Anastasia Beverly Hills' eyeshadow palettes are some of the most beloved and highly anticipated in the entirety of the beauty industry. So when the brand's president and influencer extraordinaire Claudia Soare — known to most simply as Norvina — revealed an ABH palette of her own curation, makeup fanatics unsurprisingly swooned.
But as we've all learned from previous experience, sometimes products we expect the world of can let us down. That begs the question: Is this dreamy fantasy palette just that, or is it a waking nightmare?
Anastasia Beverly Hills sent me the Norvina palette in advance so I could find out for myself.
I could tell at first sight that the Norvina palette ($42, Anastasia Beverly Hills) and I were likely to have a whirlwind romance.
The palette is available exclusively from Anastasia Beverly Hills starting today, by the way. It'll come to Ulta, Sephora, and major department stores within the next month.
Norvina's personal aesthetic is all about dreamy pastel purples, muted pinks, and a whole lot of sparkle. The color story of her namesake palette is just that, as expected.
But enough about aesthetics, on to the swatches!
Overall, the metallic shades in this palette could be summed up in one word: PIGMENTED.
Across the board, each of these shades has a texture so buttery, it almost feels wet — and that's a very good thing for a formula that's supposed to look metallic. These suckers are SO sparkly, their high shine is almost impossible to capture on screen, even with the help of direct sunlight.
Due to their loose and almost-wet texture, these shadows are almost always best applied the old fashioned way: With fingers.
Dreamer is a creamy champagne gold that's ideal for brow bones and inner corners.
Summer is a true gold that sets itself apart from every other palette's gold shades by being truly metallic.
The camera doesn't capture it well, but in real life, this shade is shinier than C-3PO.
Wild Child, a pastel pink with a slightly silver sheen, is the sweetest and sheerest metallic of the bunch.
Rose Gold needs little explanation. Just look at it.
Celestial is the shade Norvina's fans have been dying to try most, and I can see why thanks to its underlying blue-to-pink color shift.
Dazzling is yet another true gold (can you really have too many, though?) lying somewhere just between Dreamer and Summer.
Lastly, Drama is an intense, deep purple chock full of rainbow glitter that only appears in the direct light, making it well worthy of its name.
The matte shades in the bottom row of the palette also carry extreme pigment but are completely different in a handful of ways.
Norvina's matte shades are so pigmented that they require a very gentle and aimed hand to apply them without the risk of looking completely color blocked. That being said, they require a lot more layering and careful blending to reach full opacity on the eyelid, and that's OK! They're designed to serve as transition shades for all those stunning metallics, anyway.
Basically, just have a couple fluffy blending brushes on hand and be ready to practice a little patience with these guys.
Base, another self-explanatory shade, is the perfect bright off-white backdrop to make the other shades really pop.
Soul looks like a plain periwinkle in its pan, but when swatched it reveals a subtle blue sparkle.
Incense is a warm mid-brown with yellow undertones just like a stick of Nag Champa, making its name all too fitting.
Love, a gorgeous muted rose, is so soft it almost falls apart beneath my fingers. It's potentially the trickiest shade in the palette.
And that's a very good sign!
The shade literally named Volatile, however, is a unique green-toned deep brown that swatches with zero issue.
Eccentric is a mustard much like New Wave from the Subculture palette that I find preferable because it's not as soft-pressed or reactive to oxygen.
And finally, there's Passion, a deep, doe brown that's not as pigmented as the rest but creates no kickback whatsoever.
Now, about that kickback... You can tell from my finger swatches alone that these shadows come with a high risk of fallout.
So I delivered myself a challenge by wearing the two shades I found most challenging to swatch — Love and Wild Child — right off the bat.
And I was pleasantly surprised at the outcome, the glitziness of which was not done any justice by my phone camera.
As I'd predicted, Love's intense pigment and high kickback level just need a light hand and a lot of blending — everything you see in my crease here is the result of a single dip into the pan.
Once I had Love laid down, all I had to do was swipe just a small amount of Wild Child onto my lids, and she DELIVERED.
I followed that up by popping a tiny bit of Dreamer into my inner corners, also with my fingertips.
Once again, my phone camera really could not do that glitter justice. On another note, Wild Child is the sheerest metallic in the pan — if she can create this much sparkle with such little effort, the rest of the metallics in this pan must be 100 times more dazzling.
Did I need to swipe away some fallout underneath my eyes? Yeah. Did it smear and ruin the rest of my makeup? Absolutely not.
The look, I should note, even lasted through an entire afternoon spent in a humid botanic garden. I didn't even use an eye primer.
All in all, I only have one major gripe about the Norvina palette. And it really has nothing to do with my preferences.
Given how this palette appeared on my very pale skin, the matte shades may take work to pop on someone with a deep skin tone. The metallics are bright and flashy enough to pop on anyone, but the pastel and soft brown mattes are another subtle story entirely.
In no way do I expect every single palette to work for every single skin tone, but it's just something to keep in mind. If you have deeper skin and aren't feeling 100% sure about it, you can swatch the Norvina palette IRL when it hits Ulta and Sephora stores on August 5 and 7 respectively.
Just prepare to fall in love with the velvet-smooth texture of both the shadows and the packaging.
My overall first impression? Incredible textures, durable formulas, and a much-needed change of pace from this year's trendy, all-red palettes. Four outta five stars!
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For the rest of 2018, you can find me wearing nothing but pastel pink and purple on my lids. Norvina, you DID THAT.
