Tom Ford Ice Queen Eyeshadow Quad

Tom Ford Beauty released a new eyeshadow quad last November in time for the Holiday 2013 season, named Ice Queen.  After culling as many as 4 eyeshadow quads from the pitifully small range, Ice Queen is joining as a permanent member (we need more, more!).  Unfortunately Estee Lauder Singapore has decided we are not worthy of a new quad, and so Tom Ford die-hards will have to ship this in from the US.

Tom Ford Ice Queen is a distinctly cool-toned palette, filled with icy whites & greys.  That’s right, I was perplexed for a long time as I had expected this to be a blue palette based on online pictures and descriptions.  But when I finally got to try it out on my own skin, there is actually very little blue in Ice Queen.

The shades, in clockwise direction starting from top left, are:

• Frosty, shimmery white.  This shade didn’t apply quite as smoothly as the 2 bottom shades, but that is really nitpicking in what is an overall excellent palette.  It had  good color payoff and it does not come across chalky which whites are prone to.
• Sheer, light silver glitter.  As always, Tom Ford glitters are ultra-fine, and there is no fall-out.  But I thought this was quite sheer, and due to the lightness of the color, it didn’t come across so well.  Best patted on with a finger.
• Matte, dark slate grey with a blue base.  If any shade in Ice Queen resembles a blue, this is it.  However, this is one of those really inky, almost-“dirty” sort of shade that is really more charcoal than blue.  It is incredibly finely milled, and feels soft and silky to the touch.  Be gentle with this shade, for it is so soft, it does kick up quite a bit!
• Light, satin dove-grey.  This is my favorite shade in the palette as the texture is excellent like the matte shade, and it has excellent color payoff.  Again, due to the softness of this shade, it does tend to kick up.

And here are the corresponding swatches from left to right:

And here are some shameless EOTDs…

Once you have used a Tom Ford eyeshadow quad, the formula seems fairly straight forward.  I just went on auto-pilot mode here: Satin dove-grey all over the lid, matte blue-grey on the outer corner, winging up to a small cat-eye (I didn’t go too dramatic as I was wearing this out in the day, but obviously you can!).  Dabbed silver glitter on middle of lid, and finished with shimmer white on inner corner.

Overall, I find Ice Queen to be of the finest quality from Tom Ford thus far
(which is saying ALOT).  However, I wished the 3 paler shades were not quite so close in intensity and color, and that the disparity with the dark matte grey is not so great.  It would have been a truly fantastic palette if there was another color to play with, perhaps if the satin dove-grey was more of a medium intensity.  Of course, you could always blend the dark matte grey and light satin dove-grey together for a medium grey shade… which I actually did attempt, but failed.  As it is, I personally feel Ice Queen is somewhat one-note.  Another interesting thing to note is, the blue seems to come out more on cooler skin types.  On warmer skin it may come across more murky grey.