Inglot matte eyeshadows swatches and review

Not going to lie - all the messages about how you miss my blog make me feel both equal parts loved and guilty! I've been travelling solidly for the past 6 weeks (spending no longer than 5 days in any one country) which was obviously not conducive to either makeup or blogging.

As an inadequate apology here are a few holiday snaps:

In one of these photos I've filled my eyebrows in so this collage is vaguely relevant to makeup!

Now, without further adu here're my swatches and review of Inglot's matte eyeshadows:

Inglot package each eyeshadow, blush and I assume concealer, lipstick etc pan individually as I've shown below. Although this large amount of packaging wastage makes my environmentally conscious cricket cringe I can't argue it's extremely effective, hygienic and aesthetically pleasing.

I purchased eleven Inglot eyeshadows - nine metallic and two matte - around Christmas last year and while I adore them all I found myself reaching for the two matte taupes for almost every look I created as they were the perfect crease colours, blended effortlessly and flawlessly, and wore impeccably through all of the sweaty club dancing I am so fond of.

I'd been looking for a matte cool-toned neutral palette for a couple of months now; the Tarte Be Mattenificent palette was a strong contender and although the purple agate packaging won my heart instantly the eyeshadow quality was pretty meh. The Saucebox Etude palette was another option I liked - but they're been out of stock for about six months now (which is frankly ridiculous), and have absolutely awful customer service so I'd rather not support them.

Photo credit:
http://www.temptalia.com/
http://sauceboxcosmetics.com/

Thus, with the help of the amazing Beautylish Inglot palette builder I began building my own neutral palette which was equal parts fun and frustrating. I obviously highly recommend actually swatching the shadows yourself at an Inglot store, but if that's not possible Temptalia and other google source's swatches are actually very accurate. I ordered my palette from the UK Inglot website (as Beautylish only accepts US credit cards and ships to US addresses) and although postage was £5 regardless of how much you spend (free shipping is a weakness of mine) my package arrived less than a week later all bubble wrapped and lovely.

Top row: 360 / 363 (not new)
Second row: 391 / 329 / 326 / 378 / 358
Blush: AMC 55
Third row: 344 / 390 / 353 / 375 / 325/ 338 / 317 / 385

Aside from their phenomenal product quality and unparalleled colour and texture range my favourite thing about Inglot is the ability to mix and match their palettes as the mood strikes you - all their pans are magnetic and they offer multiple sizes of empty palettes so you can arrange and re-arrange all your eyeshadows (and brow powders/concealers/lip sticks etc) endlessly.

Since I don't know how to overlay text on my photos (sorry) I'm going to list the shade colours and names here (obviously all of them are matte):

Top Row:

• Neutral Taupe - 360
• Cool Taupe - 363

Middle Row:

• Black - 391
• Neutral dark brown - 329
• Cool burgundy tinged dark brown - 326
• Cool dark brown taupe - 378
• Mid grey mauve taupe - 358

Blush:

• Mid plummy beige pink - AMC 55

Third row:

• Mid beige pink mauve - 344
• Light beige pink - 390
• Very light neutral cream - 353
• Mid purple - 375
• Dark purple - 325
• Mid bright blue teal - 338
• Mid bright green teal - 317
• Bright mid green - 385

Top row: 360 / 363 (not new)
Second row: 391 / 329 / 326 / 378 / 358
Blush: AMC 55
Third row: 344 / 390 / 353 / 375 / 325/ 338 / 317 / 385

I cannot reinforce how amazing the quality of these mattes are - most of these took literally one swipe (with a clean finger over bare skin) to show full opacity, and all of them were incredibly soft and oh so buttery. All photos were taken with a flash.

I then pulled out some other mattes in my collection to compare the colours and texture - needless to say Inglot made it into no competition, my previous favourite mattes (Suagarpill, Laura Mercier, Urban Decay) were left biting Inglot's dust.

Top row: 360 / 363 (LM Plum Smoke / UD Tease)
Second row: 391 / 329 / 326 / 378 / 358
Blush: AMC 55
Third row: 344 / 390 / 353 / 375 / 325/ 338 / 317 / 385
(Fourth row: LM Morning Dew / Sugarpill Poison Plum / Midori)

The third and fourth shadows on the top row are Laura Mercier's Plum Smoke and Urban Deacy's Tease (from the Naked2 palette). The three swatches added as a fourth row are Laura Mercier's Morning Dew, Sugarpill's Poison Plum and Midori.

Top row: 360 / 363 (LM Plum Smoke / UD Tease)
Second row: 391 / 329 / 326 / 378 / 358
Blush: AMC 55
Third row: 344 / 390 / 353 / 375 / 325/ 338 / 317 / 385
(Fourth row: LM Morning Dew / Sugarpill Poison Plum / Midori)

Here you can see Laura Merier's Morning Dew (light neutral) is significantly less pigmented than Inglot's 353, as is Sugarpill's Poison Plum (purple) and Midori (green). Honestly I wasn't too surprised Inglot's mattes were more pigmented than Laura Mercier's as LM's are so incredibly soft they're hard to pack pigment on, and while this does make them slightly quicker to blend it's at the cost of seriously sheering out the eyeshadow.

However, Inglot out performing Sugarpill's matte brights was definitely a shock to me - I used to swear that Sugarpill's were the most pigmented, soft and blend-able mattes out there, obviously I was wrong. In comparison to Inglot's shades Sugarpill's felt grainy and applied sheer! Also, Sugarpill's mattes are not 100% matte like Inglot's are.

