Anastasia Beverly Hills has recently released Soft Glam II, a mini version of the popular Soft Glam Palette it launched in Spring 2018. Perfect timing to revisit the original palette and see if was able to maintain its top position among the sea of palettes that followed since.
Before we get started on the palette itself, a quick recap if you’re not familiar with Anastasia Beverly Hills or ABH: Romania-born Anastasia Soare founded the company in 1997 as a flagship salon in Beverly Hills where she gained fame as the “eyebrow queen” of the rich and famous. The brand is mainly known for its eyebrow products and eyeshadow palette collaborations with makeup artists/ influencers such as Makeup by Mario, Amrezy, Carli Bybel and Jackie Aina.
The palette comes in a sturdy cardboard packaging with magnetic closure and a velvety soft ochre cover. While this definitely makes the product stand out from competitors, there’s one major drawback; it gets dirty really quickly. This is why I keep my Soft Glam palette in its original box to protect it as much as possible. Luckily, ABH has stepped away from this type of packaging with their most recent releases. The decent sized mirror and dual-ended makeup brush make this a travel-friendly palette.
The Anastasia Beverly Hills Soft Glam Eyeshadow Palette is described as an everyday to night eyeshadow palette with 14 shades, including 9 essential ultra-mattes and 5 glamorous metallic shimmers. The palette offers a great variety of mattes/shimmers and light to deep shades. The neutral colour story leans rather warm but is just neutral enough so people with cool skin tones like me can pull it off too.
Shades included:
- Tempera (Ultra-matte velvety beige) *
- Glistening (Iridescent gold with a hint of pink reflect)
- Orange Soda (Ultra-matte pastel peach) *
- Rose Pink (Rose gold with a soft pink iridescent hue)
- Sultry (A hybrid satin metallic finish warm chocolate brown) *
- Bronze (Metallic gold bronze)
- Mulberry (Ultra-matte mulberry) *
- Dusty Rose (Ultra-matte dusty lilac) *
- Fairy (Multi-dimensional light gold)
- Burnt Orange (Ultra-matte deep orange)
- Sienna (Ultra-matte earthy brown)
- Rustic (Ultra-matte deep cinnamon brown)
- Cyprus Umber (Ultra-matte dark coffee)
- Noir (Ultra-matte deep carbon black) *
At first glance, you may see another nude palette. But it’s so much more than that. It is literally glam in a palette, but one that is subdued enough you can wear it on an everyday basis, day and night.
Apart form the beautiful colour story, there’s another reason this palette lived up to the success of the Modern Renaissance palette, being the amazing quality of the formula. Both the mattes and shimmers are incredibly soft, pigmented and easy to blend, which help to create the most seamless eyeshadow looks. There’s definitely some kickback though, so be careful going in with your brush and make sure to tap it off before you start packing on that shadow. You can also choose to use an eyeshadow primer if you like, although this isn’t necessary. I also like to pack on some extra shimmer using my finger.
I literally can’t get enough of feeling the beautiful texture of these finely mild shadows. I still regularly use this palette for both day and night looks, mostly during Summer and Autumn. Over 2 years and a couple hundreds palette releases later, this is still one of the best ‘nude’ palettes on shelf today. Therefore it’s no surprise ABH has relaunched Soft Glam in the shape of a mini palette.
Soft Glam II mini palette features 8 shadows of which 7 come from the original Soft Glam palette (marked with *) and 2 shadows from the Norvina palette called Dreamer (metallic pink champagne) and Incense (Ultra-matte dusty terra-cotta). The mini palette retails for $29 / £ 30 / € 30. Although I love a good mini palette and the shades are perfect for one look, I don’t think this is is worth spending money on. Like I said earlier, the original Soft Glam palette is perfectly equipped as a travel palette and you would have to miss out on some pretty good shades. Rather than a mini palette I would love to see a 2020 interpretation of Soft Glam with some pink nudes. In short, skip the mini palette and go straight for the original Soft Glam palette. You won’t be disappointed.
Anastasia Beverly Hills Soft Glam Palette – $ 45 / £ 46 / € 50
Available at ABH, Sephora (US/FR), Douglas (NL), Ici Paris XL & Planet Parfum (BE), Beauty Bay, Feel Unique, Look Fantastic, Cult Beauty…
Disclaimer: Product was purchased.