Huda Beauty: New Nudes Review

If you're interested in my thoughts on Huda Beauty as a brand, please refer to the discussion post on Huda Beauty!

Here's the new palette created by Huda. It's the newest addition to her larger palettes, with Desert Dusk, Rose Gold and Rose Gold Remastered.

I've never bought from her before, so I had no idea what to expect with the formulation of her eyeshadows. Previously, her Rose Gold eyeshadow palette was discontinued and then remastered for another release because she had 'reformulated' all of the eyeshadow formulas to be better than the previous palette.
I unfortunately, don't have either of these and find them too repetitive to other items I own to think they're worth the money. 

Much like the Rose Gold, this was described in a way that emphasized the uniqueness and innovation of Huda's new eyeshadow formulation.



The palette is described as such (taken from shophudabeauty.com)

Reinventing nude so you can experience it like never before, The New Nude Palette by Huda Beauty is versatile and wearable in equal measure. Delivering infinite possibilities, this unexpected palette encourages you to experiment, empower and express yourself however you please.

The all-in-one eyeshadow palette consists of 18 highly pigmented shades, ranging from flattering mattes to shimmer-drenched hues, and has everything you need to transform your lids. The carefully curated lineup is studded with easy-to-use combinations – from soft berry to dusty copper, and rosy pink to golden taupe tones.

The New Nude Palette boasts a variety of game-changing textures and colors – finally balancing cool and warm tones to complement the best of both worlds. The New Nude Palette includes Ten Highly Pigmented Matte Eyeshadows, formulated with Aloe Vera and Coconut Oil for butter-like application; Four Reflective Shades, featuring shimmering pearl flecks for a gorgeous duo-chromatic finish; Two Glitter Formulas, infused with innovative silicones for advanced adherence, pigment dispersion and luminosity; One Pressed Pearl, combined with Acacia, Jojoba and Sunflower Wax for a high-shimmer finish that layers effortlessly on top of mattes, adding dreamy depth and dimension; One Concealer Base, for flawless application, and to boost eyeshadow. 

My initial thoughts when I saw this palette were mostly regarding the lovely aesthetic. While I could do without Huda's face on literally every palette, the lovely big mirror and cohesiveness of the colors really pulled me in (I have a big problem with buying palettes that are literally all the same color).

I also think the mauvey pinks and purples are a nice alternative to 'nudes' and neutrals, and I wanted something interesting, color wise, to try from Huda to know whether or not her products actually lived up to the hype. 

The concealer shade was always going to be an awful decision (despite Huda's attempts to prove me otherwise) but I thought, sure, why not. Give it a try. 

The price tag however, was pretty high. This palette retails for $65USD, and I bought mine at $95AUD off Sephora Australia with a nifty 10% off my first online order (with free shipping.)

This palette is definitely not cheap, on the other hand, it isn't Natasha Denona or Pat McGrath levels of expensive either. 

How does the actual palette measure up then?

Not too amazingly if I'm honest. In addition, this palette has received almost no press since its release, mostly because it's not an outstanding or interesting palette.

If you've ever looked up the New Nudes on IG or Youtube, most of the eyeshadow looks (somewhat impressively in a way) look pretty much the same.
The actual diversity of shades and range of light and darkness with this is not great, and most of the colors don't look too different when applied on the eye.

We'll do a breakdown of the whole palette so let's start with the concealer -

The formula itself isnt awful, it's creamy and melts very quickly with some heat, doesn't have a lot of coverage, sheers out alright and works really well for my skin complexion (for reference, I'm around an NW20.)
It's by no means crease proof, doesn't really set well and is just about as effective as any slightly tacky skin colored based you could find lying around. Huda also created a special 'brush' with the PR package she sent out to influencers to improve the usage of this concealer with the special 'reflective' shades, but I really don't want to spend that kind of money on a brush (the Fender Blender which is coming up soon) that only works with one formula.

Is this essential to the palette? Nah.

