It's been a long and arduous few months for Anastasia Beverly Hills' Subculture eye shadow palette. Before we knew of its existence, it was leaked on Reddit and caused the firing of one of the company's retail employees. With the surprise ruined, the internet believed that Subculture would never see the light of day.
Luckily for all of us, that didn't happen. The palette has been released and is in customers' hands. But the drama doesn't stop there.
The reviews for ABH's new Subculture palette are in, and things are not looking good for the palette.
It all started with this review by Alissa Ashley, a beauty vlogger with around 650,000 subscribers.
Due to the "powdery" texture of the shadows, she found them unblendable and ultimately decided she couldn't successfully create a look with them.
"My verdict for this palette is that… no, I'm not doing it," she said. "I'm so irritated."
The fallout was just too much for her — especially when it came to Roxy, a matte peach that crumbled with a single brush stroke.
She took to Twitter to show the fallout up close, and you can see she'd already hit pan.
She says she bought the palette directly from the brand's website on launch day, by the way.
Things only escalated from there — users flocked to her mentions to share similar experiences with the palette.
And, as it turns out, a LOT of people are really pissed for the same reason.
And it's not just Roxy causing issues, either.
Users suggested that Ashley received a defective batch of shadows, but ABH's Claudia Soare cleared things up in a statement.
"Subculture is super pigmented," she wrote on Twitter. "A little goes a long way. The product is drop tested by our QA before it's approved for production. It has to pass a drop test in order to shop and arrive to a customer safely through the mail. Now since our mattes are pigmented, they're soft pressed (within the specs that pass a drop test) but not so soft, that they would not pass that drop test. All production has a tiny % of leeway for random issues/defect because nothing is perfect. That's why we have customer service, who is happy to replace or return a product. You can swirl a brush around over and over again to get to the bottom of a pan, if you wanted to, but why would you? Regardless, the product is solid, stuff happen, and we have a good return policy when it does."
She explained that the powdery texture was because of the way the shadows were pressed, and that the brand's customer service would replace any unsatisfactory palettes.
"I like to take care of our customers. We will ensure that you're happy with your purchase. Since some concerns weren't handled by CS it's the weekend (they're closed) I addressed concerns. Ideally we need to give CS a chance, as I'm one person. This means that it's impossible for me to do my job, and service our customers via social media."
She even reached out to Ashley herself to let her know the palette was exchangeable.
For those who didn't have an issue with Subculture's fallout, the palette worked like dream.
But a significant amount of people are putting their wallets down and walking away following this whole mess.
While the internet continues to argue, ABH will start pressing its shadows a little bit harder to nix that fallout ASAP.
The good news is, if you still want to buy the palette, it lands in stores on the 15th so you can test it out in real life before you buy.
Really, though, will this Subculture melodrama ever end?
It's tearing us apart… because we really want this thing, TBH.
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These stories are based on posts found on Reddit. Reddit is a user-generated social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website where registered members submit content to the site and can up- or down-vote the content. The accuracy and authenticity of each story cannot be confirmed by our staff.
