That's right, I said "alleged". I am late to jump on this Coastal Scents bandwagon but better late than never right? Not in this case. Never would have been way better than late. But if you don't know, Coastal Scents is an online brand that became kind of popular as they started sending various YouTube gurus free stuff to show in their videos (they make various items like decent inexpensive brushes too). You can get several styles of palettes for very cheap, I'm talking 88 shadows for like $20 or something. I'm not speaking for the quality or performance of any other palette but the one I ordered, the 28 Neutral Palette. I ended up buying it after seeing a 40% off sale on the CS site (this was a few weeks ago but they do sales like this every now and then) so I ended up getting the palette for around $11 plus a ridiculous $6.95 shipping charge which pretty much equaled the price of the palette before the 40% off.
The reason why I got the palette was because several people in several videos and several blog posts have said these shadows are close dupes to many of the popular MAC neutral shadows. I figured why not, for $11? At the very least, my 5 year old can use it for playing dress up.
First let me tell you briefly what you get:
-roughly 8 shadows that can be used for highlight shades or basic light neutral lid colors and what not
-8 shadows ranging from mid-toned browns to shades of pink and berry
-8 shades of darker neutrals like blacks and browns and deep burgundy and a couple more mid-tone neutral browns
There are a mixture of matte and shimmer but nothing overly glittery and annoying. Overall, its a great pairing up of shadows with a great selection of finishes. And that is, unfortunately, is where the compliments end.
I don't particularly find these to be MAC dupes, I mean anyone can find something similar in their collection that one of these shadows may resemble in some way. For instance, in the CS palette, there is a chalky black shade with red shimmery flecks (bottom row, last shadow on the right) that is said to be a dupe for MAC Carbon. Hmm. Not really. If it were a matte black then I would say sure but come on now, that is a stretch. I know dupes don't have to be exact, I'm not saying that, but they should be in the same ballpark or at least next door to that ballpark to be called a dupe. Basically, around 2 shadows per row of 8 have decent pigmentation upon first swipe. I am convinced that the light pink shade in the CS palette (third row from bottom, third shadow over from left) that is supposed to be a dupe for MAC Phloof! is in fact actual chalk. I see no difference between the likes of that shade and my daughters pink sidewalk chalk. The very frosty white shade, which is said to dupe MAC White Frost (from bottom-up, first row, first shadow) is the only decent one in the row because it is pigmented and soft. If you really like frosty white, you're in business but I personally won't get much wear out of it. On the opposite end in the far right corner, top row, last shade in the row, is a very pigmented deep burgundy with shimmer (supposed MAC dupe for Beauty Marked). Everything in between is crap.
And to further kick a horse while they're down, these shadows don't wear well (on me). Not at all. They kind of all start to blend into each other by the end of the day afternoon.
There are a couple of different versions out there of how people interpret which MAC shade is closest to which CS shade but I included the version I liked best (below).
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| Photo taken from www.makeupandbeauty.com (this is the CS palette with names of MAC dupes) |
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| This is a photo I took with flash (above) |
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| Image from www.matylovemakeup.blogspot.com (CS swatches above) |
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awww thank you so much for the review,
ReplyDeleteU saved my money. haha.
I was going to order this palette :)