In Essence’s Spring/ Summer 2022 collection they released a new line of eyeshadow palettes. I bought two and today I am reviewing the first one for you. This is the Welcome to Miami eyeshadow palette: a bright, fun summer themed palette that, provided it works well, can bea fun one for the upcoming season. Let’s see how it went.
Review: Essence Welcome to Miami eyeshadow palette
The Essence Welcome to Miami palette is of course going to be affordable. It’s Essence, which is an affordable brand. But when I looked up the price point, which is €6.99, I wasn’t sure whether I truly found it worth it. With Essence, eyeshadow quality is quite hit or miss and therefore I am unsure whether this price point is warranted. For Essence, this is quite an expensive product.
What does the palette have to offer?
The Welcome to Miami palette is a 12-pan eyeshadow palette featuring 6 mattes and 6 shimmers. There are some neutral shades in the palette, but what stands out most are the pops of blue and purple this palette has. The palette is Miami themed and the packaging and also the color story suit the theming quite well if you were to ask me. Packaging wise this feels a bit cheap: the cardboard is thin, there is a mirror but it is too slim to really have it be a functional mirror for doing your makeup and it is a bit thick when storing the palette. Let’s have a closer look at the color story.
What is the color story like?
For Essence this is definitely something out of the norm. They don’t do many bright, colorful palettes and that was one reason why I wanted to try this palette in particular. It looks so much fun. However, upon further inspection it may be good to know that the palette is not as colorful as you might think. Out of the 12 shades only 6 are actually colors and one of those colors is a shade of pink that could easily be classified as a neutral. So we get quite a few neutrals or neutral acting shades here, while your eye is drawn into the fun bright pops of color. For me, the palette breaks into two parts: a purple part to the left and a neutral part with a pop of blue on the right.
What are the swatches like?
When swatching the palette, I noticed that the shadows feel soft, a bit powdery sometimes, but with fingers these all look quite good. Even those bright pops of color show up well and don’t look patchy, nor do I need to go into them twice to to build them up to full intensity. So these swatches look very promising indeed. The mattes feel very smooth and soft, the shimmers too but the shimmers aren’t all as intense as I’d hoped. The peach and the darker purple aren’t necessarily the most vibrant shimmers I have ever seen.
2 Looks with the Essence Welcome to Miami palette
Naturally, when I try a palette, I like to use every single shade in the palette to see how they perform. I like to create looks that are organic to my normal makeup use so these may not be the most creative, but this is how I would wear this on a day to day basis to work and out and about.
This palette lends itself perfectly for one of my favorite go to looks for the summer: neutrals with a pop of blue on the lower lash line. This look is pretty, but as you can see the neutrals here aren’t that definining and they are also quite warm toned. I would have preferred a different undertone in these neutrals for sure. I hardly reach for yellow toned golds. I mainly use them because I want to try every shade and while pretty, I know I will never go back to it. The blues are pretty indeed and the blue shimmer here is one of the standout shades in the palette.
The second look I created was with the purples in the palette and while pretty and very nice shades to work with, these aren’t my favorite purples. Why? They are warm toned and warm toned purples and me: we don’t really go together very well. Yes these are stunning, but I feel putting all the purples together makes the look rather overbearing and making it look like I have an eye problem. What could save this look is to mix it in with the blues, but overall this look wasn’t my favorite.
My final thoughts
The Essence Welcome to Miami eyeshadow palette is a pretty vibrant and more colorful option at the drugstore. The shadows have good quality, blend easily, good pigmentation and stay on all day. I am just not too excited about the color selection as it is quite a warm toned palette and therefore not perfect against my fair skin tone. That’s really the only issue I have here. Is this a bad palette though? No, but at €6.99 I do find this a steep price point for Essence. I mean, their 6 pan palettes such as the Dancing Green are only €3.39 each and I find that eyeshadow quality even better.
Would I recommend the Essence Welcome to Miami palette?
I think if you are looking for affordable, bright, colorful shadows that this may be a good option at the drugstore. I just wish the formula of Essence shadows would be more consistent and for the price point I think we can find shades like this from other brands that are just as affordable or possibly even cheaper. Especially since half the palette consists of neutrals that you may already have, you may not get exactly what you are looking for with this one.
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