Mally Beauty In the Buff Eyeshadow Palette Review & Swatches
Mally In the Buff Eyeshadow Palette ($45) is a newly launches eleven pan eyeshadow compact featuring all nude shades of shadow.
I was very excited about this launch because 1. I love Mally’s makeup and 2. I absolutely adore nude, natural shades of color lately.
Yes, yes, I already own both Urban Decay Naked Palettes and no, there probably isn’t anything around at the moment that can top them. But I was every so tempted to have a look at what In the Buff would bring to my natural world.
Here’s some thoughts!
This is a little slimmer than Urban Decay’s Naked Palette and features a faux snake skin print in green. Inside you get 11 shades of shadow, a dual end brush, and an Eye Base.
The shadow brush is an excellent tool for creating your smoky natural look and features a bushy ended blending brush on one end and a small domed brush on the other. I typically like Mally’s brushes as they always have excellent bristles that are soft without any shedding issues. I liked this brush a lot and couldn’t help but wish Urban Decay did something similiar with their Naked boxes. However, the blending brush did have very long, floppy bristles. The lack of density does make blending a little messy so just keep that in mind.
The total net size of the eyeshadows is 0.4 oz. In terms of size Urban Decay does pack a little more into their Naked Palettes plus instead of an eye base you get another eyeshadow. Considering powders and cream don’t play very well together I’d have either liked Mally to skip the cream base for another shadow or rethink the packaging by having some sort of lid for it.
The cream base is quite nice although I’m not a fan of prepping with it. This is somewhat like Benefit Lemon aid but a nude beige shade which brightens up eyes and lays down canvas for powders. I does give the shadows something to adhere to but the thickness of the cream also ends up in allowing the powder to crease. Or at least this is the case for me so I skipped prepping with it.
Now I am very sad to say this but the shadow formula is not great. It’s a nice, graduating selection of colors that range from beige all the way up to a chocolatey liner shade with a variety of satin to matte finishes.
My issues was with the formulation of the shadow. Again, I hate to say this, but I’ve seen better quality from E.L.F. I quickly logged onto QVC to see what others were saying about the palette but it looks like raves across the board. So maybe I’m too picky?
Some of the shades are very sheer and provide very little color pay off where as others are very powdery and chalky. I did run across two shades (second two at the end of the compact) that had a fairly ok (just ok mind you) formula with a buttery almost velvet like texture. But outside of those two colors I felt like the quality wasn’t here for the rest.
I’m not really sure what I expected. My track record with Mally has always been fairly good. But the In the Buff Eyeshadow Palette seems a poor, mediocre imitation of Urban Decay’s awesome Naked Palette.
I had plans to rave this when it arrived and was sure I’d love it now it just seems like a poor purchase on my part.
If you want great, just go with Urban Decay.
Mally’s In the Buff Eyeshadow Palette just isn’t it.
Tried it?
Love it?
Do share!
Available now at QVC.com