Kanebo Kate Glam Trick eyeshadow palette

I was enamoured with this eyeshadow palette from Kate by Kanebo when I first saw it online and read the rave reviews on it.

The reviewers basically gave it a thumbs up for colour and texture, and the one most raved about was the dark blue palette (BU-1) for what they say would make a lovely smokey eye. So, understandably I was all hyped up about it.

Over the weekend I finally found some time to check out Kate cosmetics again, and saw that this palette is finally here in Malaysia and retailing for about RM42.90 or so at Watsons.

Eagerly, I tested the tester sets for all the colours and unfortunately, I came away disappointed.

Firstly, I found that the colour was too sheer. It would have been much better had it been more pigmented because there is a lot of shimmer. So, when an eyeshadow is sheer with a lot of shimmer, you tend to just end up with lots of shimmer on your lid and not much colour.

Secondly, the texture. It felt soft but hard in the sense that there wasn’t much colour pay-off. Also, the surface of the colours loooked off after a spell. It looked messy and dirty and colour was hard to pick up. It got me thinking. If this is what happens after 100 fingers have touched it, how about if I have touched it 100 times myself? So, that did not impress me much.

Thirdly, there is very little product. The colours are arranged into these geometrical shapes in the case and the little square of dark liner shade for example, is really very little. So, it does work out rather expensive for something from the pharmacy.

All that said, I think BU-1 is the prettiest of the lot, with the best colour payoff. With dark colours you can get away with sheering the texture out because dark colours will still remain dark. And the shimmer looks pretty on them too. But for the lighter palettes like PU-1 and GD-1, all I got on my hands were pure shimmer and nothing much else.

So, my verdict of the Kate Glam Trick eyeshadow palette is that it might be worth buying BU-1 if it dropped to about RM30 but otherwise, I personally would not buy it at retail prices.