Charlotte Tilbury Luxury Palette in Fallen Angel

 Ever since seeing Charlotte Tilbury in person during the launch of her eponymous makeup line at Selfridges in the summer of 2013 I have been pining to get my hands on more of her products. The great news is that Charlotte Tilbury is now available in the US and retailers such as Beautylish have made it easy to get her products north of the border.

Fallen Angel (LE $65.00 US) is part of TIlbury's holiday offerings and is part of Tilbury's "The Supermodel" look. Fallen Angel is the first Luxury Palette with "a breakthrough formula for a wet and dry finish." According to Tilbury, using these shadows with a damp brush gives "three times the colour intensity and an irresistible liquid metal reflective finish."

Photos taken in natural light, swatches are dry on unprimed NC 35 skin.

Charlotte Tilbury Fallen Angel (clockwise from top left): Prime, Enhance, Smoke and Pop

Like all the other Luxury Palettes, Fallen Angel consists of four shades: Prime, Enhance, Smoke and Pop (clockwise from top left.) 

Prime - described as a "pale golden pearl,"  this is a pale golden champagne shimmer that runs on the neutral side of golden with good pigmentation.

Enhance - described as "antique silver," this is my favourite shade from the quad - a metallic taupe that leans golden brown at some angles and silvery in others. Excellent pigmentation.

Smoke - described as a ":velvet black",  this medium dark black has a slight blue undertone and a satiny/pearl finish. Good pigmentation.

Pop - this "metallic bronze" shade is an ultra pigmented metallic bronze with auburn undertones.

Charlotte Tilbury Fallen Angel applied dry (clockwise from top left): Prime, Enhance, Smoke and Pop

The texture of the shadows in the pan is smooth and almost dry feeling - very similar to MAC's Extra Dimension eye shadows or Estée Lauder's Gelée Powder eye shadows. All the shadows apply, blend and layer effortlessly. Applied dry the Pop and Enhance shades are the most opaque, although all the shades can be built up to be opaque in two layers. Applied wet, the shadows have a slightly more opaque finish, and they apply as smoothly as they do when dry. You can see Charlotte herself apply this quad both wet and dry in her fantastic and entertaining "Supermodel Look" tutorial here.

While the actual shades in the palette are not incredibly unique, the finish and saturation of the shades makes this worth owning if you love smokey neutrals and are willing to pay for a luxury brand. Yes, if you are a makeup junkie you most likely have colors very similar to this in your stash, but they will probably not perform this well! The one thing that impressed me in particular with this quad is how well the shadows layered on top of each other, there was no muddiness or dulling down of the shades. When layered, the shadows actually became richer and more lustrous. This is not an easy feat for a quad that contains both warm and cool tones. Wear time on the shadows is excellent, I only noticed a tiny bit of fading and creasing after 8 hours on non-primed eye lids. 

Highly recommended if it fits your budget!

Grade: A-

J