Welcome 2014 with YSL’s Pivoine Crush Palette

Happy New Year everybody!  It has been an amazing year and here’s wishing everybody an even more beautiful year ahead!

It still feels a little early to be talking spring collections, but this beauty actually launched here in Singapore before Christmas (!!!), and I simply couldn’t resist.  So, in the spirit of celebrating beauty, I thought what better way to start the new year than with Yves Saint Laurent Beaute’s Flower Crush Collection for Spring 2014.

The collection consists of 2 collectors’ palettes – Pivoine Crush Palette for blooming eyes, and Rosy Blush Palette for petal cheeks.  Both come in a limited edition, shiny gold compact with pink matte contrasting background with exquisite gold motifs swirling over.  It reminds me of the capillaries within each petal, magnified.

For today, I’m going to focus on the piece that arrested my attention from the moment I laid eyes on the press release… the Pivoine Crush Palette!

“A vibrant harmony, the mixed hues of peonies, like an explosion of luminous colours.  The shades of Palette Ombres 5 Lumieres Pivoine Crush are like precious extracts of a bouquet for the eyes” … Lloyd Simmons

And indeed, the colours do remind me of a lovely bouquet, delicate and so feminine… utterly delicious for spring.

Sometimes when I look at quints, I often find an odd colour that doesn’t seem to meld with the rest, or a “duplicate” shade in a darker/lighter version.  That is not the case with Pivoine Crush at all.  I look at this palette, it almost seems to me to be a fusion of several palettes, certainly a couple of trios could be picked out from this combination, but placed together in the pan, it all makes sense.

Working in columns from left to right of the palette:

• Medium cool pink with some champagne shimmers.  This was described as a “fuchsia pink”, and certainly there is strong hints of blue, but it is not quite so “hot pink” for me to consider it as fuchsia.
• Medium warm salmon-pink with some gold shimmers
• Pale champagne gold with pearl shimmers
• Medium coral with pale gold shimmers.
• Dark plum which is warm-toned, almost chocolate on me.  It too has some sparse shimmers.

And here are the corresponding swatches:

YSL’s Ombre 5 Lumiere palettes are generally sheerer in formula than their Wet & Dry Pure Chromatics quads.  However, this particular Pivoine Crush palette is even sheerer than usual.  In particular, the coral shade on the top right is so sheer it took almost 8-10 layers with a brush to get any color to show up on my lids.  Also, the texture is quite dry and hard for all of them, particularly the plum shade which shows up really patchy in the swatch above.

Remember earlier I mentioned that Pivoine Crush seemed to be a fusion of several palettes?  In particular, first impression reminded me of Guerlain’s Capri eyeshadow quad which was a limited edition Pucci summer 2012 release.  I don’t own Capri myself, but was able to get one of my sweet IG friends to share a photo comparison.

And a swatch comparison of the two:

As you can see, Guerlain Capri is much better pigmented.  The shades are very close indeed, but Capri may lean somewhat warmer whereas Pivoine Crush is somewhat cooler and shimmery.

And an EOTD using all 5 shades of Pivoine Crush…

Salmon-pink on inner half of lid, pink on the outer half. Champagne gold from inner corner to above under the brow bone as highlighter. Lower lash lined with plum with coral along the inner corner.

And here’s another play using the coral and plum shades:

Coral on most of upper lid, plum to smoke out the corners. Added a dab of pink on the middle of the lid and used the champagne as highlighter under the brow bone. Lined lower lash line using plum, and champagne in the corner.

Pretty as it may be, YSL’s Pivoine Crush Palette is an incredibly sheer creation.  It is lovely if a light wash of color is what you are looking for… but bear in mind anybody with more than the most translucent / pale skin will have to really work to get colors to show.  It is perhaps rectified by using a good primer base and a darkening base color.  I also wished there was greater variation in finishes… the shimmers were rather one-note, but at least they were elegantly done with no fallout.

I’ll be back with more on the rest of the Flower Crush collection later this week.  Until then, have a fantastic start to the new year!

xoxo