Lancôme's Spring 2012 colour collection by Aaron de Mey, called Roseraie des Delice, is "inspired by a garden party that takes place in a rose garden." (Sound familiar?) This collection is available at all Lancôme counters and online. This collection features nine new and limited edition products. The star product of the collection is La Roseraie Illuminating Smooth Powder. It is meant to be a "lightweight, multi-dimensional powder that gives a transparent finish to the skin" and is touted as an "all-in-one product for cheeks and face." Each powder comes in a black compact with "La Roseraie" written on the outside in mint green, contains 11 grams of product, and retails for $48.
La Roseraie features a satin peachy pink rose design and satin pale cream beige "stripes" with a gold shimmer overlay on every other "stripe." When mixed together, it creates a light peachy pink with gold shimmer and a light pink sheen. The texture is soft, silky, smooth, and very lightweight. It has light pigmentation and sheer to semi-sheer colour pay-off. This product is touted to have a "transparent finish," so the sheerness of the product is to be expected. Because of this, it should work well on all skintones and undertones. It is not as frosted as MAC Porcelain Pink Mineralize Skinfinish.
I almost didn't want to touch it because I didn't want to ruin the gorgeous imprint. I was really disappointed to see that the gold shimmer "stripes" were just an overlay, though. The purpose of La Roseraie is very similar to that of MAC's Beauty Powder, but this is much more translucent and less frosted, so it's more wearable in general and can possibly even appeal to those who hate shimmer (a "gateway" product into shimmer, if you will). However, this product is almost too translucent for me; it barely shows up — at least, on its own (the swatch in the picture is layering the product about five times). If you layer it on top of blush, it does soften the colour and add a very subtle glow. However, as a highlighter, it barely registers. It seems that the main purpose of this powder is to add a subtle all-over illumination to the face (with "subtle" being the keyword here), and it does to a certain extent — it will be more apparent in direct lighting or sunlight than indoors. But for $48, it was painful to see that this product barely shows up on skin. You can easily find a product that does something similar for much, much less.
I *almost* bought this. Went into Shoppers about a dozen times to fawn all over it and leave the SAs hanging, lol. It'so so pretty and I don't even mind the subtle look on the skin, but it's like the last thing that I need and when I saw a destroyed tester with the rose all out of whack, it sort of took me out of the spell. Are you going to keep it?
ReplyDeleteI'm actually REALLY contemplating whether or not I should return it. And I rarely ever return things, especially cosmetic items. I just don't think I'd have a real use for it on a regular basis (or even a semi-regular basis). Oddly enough, when I saw the design of it, I instantly thought of you and your fawning over your Laura Mercier illuminating powder, lol. :) And, actually, you might actually really like this product on the basis that it's subtle, given how you love your naked things... ;)
DeleteThe product looks so pretty!
ReplyDeleteHi, Sabrina! Yeah, this compact is really gorgeous and is probably the sole reason for me buying it in the first place, but it was just so underwhelming in execution. :( I'm actually thinking of returning/exchanging it -- it just doesn't justify the $48 price tag (for me, anyway)!
DeleteIs it me or are there many brands making these "flower-like" highlighters?
ReplyDeleteThat said, I'm kind of glad most of these new highlighters are very light. I know they will look ashy on me so I don't even have to consider buying them.
It does look pretty on your skintone though :)
It seems that all cosmetics brands copy each other. I mean, Dior and Lancome have the exact same garden theme for their Spring collections! But, yeah, there's been a lot of flower imprinting in make-up -- Dior, Laura Mercier, Guerlain, and now Lancome... MAC did the flower imprinting last May for their Fashion Flower collection! :P
DeleteYou know, I'm not sure if this will look ashy on you. But I think it has more to do with the colour pay-off rather than the actual colour. :P
Thanks, but it only looks pretty after 7,241 layers. :(