With great job comes a great salary and with a great salary comes the time in your life when you can actually buy stuff from Pat McGrath without the need to each just crackers for the rest of the month.
The Pat McGrath Labs MTHRSHP MEGA: Celestial Divinity Pallete is part of this year's Pat McGrath holiday collection. The collection also includes some eyeshadow quads and lipsticks and other products but this pallete caught my eye. It was mostly because of the pricetag because this pallete was 1850 Crowns. That's not a usual Pat McGrath price range for eyeshadow pallete and this is an 18 pan pallete.
Now there's a little controversy around this pallete because it contains many already released shade that were part of the Star Wars collection. I understand that people don't like seeing that because these shades aren't technically new but at the same time...that collection was a limited edition and if you didn't have a chance to pick it up, now you can. And honestly some of these shades are just incredible. There are 12 already released shades and 6 brand new shades in four finishes - matte, metallic, shimmer and duochrome.
On the website there are instructions for multiple looks that can be done with the pallete, so I might do a video featuring these looks but in this post I want to create my own. To be honest the pallete didn't really speak to me that much at first because of the colorscheme but I know that these shadows are going to be something else just because of the feedback I read on the Star Wars palletes. So I picked it up even though I wasn't 100% in love with it the first time I saw it.
I must say that I really like the packaging, the pink and gold is really pretty and pleasing to my eyes. I also like the big mirror which is in the pallete. And also, even though this pallete is a slimmer format than the usual "gold brick" palletes, it feels very lux, heavy and great quality. It's not your usual cardboard pallete. The pans are smaller than in the other palletes but I think that's to be expected. The shade names are on the back which is a little annoying to me but Pat McGrath palletes always have it that way. At least it's one the back and not separately on a card.
Now on the first sight it's a little chaotic pallete, you don't really see a theme or a story in it that much...but it looks nice. If you look a little more into it, you'll see that there are no shades with the insane finish like in the regular Mothership palletes. I was kinda expecting to get at least one or two of these, but there are none. However, that doesn't mean that the shimmers aren't beautiful. After swatching all the shades I was very much in love with the duochromes. Those are truly amazing and I don't own any shades like them. And also the mattes have really nice undertones, I think that they're great for building the structure of any look. The shimmers are also great quality and they are really pigmented and incredibly opaque and metallic.
Look 1
As a first look I wanted to do something very pinktoned and simple as I didn't have much time to do it anyway. I absolutelly fell in love with the duochromes in this pallete so it was my mission no. 1 to incorporate one in a look.
First I took Venomous Void and packed it into my crease and onto my outer corners. I blended out its edges a bit with the same brush but then I took Venusian Orchid to blend them out a little bit more. Then I took Odyssey onto a flat brush and packed it all over my lid. It's such a beautiful duochrome with an amazing hot pink shift. I also added a mauve eyeliner into my waterline and put a black winged liner on top and that's the look.
Look 2
Today I wanted to take advantage of the green tones in the pallete. I am stunned by the duochromes in the pallete so I wanted to build the look around the shade Dragonfly.
I started with Major Mahagony as my base matte shade and I blended it into the crease and packed it onto my outer corner. Then I took the same brush and used the exces product to blend out the edges. Then I picked up Dragonfly on a large flat brush and packed it all over my lid, up to my crease. I really didn't feel like this shades need to be paired with anything so I just added brown gel liner in to my waterline and smoked it out with Major Mahagony. Last touch was seafoam green glitter liner into my inner corners which perfectly matched that duochrome shift. I added a black winged liner and that's it. Nice and simple.
Look 3
This pallete has very little mattes so I wanted to experiment with shapes a little bit because I usually build structure with mattes and I don't have much space here.
I started with Major Mahagony and created basically a very large and smokey winged liner that went way too far. It was a little tricky to do but you need to find small enough blending brush and get the angle and you've got it. Then I took Gold Standard on my finger and placed it along the liner above it. So I basically had gold going from the center of my lid all the way along the liner to my crease and above. Then I wanted to have a little deeper inner portion of the look so I took Bronze Nebula on a blending brush and blended it into the inner crease and along that golden shade. I then took a dark brown liner and placed it into my waterline and added some mascara. I took Major Mahagony and blended the brown pencil a little bit to continue the wing on the top. It's a little different look in terms of what I usually do but I really like how it turned out.
Look 4
Since there are many looks where Pat uses the shimmery shades instead of mattes I wanted to wander into this area of eyeshadow too.
I started with Violet Void in my outer crease and I blended it into a rounded shape. It has a lot of glitters but it's still very usable as a matte if you tap away the glitter. Then I took Electron on a flat brush and placed it in the middle of my lid. It has a purple base so it blended right into the Voilet Void shade. Then I took Lunar Champagne onto a smaller flat brush and placed it on the inner 1/3 of my lid. I mirrored the colors with eyeliners on the bottom lashline and buffed the black on my outer corner with a little bit of Violet Void.
Look 5
For the last look I couldn't quit without using the green shade Megabyte. It's just meant to be.
I started by placing Megabyte all over my lid and crease. Then I took small buffing brush and blended out the edges very gently. The shade has quite a dark base so it blends out really well into a smokey cooltoned brown/grey. Then I took Galactic Gold and put it over the inner half of my lid. It's not very prominent in the look because I placed it over the green and also because it has a slightly green shift but it makes the green a little brighter. Then I took Smoked Amethyst and liner my upper lashline very close to the lashes. And lastly with Fuchsia Shock I buffed the lower lashline.
Final thoughts
So is this pallete worth the buy? I'm a little torn after using it for a while. One thinkg is the price as I think that for a similar price I could probably get a pallete I would use more in similar quality. I love the quality of the shades, don't get me wrong, but I think that Natasha Denona for example makes also great eyeshadows and this price would be on one of her palletes.
Once you get past the price the eyeshadows themselves are very nice and I especially love the duochrome shades. Basically the bottom row of the pallete makes it worth it for me. The gold shade is also insane and overall if you need metallics that are truly special and creamy and pack incredible punch...this is a nice pallete to get. But I wouldn't say that it's a staple you need in your collection or that it's a must have. It's not really a pallete I reach for all the time and it's not a pallete I typically use to do a full look with. But I still like it.
Have you purchased anything from this year's Pat McGrath holiday collection? Let me know and thanks for reading!