I knew the concealer shade was always going to be a bad decision, but thanks to some pointers off r/makeupaddiction, I got some scotch tape and taped over the whole concealer shade so I wouldn't have to get an increasing amount of dust and kickback eyeshadow onto the cream base.
Despite the placement, I've never been a huge fan of any cream products around powder products, and mixing each other even with the same brush can be a pain, and pairing this in an eyeshadow palette.
I mean look, they're not really popular not because nobody isn't as innovative and impressively creative minded as Huda is in pushing the boundaries, it's that it has been proved time and time again that cream products don't belong in the same palette with predominantly powder products.

My other gripe with this palette, is the "Glitter Formulas, infused with innovative silicones for advanced adherence, pigment dispersion and luminosity", which are really just pressed glitters with less of the vaseline-like base you usually get.

Just to show you how much of a headache I had with using the glitter shades, I hope these pictures demonstrate how annoying I found them.

From left to right, the first is attempting to blend out the shimmer, the second is 4 passes dipping into the glitter each time, and the third is attempting to swatch with one pass. 

 As you can probably see, it's basically impossible to get a great section of glitter blended out nicely, and it's just mostly patchy and slips around when you try to blend it. From the third watch, it's basically impossible to get an even application of the glitter without having to intensely build it up, and you really can't smooth it out without it just shifting from where you initially placed it.

The aftermatch of my finger trying to blend out that first swatch. 

It is also impossible to get this off your face or wherever you've chosen to apply this. I believe this glitter is probably cosmetic grade (meaning it probably won't blind you if this gets in your eye) but with how difficult it was to use and remove, I don't really reach for this too often.

It feels pretty much like pressed glitter with barely any adhesive to gel it together at all. This never sets, you can pretty much remove this because it sticks to anything but what you want it to stick to.
I'm super disappointed, because at least with other pressed glitters, there's enough of a sticky base that you can move it around evenly. This has none of that at all.
I would probably recommend using this with a glitter glue, and it's just your standard loose glitter packed into an eyeshadow tin. Not too bad, but for the price, absolute rip off.

If you're asking, oh yeah but like what about that special eyeshadow brush you said was paired with this eyeshadow palette to make the formulas work more?

Well, Huda has also created the Fender Blender for this palette, described as :

A Limited Edition multi-purpose eyeshadow brush encased in chic rose gold and sleek nude acrylic.

Hand-designed by Huda herself, the easy-to-use dual-ended Fender Blender combines a sponge applicator with a flexible silicone tip that are perfect for applying more challenging eyeshadows

The brush stock picture - taken from shophudabeauty.com. This retails for $15USD. 

One end is a sponge tip application, and the other is a silicone tip. Personally, if I have to go out of my way to buy an overpriced silicone tip just to make your eyeshadow formulas work, that's a little bit classist and bars the rest of your audience from fully enjoying your products.

The Fender Blender was also created for these Reflective shades, of which there are 4.
These act a lot more like, shimmery shades that have been pressed with a random mix of  iridescent with pink shift glitter glue chunks. Mine came with quite big chunks of the white glitter, so I was able to pry some out and swatch just that.

Here's a picture of the pink reflect, and the white/non reflect.

White base!

The pink reflect is super strong! I took the top swatch out of Crave (the light gold) and the bottom out of Fantasy (the dark pink).

These work a lot better with fingers, or wet with a brush! This formula is supposed to work best with the silicone brush as well, but I find fingers a lot more convenient as well.
While I'm not a huge fan of shimmers, I'm trying to branch out and I love the lighter two on my lower lash line, and I really love the dimension of Charmed.
I can basically use just that as an all over eyeshadow color and it looks really lovely because of the iridescent shift with the shimmer.
I've grown to like this formula, despite the super easy give in this and the glitters, where you can probably just press down and squish the eyeshadow together. If you press too hard when using this, you'll end up putting a massive dent in this, so if you do get this, fair warning to be gentler on the reflective shades.

