Melanin and Makeup | Tarte Tarteist Pro Palette Review
/“I believe that all women are pretty with out makeup - but with the right makeup can be pretty powerful”
So this palette has received range of different reviews. Some people love it and some don’t. The generally consensus seems to be that the word of those who are sponsored by Tarte can’t be trusted. There have been complaints about lack of pigmentation, repetitiveness and dustiness.
Tarte tarteist pro palette
My opinion is different than those who found the palette to be overall lacking. This is because I don’t own any other Tarte palettes, this is my first. I will say that I don’t especially like eye shadow formulas that produce a lot of kick up when a brush is dipped in it, but I use Lorac shadows so I can work with this one.
From the first photos I was interested in making this my first Tarte palette, I liked the colour selection and the mostly matte assortment. My palette collection is pretty small, so havinga lot of duplicate shades wasn't a concern for me.
Packaging and Cost
The packaging as you can see that is beautiful. The overall look of the palette is minimal and clean with just a gold and black theme. The black of the case does show every finger print and smudge though, so while it looks pristine and nice when you first get it, after you've opened it, it'll be marked. You can use a damp cloth to help clean it up a but that's the nature of the beast when you have matte black packaging, fingerprints galore. The eyeshadows do smell like frosting, and it's immediately noticeable upon opening the palette, the scent doesn't linger when applied to your lids though.
The snap to open the palette is very secure, so if you want to travel with this, there are no worries that it wont stay shut. It's pretty snug. Inside the palette there is a mirror that is the full size of the cover. The housing for the shadows is a reflective gold that is plastic but doesn't feel too flimsy. For picture taking purposes the reflectiveness is annoying but it does make it easier to clean up the fall out from the shadows.
It's a square palette, which you don't see too often, it's a little too large to fit nicely in the palm of my hand, though my hands are on the small side. The weight of the palette is good, not too heavy or bulky that it would make it difficult to travel with, but not too light weight that you fear breaking it. The weight of each shadows is 1 gram which is a bit less than the Urban Decay Smoky which is 1.3 grams and the Electric which is 1.2 grams. Keep in mind that both of those palettes contain less shadows 12 and 10 respectively. The Pro palette consists of 16 matte shades and 4 duo-chromes. It does however contain more product when compared to the Anastasia Beverly Hills Modern Renaissance Palette and the Mario Master palette both of which contain 0.7 grams for each shadow with 14 and 12 shadows respectively in each palette.
Cost wise it retails for $69 CDN which at first seems pretty hefty. However if you look at how much product you are getting for the price it's not so bad, especially when you compare it to other palettes on the market. Let's go back to the UD smokey which retails for $66 CDN with 15.6 grams total for the product. The ABH Mario palette is $59 CDN and has 8.4 grams of total product. So if you compare 20 grams of product for $69 it doesn't seem too bad right? The Kat Von D Metal Matte palette retails for $84 CDN and contains a whopping 37.4 grams of total product.
However, if you wait patiently you may be able to grab this palette while it's on sale from Tarte's website, which is where I purchased mine from. I picked it up when they site offered free shipping and I had a $10 coupon. So even with the duties and taxes I still ended up paying less than the palette actually cost. Sephora carries it now, so if you want to wait till April when they do their next sale, then that might work as well.
Performance and Pigmentation
I’ll answer the first complaint that some people had regarding this palette- lack of pigmentation. I truly find the colours in this palette pigmented, even the colours in the first two rows, those pale creams and whites. They show up on my complexion and don’t come across as ashy.
You'll see below in the swatches that I've done on my arm, that the fourth row - the one that contains the darkest shades, the colours applied patchy , I did have to build up the colour. However I don't have this problem when I'm applying the shades to my eyelids.
I applied the swatches on my bare arm without primer, the makeup brush that I used has synthetic bristles and I used it dry for all swatches. I used a rough textured cloth to clean my brush after swatching each row. With the combination of matte and shimmer shades in the palette making sure that no shimmer remains on the bristles of the brush was important.
I was pleasantly surprised by how well the colours in the first two rows applied - especially the lightest shades which I was initially concerned about. I found that when applying the lighter shades using a broad all over the lid brush worked much better than a brush with less surface space. However the dark shades did perform better with a smaller precision brush, which would be great if you're using them in the crease to add deepen and depth to your eye look.
From the times that I used the duo-chrome shades I wasn't surprised by there lack of performance, only Ethereal applied nicely with one pass of the brush, the colour picked up nicely and spread smoothly when I swatched it on my arm. The other three shades might be lighter in formula because the only way I was able to get saturated colour on my arm was by pressing the brush firmly into my arm. I did use a synthetic brush to do the swatches, so they might perform better with a natural hair brush. I don't have any shader brushes that are natural hair so I wasn't able to test out my theory.
To really see the potential of the shimmer shades I’ve had to pack them on, I think to get the best performance I’ll have to use a damp shadow brush when applying them. There were some that said they found the colours started to get muddy, I also didn’t experience this, but I didn’t use a whole lot of shades on top of each other when I applied them to my crease.
Dustiness and Wear Time
Next up the repetitiveness of the colours, since this is my first Tarte palette I don’t have cross over issues, where I’ve got similar colours in various palettes. As I mentioned above, I have a small collection of eyeshadow palettes so have few if any duplicates. For others, this might be a valid complaint, if you’re an avid makeup collector then you may have some shades that are similar already in your collection.
Dustiness or kick up, I don’t like when shadows do this, but I’ve found that with most shadows I experience this, the only shadows I’ve not had this with is MAC shadows. I try to use a denser brush which helps to minimize the amount of kick up that occurs.
In regards to this palette, there is quite a bit of kick up, no two ways about it. In some of the above swatches ( the second row) you can even see some of the kick up. I would suggest that you pat your brush into each eyeshadow pan instead of rubbing it, that can help to mitigate some of the kick up.
The wear time of the shadows was good on my oily lids, I did use a primer though. I always use a primer when applying eyeshadows otherwise they start creasing and fade away. I usually use the Lorac eye primer, it’s not super tacky but it does a great job at prolonging the wear of my eyeshadows.
This is a great palette when you want to create a soft neutral look, there are deeper shadows in the palette if you want to make your eye look more dramatic. I still need to work some more with the duo chrome shades in the palette, but overall for me, this was a good purchase.
I'm not certain what I'm doing different than most people who are using this palette and finding it lacking. The thought occurred that maybe they are comparing the shadow performance to another palette, if that is the case then the shadows may come up lacking. Another thing is I don't tend to spend a lot of time blending out colours a few windshield wiper motions with my brush in the crease to diffuse the colour a bit and then I move on to the next shade. I will continue to experiment with this palette and give an update.
What are your thoughts on this palette? Is it something you're interested in purchasing or will you pass?
