Dior’s Fall Collection this year is called Blue Tie with a heavy emphasis on deep rich navy blues for eyes and nails. The look featured for Dior is quite dramatic with an intense smokey eye and soft pink lips. The collection launched several weeks ago and I initially decided to pass on the entire collection. I can’t pull off navy on the eyes and I was already smitten with Chanel Blue Satin for the nails. The colors for lips are amazing (there are some amazing pinks and nudes) but did not seem like must-haves for me.
So how did I end up with items from this collection? Well, after I played at the counter and passed, I saw Karla Sugar’s Blue Tie swatches and knew I had to go back. The Serum de Rouge formula is among my favorites (I’m not sure why I haven’t written about them before) for lipsticks. They are truly moisturizing and make the lips glow and feel hydrated without having too much slip. The colors work well to enhance the lips while making them look completely luscious. I picked out Primrose Crystal 215 and Tea Rose Crystal 455.
The Blue Tie Palette in Smoking Blue 001 was kindly sent to me by Dior (a lovely surprise!). I would not have purchased this on my own since navy looks too sharp on my skin and especially given the reports of sheerness and chalky textures on KarlaSugar, Temptalia and Beauty Moogle. The packaging is indeed stunning in a heavy silver mirrored compact complete with applicators and a swivel lid to protect the lip product from shadow debris. I was a bit weary of how this would perform, but a few beautiful look reviews gave me hope, especially from The RAEviewer, Lipstick Musings and Tiffany’s Makeup Story. Photos first and then my review at the bottom of this post.
My thoughts:
The Blue Tie Palette in Smoking Blue 001 has a quad of smoky colors in sheer matte navy-black, deep denim blue shimmer, deep charcoal with silver flecks and a metallic smoky grey. The lipgloss seems to be a lipstick-lipgloss hybrid and is a sheer petal pink without shimmer. When swatched on the back of my hand, the shadows barely showed up. The texture is indeed rather dry. I layered a primer (UDPP) on the arm and then swatched the shadows as heavily as I could with the sponge tip applicators. As you can see, they are still fairly sheer, especially the top left matte shade. I applied this on the eyes following the tips from the other vlogs and blogs. I was pleasantly surprised to find the color shows up better on the eyes (but only over a well primed eye.) Still, the product looks so much prettier in the palette. The result for me was a soft smokey eye. If you’re scared of over-doing a smokey eye, then sheer-darks are the way to go because it will be virtually impossible for you to mess up your eye makeup. The colors are layerable for a medium-intense smoky eye. Still, the colors aren’t really me, I would not have purchased this palette on my own. It’s workable, but takes more effort than your average eyeshadow palette to get a decent application.
Primrose Crystal is a nude pink-beige and Tea Rose Crystal is a sheer brighter pink. I picked the most neutral of the options but really all of the colors in this collection are lovely. The colors I picked look sheer when swatched but they work well with your natural lip color to enhance the lips and they do show up. Karla’s swatches are a better representation of the true color (in my opinion). These are pricey at $32 but completely worth every penny. I love the twist-up and click feature. Makes these easy to use and non-messy. They are your easy swipe-and-go kind of lipstick and require no extra tweaking.
Did you try anything from the Blue Tie Collection? What were your likes/dislikes?
