Review (sort of) Sephora Nars/Steven Klein One Shocking Moment Palette

I tried a bunch of new lines and new palettes in 2015, and the one real standout for me was the Steven Klein blush palette collaboration with Nars.

I hadn't bought a Nars product in about 15 years, partly because I can't stand the creepy black rubbery packaging, partly because the oversexualization of the shade names is icky, and partly because (speaking of creepy) I'm already in a polyamory relationship with far too many other high-end brands, and even I have my limits.

Also, I popped for a few Nars Artist Palettes back in the early oughts, and I remember the blushes and eyeshadows as hard-packed glitter bombs that somehow would not deposit color onto my makeup brush or my face, but would export masses of glitter that would glue themselves to the open pans of lipstick.

Back in the day, Nars palettes looked like this: four eye shadows, two blushes, four lipsticks:

Images courtesy of MakeupAlley.com

The palette I've come to praise, not to bury, looks like this:

The first thing you should notice is that the pans all contain pressed powder products. What does this mean? It means that no lipsticks had glitter or eye shadow deposited onto them in the making of this palette.

The top row contains a highlight/contour duo, and a bronzer, and below that, there are four blushes, in two shades of pink, apricot, and deep plum.

I don't contour and highlight, but the contour shade makes a nice crease shade, and the highlight is not sparkly and is useful for blending out eye shadow.

The blushes are lovely; pigmented, but soft and easy to blend.

This leaves us with the bronzer. Admittedly, it will take me a decade to use it up, since I bronze very infrequently. As in, on my annual trip to Florida. Maybe. Still, Laguna is a nice, not-too-orange, not-too dark bronzing shade.

On top of that, there's a nice mirror, and the whole set is great for travel.

This particular palette was a 2015 Holiday Limited Edition, but I like it enough to advise you to check out any or all Nars blush palettes. There's another one a lot like it available on Sephora right now. It's worth a look.

So that's my (sort of) review and proof that you should never say never, because it took almost fifteen years, but I have apparently forgiven Nars for that Last Dance glittery disco-ball palette debacle.