I love a gorgeous new eyeshadow palette as much as the next person. What is more beautiful to look at than 12 or 18 pans of glistening colour laid out beside one another. But, what is more satisfying than finding one single eyeshadow pan that can stand alone, acting as both base colour and shimmering top coat? No blending, no inner corner, outer V, lash line, etc. Enter YSL Satin Crush Mono Eyeshadow.
YSL isn’t a beauty brand that’s constantly on my radar, but they’re always there, reliably in the background with some serious cosmetic credibility. Touche Éclat anyone? It’s perhaps the original and most famous highlighting/concealer pen in existence, frequently imitated – and it’s still going strong. How about the Rouge Volupté Shine lipsticks? Beautiful packaging, amazing colours and undoubtedly the softest, creamiest, dreamiest lipstick texture on the market. I loved 62 for a 60’s throwback pink. Let’s not forget some of the excellent base products, like the Fusion Ink Cushion Foundation – I picked this up at Le Bon Marché while on a trip in Paris, and you know it’s good makeup when there’s a memory attached to it some four years later.
I shouldn’t be surprised, it seems, that I’ve fallen in love with another YSL beauty product. While not necessarily the most hyped, or as Instagrammed as the latest multi-pan palettes, these Satin Crush Mono Eyeshadows are set to become long-term favourites.
03 Indecent Nude is a beautiful, softly shimmering nude. It’s not quite silver, not quite gold – the perfect cream-taupey champagne, especially for fair skinned ladies who struggle to find base colours in the right tone of neutral. This isn’t too warm, nor too cool.
06 Transgressive Taupe is just one step deeper but still an extremely subtle, wearable shade. It’s a taupe brown for those who find most light browns too orange, or too yellow. There’s just the right amount of luminosity that it can be applied as a single lid colour without need for any more shimmer. Along with 03, I love this as much as I love Burberry’s Pale Barley. If you know, you know.
02 Excessive Brown is a deeper chocolate, bronzey brown. While some browns can lean toward a minky, red tone, which I find never flattering around my eyes, this has only the slightest hint of pink. There are tiny, glistening flecks of gold and it makes the perfect shade to amp up a daytime eye look into something more smokey and dramatic.
While the black and gold compacts are luxe and gorgeous, if I could just curate these three eyeshadows into one mini palette I may never reach for another eyeshadow palette again. Hint, hint, YSL. They create the perfect nude, understated but sexy, eye look – and there’s an additional three shades available if a different tone or depth better matches your completion; 01 Scandalous beige, 04 Extreme Copper and 05 Radical Rust.
For the sake of editorial honesty, I would be remiss not to mention the mind-bogglingly thoughtless decision from YSL not to print the shade names on the bottom of the compacts. Trying to remember which number relates to which colour while putting on a quick face of makeup – when the numbers do not even follow a lightest to darkest pattern – is tedious and clumsy. You end up opening every compact in search of the right one – and God help you if you have all six shades. Minor detail? Absolutely. But for a luxury brand of decade’s pedigree, the devil’s in the details.
Find YSL Satin Crush Mono Eyeshadow. at Look Fantastic and Selfridges