NARS 2011 - Dogon Eyeshadow Duo

I was lucky enough to be invited along to the NARS Summer preview this week, and, aside from falling deeply in love with the fall collection (which I forgot to take pictures of, because I'm an idiot), I also feel in love with the new eyeshadow duo in Dogon.  There are two duo's in the summer range (the other has a baby blue/gold combination) alongside an aqua-green trio.

Dogon has a taupe and navy blue combination, which, on first look appears to be a cool taupe with grey leanings, and a matt navy with a slight hint of glitter:

On initial swatching, those impressions are correct:

However, the taupe is creamy, easy to blend and mix, and has a slight hint of a green sheen.  The blue appears both blackened and slightly chalky.  It's decidedly harder to blend than the taupe, and I wondered how the two were meant to work together.


However, when you layer the shades, something magical happens:

This is the blue over the taupe and below is taupe over the blue:

What you have here (and it was nigh-on impossible to pick up with the lighting in my flat today, and this is a source of intense frustration) is green duochrome.  Beautiful, beetle-green duochrome, which is all the more wonderful for being completely unsuspected in the initial shades themselves.

This look is the blue in the crease,which is then blended onto the outside of the mobile lid, and with a layer of the taupe worked on over the entire mobile lid.  Sadly, the lights have washed out most of the colour here, as this is very definitely a much more dramatic look than it shows here.  The light plays off the shimmering duochrome, adding a depth and dimension that would normally be missing from a basic taupe/blue combo.  This is a smoky look, which I'll attempt to re-photograph in different lighting conditions.

Here's how it looks in the full context of my face:

Here's a crappy pic of my face that gives a better impression of how smoky this look is (which, thanks to my hooded lids, you can't really pick up here):

(Yeah, bit cross-eyed,this is what three hours sleep looks like)

So there you have it, this is my pick of summer from NARS, and I'm a tiny bit in love, it's more than made up for the bitter disappointment of Calanque (beautiful shades, but packaged in [expletive deleted]-awful glittery badness, making it unwearable, and, at £33, a daylight robbery too) from their last collection - and it's another blue eyeshadow to add alongside Blue Dahlia from Estee Lauder last year.

NARS summer collection will be in shops from May, and the eyeshadow duos will cost £23.

The Fine Print: PR sample, obtained after a press event, as the product is not yet available in-store.

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