Friday 13 February 2009

Ilamasqua

Brand Focus: Illamasqua
Illamasqua is a new brand to the UK - they are London based and seem to fit a missing link to higher end dramatic, dark make up.

I put in an order with them a few weeks ago and received it yesterday -








I ordered 2 eyeshadow palettes (1 of purples, 1 of greens) and a lip palette where I just picked 4 colours at random from their list.

Now..onto the review -

This brand is not cheap - single shadows & lipsticks are more expensive than MAC - but less than NARS:
Single shadow - £14 (MAC £9.79 NARS £15)
Lipstick - £14 (MAC £11.26 NARS £17)
Liquid foundation - £19.57 (MAC StudioFix £18.60 NARS £31)

Palettes are much more affordable - the three palettes I ordered cost me just short of £90 with postage.
When I ordered there were already a lot of colours out of stock (there are now even more) and my order was delayed by part of my order being out of stock - had to be replaced with similar colours. Despite the wait - the customer service was excellent, when I emailed for updates I received emails back the same day - which my fellow Brits will know is extremely rare for UK companies - most seem to forget the value of actually helping the people buying their products -mini rant over-
I've already tried out all of the green shadow and 3 out of the 4 lipsticks and there are good and bad points to both.
The eyeshadows are all matte - they do have a small selection of shimmer shadows on their website but the vast majority are matte and as such they are difficult to work with - hard to blend and even though the greens look different to each other in the pans, it is very difficult to tell between them on your eye :
This is all 4 shadows - all look the same right?




Click to see close up





However, saying that the colours are really pigmented - in the future I will probably use these as base colour and shadows that are easier to blend with for crease/blending work.

I tried the most vibrant green wet as eyeliner this morning and it looks fantastic, I will try out all the shadows wet and let you know if that makes any difference - hopefully the colours will stand out better against each other.

Swatches of shadows


Lip palette -
When I first tried these out (the top - I think this is Underworld & bottom left - I think this is Welt) I was really disappointed. I don't naturally have very pigmented lips and the colours hardly came up - and I was applying a tonne of the stuff - this morning I tried the top (bright purple/pink) over nude lipliner ..et voila! Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. It reflects blue in the light and looks amazing, I've never seen that combination of colour in any other brand. I tried to take a photo to post up but they all looked blurry so I'll work on that!

In conclusion, I think this is a good brand with an excellent range of products & colours but they haven't personally beaten MAC, Chanel or Urban Decay yet for me as the eyeshadow queens.
I will order from them again but I will probably buy the lipsticks individually and try out other products - their blushers look amazing for one.
Chica's ratings :
Customer Service: 10/10 (even with the delay)
Quality of Products : 7/10
Selection & Price: 7/10
x x

3 comments:

  1. Cute blog dear, and welcome to the blogging world. :)
    I wanted to try out Ilamasqua but unforunately they don't ship internationally yet. Its great to finally see a review. Thanks.

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  2. Hi hon,
    Thanks :) I hadn't see any reviews for Illamasqua floating about so thought I'd add my thoughts for anyone who hadn't decided whether to order from them or not.
    I think there are plans for them to ship to more countries later in the year. Thanks for stopping by! x

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  3. I have not heard anything good about illamasqua as of yet. http://forum.topmum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=7053 this is something i think anyone debating using the products need to see, the quality isnt as good as MAC but just as expensive and not worth the time.

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