ANASTASIA BEVERLY HILLS SUBCULTURE PALETTE
August 08, 2017The infamous Subculture palette... I ordered this palette the day it was released on Sephora and it finally showed up at my house today. So much for that 2 day shipping, Sephora.
While waiting to receive this baby the BRUTAL reviews began slapping you in the face all over the internet, beauty bloggers and makeup lovers are ripping this palette to pieces. This made me anticipate the arrival of this palette even more. I had to see what the hell people literally lost their damn minds over. Let's take a look, shall we?
She is beautiful, isn't she? Absolute eye candy for us makeup junkies! It comes with a decent dual ended synthetic brush. One side for packing on shadow and a fluffy side for blending. There are eleven matte shades in this palette along with two dual chrome being Cube and Electric, as well as one metallic being Adorn.
The packaging of the palette is a soft velvet like texture. Exactly the same as the Modern Renaissance palette. Let's take a look at how it swatches out and I will tell you my thoughts about the application.
As you can tell by these swatches there is absolutely no doubt that the pigment is there. I did find them to be a little chalky while swatching them. One thing that struck me as a little strange is when I went to remove them with a makeup wipe they turned into a sticky paste that mix together on my skin and was very difficult to remove. I did dip the brush in to see how much kick back there was, that was one of the main things people were so upset about. I didn't find it to be a problem at all. I compared it to the Modern Renaissance palette and the Makeup by Mario collab palette they did together. They both had an equal amount of kick back and if anything the Mario one had even more. If I see one more person on Instagram or Youtube swirling their brush in there like they're mixing some cupcake batter my head will explode! Not to say there is no kickback, there is. If you use it like any normal highly pigmented eyeshadow and give your brush a little tap tap you are not going to have an issue. Alright, let's talk about how this eyeshadow actually applied.
I used four shades in the palette to create this look. Dawn, Electric, Fudge and Edge. I had to pull a matte brow highlight from my collection, there is not a good brow highlight in this palette. Cube is the only light enough shade for a brow highlight but it is a duo chrome with a pink shift, not for me. I think it would be beautiful on the lid or inner corners. Dawn and Edge I had no problems with at all, I actually really loved Dawn in my crease for a transition shade. Electric, Electric was a disaster. I tried to put it in the centre of my lid for a pretty pop... Tried, it was not going on top of those matte shadows. It was so difficult to even get any to show up and once I finally got some pigmentation with setting spray and digging in there it wouldn't blend at all. I went in and covered it up with Fudge, which wasn't as great as the others. It would either all blend away or not blend at all. Perhaps due to some of the Electric colour being underneath part of it. It seems as the shades get darker in the palette the blending gets tougher. The end look did turn out pretty, I liked it but I had to work for it. It is not my favourite palette, but it is nowhere near as awful as the word on the street in the beauty community, in my opinion. This isn't a palette majority of people I feel would reach for on an everyday basis or would travel with. There isn't a good brow highlight or transition shade for anyone with a darker skin tone. That may be something to consider if that is important to you. I'm on the fence whether or not I'm even going to keep mine. The way it applies is nothing spectacular, unlike her other palettes. Let me know your thoughts. Have you tried it?
xo TL
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