Top row: 360 / 363 (LM Plum Smoke / UD Tease)
Second row: 391 / 329 / 326 / 378 / 358
Blush: AMC 55
Third row: 344 / 390 / 353 / 375 / 325/ 338 / 317 / 385
(Fourth row: LM Morning Dew / Sugarpill Poison Plum / Midori)

Here you can see Laura Mercier's Plum Smoke (third shade on the top row) is a close match to Inglot's 358, but as with Morning Dew Laura Mericer's shadows were soft to their own detriment and thus required much more building than Inglot's. The last shade on the top row is Urban Decay's Tease from their Naked2 palette, when I first swatched it I couldn't believe how hard and unpigmented it was!

The Naked2 was my first ever pressed eyeshadow and palette so maybe I still think of it the way I did when I bought it a year ago ("Look at all these colours! They're so pretty and pigmented! Think of all the makeup I can do with these! Oh I'm so overwhelmed and have no idea what I'm doing..."). Tease applied patchy and I couldn't even build the swatch to full opacity, honestly I was beyond underwhelmed. Urban Decay's shadows are being notorious for under performing without a primer and being pretty awesome with one though, so that could be the issue - but it doesn't detract from the fact Inglot whipped them in making a exponentially better matte. 

Metallic colours top row: 409 / 43 / 404 / 07
Metallic colours bottom row: 452 / 446 / 445 / 399 / 154
AMC gel eyeliner: 77 (black)

This is everything I own by Inglot (with the mattes laid out in the same shape as the swatches above) in a Muji clear acrylic drawer, as the astute reader may notice I am not a smart girl and forgot to pick up an empty 20 pan palette to store my new shadows in. I'll hopefully get around to reviewing my metallic Inglot shadows at some point but just in case I don't here are some spoilers: they are the same quality as the Inglot mattes and outstrip Laura Mercier, Sugarpill and Urban Decay metallic shadows in every category I'd care to name.

Inglot's blush is also very nice, incredibly soft (softer than the shadows), creamy, pigmented and blends better than any pressed blush I've ever tried. I haven't opened the eyeliner yet but based on the reviews (and previous personal experience with Inglot products) it'll leave my current gel eyeliner (MAC's Blacktrack) wallowing in an inky pool of self pity.

391 / 329 / 326 / 378 / 358
363 / 360 / 344 / 390 / 353

Finally, here's my complete matte neutral palette - I played around with the order to find the most aesthetically pleasing and practical arrangement and honestly couldn't be happier with it! I'm somewhat skeptical about how the neural dark brown 329 will look when applied as even cool browns tend to look carroty on me, but if that's the case it couldn't be easier to swap it out for a pop of colour, or even a new matte neutral (I'm thinking slate grey).

One final word on Inglot - they're incredibly cheap! I'll do the calculations both in GB pounds and US dollars:

• A single Inglot eyeshadow is £4.50 for 2.7g = £1.67 per gram
• A single Laura Mercier eyeshadow is £19 for 2.6g = £7.31 per gram
• A single Sugarpill eyeshadow is £8.50 (prices vary) for 3.5g = £2.43 per gram
• A single Urban Decay eyeshadow is £14 for 1g = £14 per gram (or £9.33 per gram or £7.12 per gram depending on where you get your information)

I found a price discrepancy between Sugarpill eyeshadows being sold in the UK as they are being sold by licensed third party online retailers, however the fluctuation was only by about £1 per eyeshadow.

However, Urban Decay are only officially sold in the UK by Debenhams and House of Fraiser (department stores), on the Debenhams website they are priced £14 stating that it is £140.00 per 10g, whereas on the House of Fraiser website they're priced at £14 stating that it's £93.33 per 10g, and neither websites state how much eyeshadow a single pan contains. On the official Urban Decay US page the shadows are listed as $18 per 1.5g, so I guess I could go by that (£10.67 per 1.5g or £7.12 per gram by today's exchange rate) but I'm really not liking the lack of info for British UD stock lists.


And now in USD because google blogger tells me my main audience is stateside:

• A single Inglot eyeshadow is $7 for 2.7g = $2.59 per gram
• A single Laura Mercier eyeshadow is $23 for 2.6g = $8.85 per gram
• A single Sugarpill eyeshadow is $12 for 3.5g = $3.43 per gram
• A single Urban Decay eyeshadow is $18 for 1.5g = $10.67 per gram

Thus, irregardless of where you buy your makeup Inglot are by far the cheapest option, which is amazing considering they're also the best quality!

However it is worth mentioning that you need to buy a palette for your Inglot pans which will bump up your overall cost - the larger the palette the less this cost will be per pan or per gram. Alternatively you could just not buy a palette like I've accidentally done, or store your Inglot pans in a Z-palette type thing.

Needed to break up the block of text and calculations so here's a look I did with Inglot 363 and Sugarpill Bulletproof

Another caveat I'd like to add is Inglot eyeshadows are also cheaper than most indie eyeshadows:

• A single Inglot eyeshadow is $7 for 2.7g = $2.59 per gram
• Shiro's full size eyeshadow is $6 for 2g = $3 per gram
• Fyrinnae's full size eyeshadow is $7.50 for 2g = $3.75 per gram
• Notoriously Morbid's full size eyeshadow is $5.50 for "about 3g" = $1.83 per gram

All of these eyeshadows are loose except for Fyrinnae as they offer pan only pressed eyeshadows (which I thought would make a great comparison). I wanted to include more indies but a lot of them (Darling Girl, Femme Fatal etc) list their quantities by volume.

As always, love,

Saskia X

PS Don't expect another post for about a month as that's when I finish all my university exams! Sorry :(