Best Things in Beauty : Too Faced The Return of Sexy Palette Swatches

Too Faced The Return of Sexy palette (US$48/€44) just arrived at Sephora in France. Visually, it's much sleeker and more grown-up than Too Faced's usual cardboard palettes. Made in Canada, the layout and textures of the eyeshadows reminded me very much of Lancome's Color Design 5 Shadow & Liner Palettes, with generously sized individual pans (0.035oz each). The palette also includes a Perfect Eyes Waterproof Eyeliner in Perfect Black and a sample tube of Shadow Insurance primer.

I swatched the eyeshadows with my fingertip on bare skin without primer. Most of them are shimmery with pretty good color payoff and felt silky to touch. The three shade combinations of the Ingénue, Icon, and Bombshell are easy to work with and offer many creative possibilities. The eyeliner is an impressively intense matte jet black that did not drag across the skin. This could give Urban Decay's Perversion eyeliner pencil a run for its money.

Although the price is quite hefty, The Return of Sexy compares very well in terms of value for money vis-à-vis Too Faced's earlier palettes as the 15 eyeshadows have a combined weight of 0.525oz, versus 0.39oz for the Summer Eye Palette (US$36). The eyeliner normally retails for US$18 on its own. If I didn't already own a substantial stack of Too Faced and Lancome Color Design palettes, I would have been seriously tempted to pick this up.