THREE Spring 2013 Eyeshadow Duos 03, 04, 05 Swatches

If you feel the need to rub your eyes and double check the title, I completely understand :P Yes, finally, it is my much belated review of the three THREE eyeshadows acquired from this spring's "Love is the Answer" collection: Pressed Eye Colour Palette Duos 03 Love Revolution, 04 Love Satisfaction, 05 Love Evolution. All three duos join the permanent collection, along with 01 Love Fascination and 02 Love Connection; each retails for ¥3990.

Spoilers right now because this post will be highly picspammy: I utterly adore these products and this collection was hands down my favourite of the season, cementing THREE as my current favourite brand for eyeshadow.

All these duos pair a pigmented, complex, shimmery silky cream [like the ones in Shu Uemura's holiday 2012 Karl Lagerfeld palettes, or MUFE Aqua Creams, rather than a buttery/liquifying formula] with a delicately translucent satin-finish powder of medium pigmentation. They are designed to be layered powder-over-cream or indeed smudged each into t'edges of t'other, but may of course be worn separately -- the powders are translucently glowy, not sheer or unpigmented, and the creams sufficiently saturated to function as liners. Both set to a gloriously smooth pearlescent veil on the skin -- a cliché in beauty blogging, but they really do feel like silk.

Pictures in various stages of molestation because I'm disorganised totally lacking in self-control when faced with pretty things to poke this gives a better indication of the true colours and textures, of course! Pictures all in natural sunlight, swatches made as always onto bare skin without primer/base.


The cream has smooth, mostly tonal royal blue pearl, with rare flecks of pink, green and gold microshimmer.

Compared with the other two duos I own, 03 Love Revolution makes my favourite layered shade. The lustrous cream and delicate satin, neither particularly shimmery, somehow bring out the best in each other to form the kind of refined, texturally complex sparkle I most love. Tonally they mingle into an offbeat neutral which leaves every nuance of both shades visible, and multiplies their effect.


Scroll back up to the first picture of this duo for its darker, clearer pink base; contrast this with the genuinely milky orange in 03 Love Revolution, whose white base is consistently visible at all angles.

Owing to its more subdued finishes (the velvet-petal pink in particular is barely beyond a matte) 04 Love Satisfaction doesn't quite produce the magical sparkly unicorn of 03 Love Revolution when layered. Instead you get a satin that shifts from a mauve-flashing taupe (1st swatch pic) to a complex warm grey (2nd), an understated, goes-with-every-lip-shade one-colour wash.



The brown has a dose of grey without veering into taupe: it's warmed up (and clearedup, rather than muddied) further by complex opalescent shimmer in goldenrod, rose and lilac, and small quantities of pale blues, greens and gold sparkle.

Unsurprisingly, layering these two glistening shades leads to an texturally complex, shimmery result -- but such is the fine milling and delicacy of these pigments that it's still a lustrous sheen rather than a solid frost or metallic chrome finish. Layering seems to bring out the cooler green and blue notes, making for a very rare clear yellow-based brown, which I find surprisingly very flattering when worn.


Whew! Thanks to everyone who's waited for these for months! :D Anyone else succumbed to these beauties? I admit to hankering after the two duos I don't currently possess....

Looks and comparisons will follow in separate posts, because I think this blogger thing has a character limit :P