Wearing Charmed as an all over eyeshadow! It's subtle but has a really nice shimmer shift I couldn't get on camera. No color editing, in natural sunlight. 

The shimmer shade is just one of them, and isn't really very impressive. It's just your standard shimmery shadow, but it works, which is more than I can say about the glitter shades.

Kinky, which is swatched below the Excite (the glitter shade)

Lastly, we've got the mattes which make up ten of the shades.

The formula itself isn't too bad, they're pretty pigmented, don't skip too badly and are pressed well enough.
However, the shadows have quite a bit of kickback and are prone to reacting quite quickly to the oils on my brushes in comparison to ABH and Lime Crime's eyeshadows. A few of them have already developed dots of hard pan, despite not using them a lot.
Also, don't leave bits of eyeshadow lying around the palette because they will stain the cardboard packaging of the palette.
Generally, the mattes are pretty dusty and therefore, don't play well with the concealer pan (leading to a lot of dust in it after only one use!) too.

Left to right, Charmed (the reflective shade as comparison), Play, Secret, Teddy, Tickle and Spanked in natural light.

As I previously mentioned as well, the colors are extremely similar. Despite what they look like in the pan, Tickle and Spanked look exactly the same on the eye. The darker colors don't have a lot of range to them, and so you're left with a lot of mid range tones that look virtually indistinguishable on the eyes. 

Here are the same swatches in darker/yellow light to demonstrate the shade similarity. 

Left to right, Charmed (the reflective shade as comparison), Play, Secret, Teddy, Tickle and Spanked in yellow light.

To round up: 

This palette isn't necessarily a bad palette, because it always depends on what people enjoy and what people want out of palettes. 

For me, I would have put in a darker brown, to match the darker purple, varied the undertones of the browns a little more, and also made Spanked a darker pink. Personally, I hate the two glitter shades as well, so I would have reformulated them and only kept Excite, or removed them entirely.  I like the shimmery shades, so I would have put in a shimmery burnished gold as well. Additionally, just a white version of the reflective shade would have been great for inner corner highlights or halo eyes. And, throw away the concealed shades. 

I personally have scraped out Infatuated, and replaced it with ABH's Cypress Umber. The eyeshadow pan is small enough to slot right into Huda's empty pan, and that's what I use to round out this palette a little bit. 

Overall, at least 15 of the 18 shades work for me, but the color range feels more like something I can get out of a 6 pan palette. 

Some other similar palettes that were released during this time was the KVD Lolita palette - which offers more of a range of shades. However, both owners are known for having controversial views, but as of 2020, Kat Von D is no longer affiliated or associated with the makeup brand KVD. 

Taken from KVD's official IG : https://www.instagram.com/p/BrOjztBhgt8/?utm_source=ig_embed 

All in all, I don't think it's really worth the $65 USD price tag for a palette which might as well be half the size that has been created, with a color theme that doesn't seem too well curated, glitter shades that don't work and a bamboozling cream concealer which sits there and literally gathers dust on its surface. At least half of the money there has gone into the luxury packaging, the huge high quality mirror, the lovely semi transparent plastic slips, so your milage may vary depending on how much you value these aspects of makeup. 

It feels like a palette made for a IG post rather than a palette made for interesting and varied use, and is overall a little disappointing especially with the amount of 'innovation' Huda claims to put into her palettes. I think I wouldn't really dislike this palette as much as I seem to regarding this review, but mostly because I really don't like the way that they've touted a perfectly standard eyeshadow formula and things like, a cream product with powders as groundbreaking or completely innovative. 

That being said, I have bought it and intend to use this until I get my money's worth. It is workable, and while it needs to be supplemented with other palettes, I wouldn't really recommend this to anyone else as a favorite of mine. 

You can get this from Sephora US and AUS and also https://www.shophudabeauty.com/en_HK/the-new-nude-palette.html.