YSL Desir de Jour Collection for Spring 2015

Springtime in Paris… there is no other imagery more powerful than that, and YSL captured the essence of it perfectly with the Desir de Jour Collection for Spring 2015. I had not expected to fall in love with this collection, as it felt very familiar… and yet upon closer inspection, not quite. This season, most other houses have turned to non-pink alternatives, choosing instead to anchor their collections in green, corals, even some very bold dark metallics… this puts YSL’s Desir de Jour in sharp contrast as it focuses on that which is distinctly YSL – pretty pinks with a bit of attitude.

Of course, no discussion on the YSL Desir de Jour Collection is complete with first giving a nod to the pristine packaging. YSL consistently releases some of the most gorgeously designed limited edition palettes, and this Spring 2015 is even more exceptional with the sequined lids – pink for the Ombres de Jour Couture Palette, and pearly white for the Palette Lumiere de Jour. Even more compelling is the fact that the contents are all brand new and limited edition, unlike the past few limited editions where YSL re-promoted permanent Couture Palettes in limited edition packaging.

YSL Ombres de Jour Couture Palette is a 5-color eyeshadow palette using the recently-released Couture Palette formula. The shades are generally soft, effortless to blend, and had good pigmentation. However, I found the black shade to be a little dry and sheer though buildable. The reason Ombres de Jour caught my eye was because it had an interesting warm & cool bifurcation within the same palette, and could therefore be used to create many different looks. Also, that black is not just any boring old black, but contains beautiful pink shimmers that stole my heart when I first spied it.

Swatches in clockwise direction from top left corner:

• Top left – light-medium, cool-toned brown with a satin finish
• Top right – pale, shimmery champagne
• Bottom right – light, cool-toned pink with a whitened base that gives it a slight frosty finish
• Bottom left – medium-dark, warm-toned bronze with golden shimmers
• Center – soft matte black with pink shimmers

Due to the combination of warm- and cool- toned shades in the palette, and the unlikely mix of pink with browns and black, there are many different ways of wearing Ombres de Jour.

I was first drawn to Ombres de Jour for the black with pink shimmers, and I had many happy dreams of creating a pink-smokey eye… how rare is that?! Unfortunately, I was sorely disappointed when I got home and found that the pink shimmers in the black shade are impossible to translate on the lids! Worse, the pink that was so happy in the pan turned frosty and near-invisible when applied on my lids.

If I ever thought pink and brown do not go, I was very wrong.  Just for a hoot, I decided to sweep the pink over most of my lid, blending with the light brown on the outer corner, and further deepening with just a touch of the bronze.  Both the browns performed fabulously, though the lighter one took on a meld-with-the-skin personality and when deepened with just a touch of the darker brown at the outer corner, created one of those very neutral, office-appropriate eye looks.

You could of course, completely abandon the idea of spring and all its light-heartedness, and go with a full-on smokey eye. Simply use the black as a base color, then pat on the bronze, and blend out using the lighter brown.

I can show you more EOTDs, but before this post gets too lengthy, let me introduce you to the other beauty in the Desir de Jour Collection…

The other limited edition offering from YSL this Spring 2015 season is the YSL Palette Lumiere de Jour. This is a very light pink highlighter with fine shimmers. It is cool-toned in general, although it is so sheer and finely milled that you can hardly see any color at all. The shimmery effect is also very subtle, this is not going to give a very obvious highlighted look, but for that very reason, I enjoy just gently buffing it into my cheeks on top of blusher for a sparkling glow.

Palette Lumiere de Jour reminded me of the Y Facettes Collector’s Face Palette from Spring 2013, which remains one of my favorite cheek highlighters for daily wear.  Both are finely milled, soft shimmery and a buildable sheer finish.  The main difference is their respective colors, but frankly, both are so sheer that the color hardly matters.  I have a very thickly swatched side-by-side comparison for your reference.  In swatching both together though, I noticed Palette Lumiere de Jour is even softer and silkier in texture than its predecessor!

YSL’s Desir de Jour Collection for Spring 2015 makes me feel like I have come full-circle in my journey with the brand over the past few years. Palette Lumiere de Jour brought back a highlighter that got me hooked on these soft, subtle shimmery highlighters. Ombres de Jour on the other hand held lots of promise with its color story, but failed to deliver something really exciting on my lids, something that I thought we had passed last year with the phasing out of the Pure Chromatics (a formula that never quite agreed with me). Of course, that is not to say that this is a poor collection, both are really quite pretty, but I find myself increasingly critical towards all things beauty-related.

Have you picked up anything from the YSL Desir de Jour Collection for Spring 2015?