Today, Anastasia Beverly Hills is releasing its Holiday 2018 collection, and it's the sparkliest group of products the brand has ever made.
Despite the glitz and glamour of the brand's new lipsticks, glosses, and its first-ever line of loose glitters, fans instantly swooned over one holiday item more than the rest. I'm talking, of course, about the Sultry palette.
Upon its reveal, Sultry seemed to pack a more glittery punch than any other palette ABH has ever released. Does it pass the standard of a picky beauty editor, though? The brand sent me one so I could find out for myself.
The Sultry Palette ($45, Anastasia Beverly Hills) is finally out, and I tried it firsthand.
In case you're wondering, yes, those are real roses in the palette's press package.
You'll be pleased to know that the palette's packaging is even more sparkly in real life than it is in photos — and it doesn't shed all over your hands when you pick it up.
At first glance, I couldn't help but mentally compare Sultry to Anastasia's prior Norvina palette, which I fell head over heels for.
Much like Norvina, Sultry has seven velvety matte shades and seven smooth metallics — they're just in far more neutral hues.
The matte shades, which range from light beige all the way to black, have a semi-sheer but buildable coverage perfect for blending and transitioning.
I could tell upon my first finger swatch that these puppies are pressed very softly, and I knew that I'd have to be careful when taking a makeup brush to them.
The metallic shades, I'm not even exaggerating, glide like BUTTER. Though it took me a couple passes to build some of the matte shades to full opacity with my finger for these shots, all of the metallics took a single, light swipe.
These shadows, I should warn you, are so glittery that they're near impossible to capture on camera. They disappear in the shade and pop most in direct light.
But girl, they are OPAQUE. Cyborg, the lavender-tinted silver shade toward the bottom, cut right through my arm tattoo with ease.
To get a full sense of both formulas' full potential, I opted to try a drastically different look on each of my eyes. To prep my eyelid for the first look, a blended halo eye, I dusted the base shade Fresh onto my lash line and all the way to my brow bone.
I should note, though, that Fresh is a perfect base shade for me and other extremely pale people, but it might not serve the same purpose for those with deeper skin tones.
I knew at the first sight of Sultry that I had to try Bloom, a neon coral that's without doubt the brightest shade in the entire palette.
Sultry's matte shades, when touched by a makeup brush, did deliver a little kickback, but not enough to cause concern. I'd say it's got a very similar consistency to the pink shades from Modern Renaissance.
In terms of pigment level, it came off a lot more sheer than I'd anticipated — that being said, it was easily blendable and buildable.
I used my finger to swipe Rose Quartz on the center of my eyelid, and it stood out even without laying a base of concealer.
Now that's pigment, baby.
When applied with a finger, this metallic shade produced virtually zero fallout. The matte coral, on the other hand, did require a little sweep with a fan brush after the fact.
Wanting to attempt something a little more "me" — in other words, edgier — on my other eye, I took a sharp eyebrow brush and used Noir, the palette's impossibly dark matte black, to create a sharp wing.
You can see in this photo that Noir did leave an itty-bitty mess just below my lower lash line, but it was easily fixed with a fan brush and the gentle use of a wet wipe.
Noir, like the rest of Sultry's matte shades, did create some kickback in its pan. Because of this, I'd recommend laying down a thick base of setting powder or doing your eye makeup before your base.
But, as I've clarified before, higher pigment levels require softer pressing — it's a give-and-take with makeup that often just comes down to personal preference. If you don't like or simply don't want to deal with kickback, that's fine. But if you want the higher pigment payoff, you're going to have to live with a little bit of fallout.
This is almost always a point of contention with Anastasia eye shadow palettes. Still, the makeup aficionados who understand how to best apply it can't get enough of this matte shadow formula, and I can see why.
I was so impressed by Cyborg's swatch from earlier that I just had to put it on my eyeball. I chose the same eyebrow brush I used to apply Noir rather than my fingers this time, and it did not disappoint.
Metallic shadows such as these usually require the oil of a finger or a wet brush to reach this kind of shine and opacity, but Cyborg required next to nothing. I didn't even lay down concealer on my eye like most would for an eye look like this one. Cyborg stood out all on its own with little help from me.
Once again, you're just going to have to trust me when I say that the camera truly does not do justice to this metallic formula.
What's my overall opinion of the Sultry palette? YES, PLEASE.
This palette's matte and metallic formulas are very similar to the rest of Anastasia Beverly Hills' best-selling palettes. If you're used to using them (or need a gift for someone who is), this palette is going to be a must-have this holiday season.
Even if you aren't, Sultry's soft, neutral tones make it a perfect palette to start learning how to use soft-pressed shadows with high pigment levels.
TLDR: The palette is freakin' good.
