Hi fellow nomads,
As promised here is the second part of my mini-Kiko series, and today I'm showing you the custom palette I built and bought at Kiko. There's more about my trip here, but I'm guessing you're here for the good stuff so let's get on with it.
This beautiful item is made up of 4 individual Infinity eyeshadows which you buy separately and fit into the empty palette. They have palettes available for 1, 3, 4, and 9 pans as well as a monstrous 24. I chose a 4 pan palette on the basis of symmetry and (sort of) restraint, and then spent a while picking my 4 shades. The store is helpfully laid out with all the shades stacked above the display, so you just look for the number you swatched and you’re good to go. Easy breezy (a little too easy, if you ask my wallet).
I ended up going for a couple of beautiful green shades with some complementary browns. Green is one of my very favourite colours, and yet I don't own any decent green eyeshadows so this gave me the chance to build my own perfect palette. These greens appealed to me the most out of the shades on display, but honestly, I could have bought so many more. There were such beautiful colours...
Anyway, to pair with the glorious greens I got some matte brown shades to really set things off. Now if this were a pre-made palette you could bet your life one of these would have been a beautiful shimmery highlight colour, leaving you with only one blending shade. Well. Not when I'm building my own palette! For me, I like to have a bit of choice of blending shade, depending on whether I'm going for a day or night look, and whether I want one to double up as an eyeliner or not. I also have more shimmery highlight shades than I know what do with so I'd rather skip that and give myself some more solid base colours. I'm also coming to the realisation that this probably isn't the ideal travel palette that I thought it might be (damn) so it's no bother for me to raid my stash for a highlight should I desperately need one.
On to the ins and outs of the palette in general. Each separate item comes packaged carefully in its own box, with plastic moulding and a little clear cap to keep it secure. There's very little chance of the eyeshadows breaking on you before you've even got home (lucky for someone as clumsy as me). This also means that I think I'd be quite happy to order from them online, as far as breakages in transit go.
This is what the products look like taken straight out of their outer box packaging.
So as you can see, they're pretty snug in those plastic moulds. The good thing about the little plastic caps is that if you buy more Infinity eyeshadows and want to switch them in and out of your palette, you can keep the orphan shades safe in your makeup collection just by putting the lid back on.
Next, you break the shades out of their little plastic prisons, pop off the tops, and put them into the slots of the empty palette. Kiko also recommends peeling a portion of the label off the back and attaching it to the inside of your palette lid so you know exactly what shade you're using. They've printed the shade number twice on the label for just this purpose, and it's even scored a bit to make it easier to do so. I haven't done this on mine, mostly because I'm a perfectionist and I wouldn't be able to make it look neat enough for my tastes - and also, I don't think it's going to add anything to my eyeshadow application experience to know exactly which shade number I'm applying at any given moment... Just me?!
If you're like me you can have hours of fun deciding exactly which order your shadows should go in, and taking them out and putting them back in again just like Eeyore*. Luckily this is very easy to do thanks to the little thumb dents next to each shade, and the shadows pop out easily enough.
So this is how my final palette looks. I'm super pleased with this creation as I love each and every shadow - they all complete a gap in my existing collection (all killer, no filler) and it's more satisfying because I chose every shade myself. You know when you get a long awaited palette home and try it out, and it's great for a bit and then you start thinking oh, I wish this shade were a little darker/less sparkly/more warm toned etc? Well this cuts this right out. You can literally have it your way.
I've included some of my infamous awkward arm swatches for your delectation, so please do feast your eyes on these beauties.
In terms of the quality of the eyeshadows, they are really very good. They're extremely buttery and very blendable, which you can hopefully see from the excellent swatches above, long wearing (although I always use a primer anyway) and very well pigmented. I'd really recommend the Infinity eyeshadows in general as being a really fantastic product, but the customisability of the Clics palette is what makes this for me.
In terms of pricing, the eyeshadows are generally £5.90 each but they also have some super sparkly ones called Infinity+ which are £7.90. My palette was £4.90 and if you want to shop online, you can find the details here.
In terms of pricing, the eyeshadows are generally £5.90 each but they also have some super sparkly ones called Infinity+ which are £7.90. My palette was £4.90 and if you want to shop online, you can find the details here.
Unfortunately the only downside to me is that I think the outer casing is unnecessarily bulky - it's 2cm deep when closed and most of that is thin air - which in combination with the fact that it lacks a mirror means this is probably off my travel friendly list. I know that the outer casing looks terribly chic when it's closed, and that they've made the lid opaque so that you can stick the little shade number stickers on the inside, but as I say above that's not particularly important to me and honestly I'd much, much rather have a mirror inside the lid instead. Failing that, maybe a transparent lid so you can see the colours you have inside.
That being said, I do still highly rate this product and if you ever find yourself on Regent St (right next to Oxford Circus), I recommend checking out the shades in store yourself. If you find yourself as frustrated by the packaging as I do, then you could even stick the Infinity eyeshadows inside an empty Z palette or something.
That's all for now, check back tomorrow for the review of their nail lacquer. It won't be quite so long I promise!
-Rachel
*I'm impressed if you got that one
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