Best Things in Beauty : Dior Les Rouges Or: Swatches

The Dior Les Rouges Or holiday makeup collection has just arrived at the counters in Singapore.

The gold-themed collection includes two Cinq Couleurs eyeshadow palettes in #544 Golden Pastel and #554 Couture Gold. These are retailing at S$95 each (versus S$92 for the regular Cinq Couleurs palettes and S$95 for the Cinq Couleurs Designer All-in-one Artistry Palettes in the permanent range). See better pics of the two palettes on Iswii.net.

I swatched the two quints on bare skin without the aid of any primer. The photo below shows #554 Couture Gold in the top row and #544 Golden Pastel in the bottom row.

Most of the shades have a soft glowy finish and a smooth velvety texture. Both quints feature a sparkly metallic gold shade in the centre that look virtually identical when swatched. The dark brown shade in Couture Gold was surprisingly very sheer and took several layers to show up well on my skin. You can see more swatches of Couture Gold on Beauty Look Book.

While some of the shades have interesting nuances in tone, the combinations did not appeal to me due to the lack of sufficient contrast amongst the shades. The colour payoff was sheer to medium at best.

L'Oreal's new Color Infallible eyeshadows (S$14.90) swatched much better in comparison (bottom row in the pic below) with a richer, more intense texture. These definitely offer much better value for money as all five will cost S$74.50, still much cheaper than the price of a Dior quint. However, most Watsons stores seem to be out of stock of the Color Infallible eyeshadows already. Watsons is also having a buy-2-get-1-free promotion on L'Oreal products right now. The Color Infallible eyeshadows are also available at Sasa, but without any discount.

Swatches of the Color Infallible eyeshadows (from left to right): #21 Sahara Treasure, #23 Black Onyx, #27 Goldmine, #22 Emerald Lamé and #24 Bronze Goddess.