beige and a deep cool brown with a bit of a violet undertone.

The selling point is that the two eyeshadow colors aren't completely separated and can be blended in the pan. I tried to clean up the beige side for you (aren't I nice?) but with normal usage, the area in the middle can become quite muddled.

Dark brown, beige, blended

Once the beige is layered over the cool brown, the effect becomes even more muted, even taupe-y. For consistency's sake, I like to take pictures in natural light. I had none, so these are all with-flash, which does have the benefit of showing off the shimmer.

I know I said that most KATE palettes tended to have one shade I don't like. There's generally a glitter stripe I delicately try to avoid or a useless creasy cream base. But here, both shades are smooth with buildable pigmentation. They're not the most densely pigmented in the world but they're also not sheer.

I wanted to show you how similar the Lunasol and KATE shimmer stories are. Again, with my lack of light box, voodoo powers, or ridiculous macro lens, the subtle yumminess of the shimmer (especially in the case of the Lunasol quad) is hard to see. But what I hope you can see is that they are similar in finish and even in their soft texture. Both of these palettes are my favorites from the respective brands, formula-wise, by the way. If you are looking into KATE, the Dual Blend eyes are a pretty nice place to start.

And here is the blended shade swatched along with some other taupes in a picture that dulls the shimmer considerably, as anyone who has ever owned Bronzed Taupe can guess.

But my eyes are already three-dimensional...

 I don't know if it's bad juju to start with a "meh" review.

But here we have Lunasol's Three-Dimensional quad... or octet... depending on how you look at it, and I wouldn't keep it with me in my pyramid for use in the Egyptian afterlife, but I find it useful.

On the outside, it looks like this:

Cheekily reflective.

On the inside, it looks like this:

It boasts an eggshell, a lilac, a beige, and a dark cool brown color.

What may be hard to see is that the eggshell and the deep cool brown have three separate finishes in their respective pans: a satin, a slight shimmer (that looks much the same as the satin), and a sparse gold glitter that is not really ostentatious once applied. One can theoretically use these shades separately or blended together. I find that the three-in-one pans look pretty homogeneous in reality.

The beige and the lilac are both shimmery but not frosty, with that translucence and refinement and multicolored microshimmer seen in many Japanese eyeshadow formulations. They feel pretty silky and nice to the touch. Not too dry. But not buttery, either.

With my nekkid eye, I see lime, pink, and baby blue microshimmer that unfortunately does not translate here.

Simplistically swatched with the tri-shades blended together. Oh, hello, vein.

It is quite pretty. I think it shows why I was drawn to the color story. To the far right, you can see how the four colors layer to make a purply taupe. I love a good murky purply taupe.

This Lunasol palette is the only one I own. In my opinion, the contrasting microshimmer particles I mentioned provide the major difference between this Lunasol palette and sister-in-Kanebo line KATE palettes. The KATE palettes I own, as you may see in forthcoming posts, tend to have less interesting color combinations of microshimmer and they also usually have at least one gritty or somehow texturally subpar shade.

Given that you probably can't see the complexities of the microshimmer here unless you have amazing alien eyeballs, you might correctly ascertain that I don't think the differences between Lunasol and KATE palettes are at all massive enough to justify Lunasol's significantly higher price. They tend to offer really similar shades each season and I've, for the most part, stuck to KATE's eyeshadows.

Now, blushes are another story altogether, but that is for a later day.