Review: L'Oreal Hip Duo Crystal Shadow in Darling


L’Oreal HIP Studio Secrets Professional Crystal Shadow Duos line is one of the most popular drugstore eyeshadows. I'm not entirely sure why, but I'll get into that later.


Cost: $8 @ Walmart (& other drugstores). Damn pricey for two drugstore shadows.

Packaging: It's interesting packaging, but also clunky. I don't know why they had to devote a whole separate section for one sponge tip.  The plastic also feels a little flimsy and light.  On the upside, it stays closed and I have no problems with it popping open and spilling shadow fallout everywhere (which it has plenty of).

Texture: Picking it up is a problem, it's very prone to fallout.  Sponges or fingers work better than brushes in this case honestly.  I usually just use sponge tips anyway ^^  However, once you get it onto your skin it's pretty easy to blend and leaves a silky sheen.  However, there is so much fallout!  Just look at my finger swatches and the powder around the edges of the palette in the first picture :\!

Staying Power: Too bad the lasting powder is...bad. Worse than the creamy Almay palette I think.  I don't wear UDPP or shadow bases unless I'm doing something dramatic and these fade very quickly - under 2 hours I'd say. Drugstore shadows certainly don't have the lasting power of upper-end brands like Urban Decay and MAC (and they shouldn't be expected to), but Maybelline and Almay palettes last a respectable 4-5 hours without primers and a good 6-7 hours with a primer.   A shadow that fades under 2 hours is ridiculous.

Colors/Pay-Off: Good, initially. Overall, the colors are very dupable though, look below and you can see it's pretty similar to the Almay intense iColor trio.  The brown in L'Oreal is a tad darker with less shimmer.  As for the L'Oreal beige, it's more sheer than Almay with less shimmer.

Blendability: Blends decently enough but you're dealing with so much fallout it's hard to appreciate this.

Good:
- Good color pay off, initially.
- Blends decently enough.
- Very pretty sheen.
- Very creamy and smooth.

Bad:
- Lots of fallout :P So powdery.
- Not long-lasting.
- Clunky packaging.
Overall
All that said, I may have picked a bad duo.  There's only one review for Darling and it was hated :\ but other color duos have more love.  Personally, I will never re-purchase this duo (I'd return it if I didn't lose the receipt) and I probably won't ever try other duos in this line.  $8 for just 2 colors isn't enough for me to bother :P

Other Hip Duo reviews: Musings of a Muse (really good review), Disflylatina