Stila Charmed Palette Indian Summer Collection Review

The makeup industry has a strange tendency to make some really beautiful things and then suddenly make them impossible to find, which creates a fervor among fans.  This often leads to multi hundred dollar bids on Ebay and people clamoring for certain items which normally would only be mildly desired if they were plentiful.

STILA CHARMED PALETTE from the INDIAN SUMMER COLLECTION is one of those bizarre circumstances.

When I first saw the CHARMED PALETTE advertised in the ULTA brochure, I made a beeline to ULTA to inquire about how to get one of these palettes.  I am a huge fan of India and the Bollywood look so this really appealed to me.  Little did I know what a bizarre journey I was about to embark upon.

The ULTA person looked at me blankly and simply said that STILA did not end up manufacturing this collection so they never got it in.  I could not believe it.  I never was a STILA fan, not having tried it much, but this REALLY appealed to me.

I looked for this palette everywhere and finally gave up looking figuring that perhaps the company really did NOT produce these and I was sad, but moved on.

Then recently I was involved in a heated discussion about this palette once again.  STILA was supposed to be sending them out again to stores this month very soon, and people were very anxious to try it out.

I called my Sephora and was told that they had run out of them a long time ago and they just had a tester.  Then amazingly enough, I received a call that the manager found a stray CHARMED PALETTE stuffed in a drawer and she would hold it for me.  I was thrilled!  Imagine my surprise when I discovered that it was not the $28 that originally had been placed upon it, but for some reason, it was marked down to $10- this made it even MORE appealing to me!

(NOTE: SEPHORA JUST GOT MORE OF THESE IN AFTER I POSTED THE REVIEW TODAY SO IF YOU WANT TO TRY IT, GO TO SEPHORA.COM )

WHAT IS THE CHARMED PALETTE LIKE FROM THE INDIAN SUMMER COLLECTION?

CHARMED is a collection of very beautiful intense colors.  The unique quality about it is that it contains 24K gold.  The container reflects this by being gold with two bindis attached to the front (the little beautiful things that are glued to the skin in India).

There is .28oz of product (8g) and four colors.

The texture is smooth and very pigmented.  These shadows can be used wet or dry.  Over a good eyeshadow base, they stay in place very well for me.  I have not used them wet yet.  Dry they are very pretty.

The colors are a pink light burgundy color, golden bronze, aqua with lime shimmer, and a blackened plum with gold and plum shiimmer.

I am attaching a photo of comparison swatches with the CHARMED palette for those of you who might have some of these colors and you can use it as a frame of reference to see what it is most like.

If you want to see the photos, just press on the tiny picture to the right of this review and it will enlarge so you can see detail.

I am also including a few photos of what it looks like on the eyes- this was a quick application just to give you an idea of what it looks like.

I have found that the bronze color does not look like any of the MAC that I have, but it is more along the lines of LORAC, even though it is not exact to those either.

The only really close copy that I found in my collection is the aqua from Pink Python.

COMMENTS

I was not expecting to be that thrilled with this palette, since I have not been overly impressed with STILA eyeshadows in the past.  However, this palette was a pleasant surprise.  It is gorgeous with summer looks- a warm complexion would do best with this palette as cooler palettes would not look as good in it.  A summer tan with cooler complexions would make it possible to wear, however.

The finish is not overly metallic which is nice for aging eyelids.  I found that these shadows in the STILA CHARMED PALETTE FROM THE INDIAN SUMMER COLLECTION are very complimentary to the eyelids- and don't attract attention to flaws like some of the more shiny pigments and metallic shadows can do.

The shadows are long lasting and very blendable.  They also remove easily at the end of the night which I also like.  Sometimes dark shadows like this will stain, but this is not the case with the CHARMED palette.

WHERE TO BUY

You cand find out more about the CHARMED palette from the STILA site where they are still selling them for $28.  That would be $7 each color, which is about the same as drugstore pricing.

www.stilacosmetics.com

www.sephora.com

True to their promise, Sephora got in a HUGE load of the INDIAN SUMMER collection CHARMED palette from STILA.  When I was there recently (June 20, 2009) they had them all over the store and everyone was raving about them.  So, despite the difficulty I had in finding them at first, if you act quickly, you can probably score one for yourself and a few Christmas presents for others that you might know who love makeup.

The $10 price tag is a limited time only and no one at Sephora knew how long it was going to last when I asked.

I am loving this palette more and more each time I wear it for this summer.  I also use it with a lemon gold metallic wash to highlight the center of my lid and just under my brow.  The LORAC Metallic Pearl Glam Rocks is one such color, and also MAC's Gold Dusk pigment is another.

I hope to include a photo of that look as well in the future.