ANASTASIA BEVERLY HILLS PRISM PALETTE REVIEW

I've often raved about the Anastasia Beverly Hills eyeshadows and the palettes that they produce- the Modern Renaissance was one of the very first palettes I bought after getting back into makeup, and I find the palette super flattering on me (except warm taupe and buon fresco) 

When the release of Soft Glam came along, while a lot of the shades overlapped with the Modern Renaissance, I did really like the color scheme, and the more neutral and soft my make up as gotten, as I received Soft Glam as a present, it's definitely become the new Go To travel palette, with a nice range of flattering day time looks, a range of smokey dark shadows, but also a handy mirror and most importantly- the very convenient and easy to use dual ended brush included in all the palettes. 

I appreciate all the shades in each of these- and the softly pressed formula of the eyeshadow is an amazing consistency that I find easy to use and to blend - the ease of just dipping gently with a great amount of payoff is one that is just very satisfying to me. 

A while ago, it was raised to people's attention that the shelf life of ABH palettes fall on the shorter end of the spectrum - most powder eyeshadows are usually suitable for use for at least 9-12 months- even up to 24 usually, whereas ABH only has 6 months. 

Some people raised concerns at this- and also when depotting you will notice that there is usually rust that forms on the shimmer shades (in Modern Renaissance, this shows on Vermeer and Primavera. 

It seems that the formulation of ABH shadows - mostly the shimmers, have a very short shelf life. After 6 months - or a bit longer, they no longer have the same performance for these - the shimmers do not layer well at all, and become very stiff and hard to use. This has happened across most of my palettes - Sultry in the Soft Glam palette has become very hard to use, although the rest of the mattes are fine. 

While the palette itself retails for $42USD, or $75AUD in Australian Sephoras, I was gifted this by a friend who bought this on sale and no longer wanted it - but has been opened and is long past the shelf life for this palette. 

Originally, if you refer to other reviews, the darker shimmer shades from ABH are usually a dream to work with, they're super buttery and easy to work with, but something in them ends up breaking down quite easily and also causing something in the metal casing to rust. 

By the time this Prism palette has come to me, the shades Osiris, Throne and Eternal were an absolute nightmare to work with, although the rest of the mattes have remained relatively easy to use. 

The swatches are done in the rows of the palette, from right to left, and both Osiris, Throne, Eternal, Sphere and Obsidian were given two swipes due to the inconsistency of the aged formula. 

Personally, I do really enjoy and feel inspired by a lot of the color schemes - as ABH typically organises their colors in quads, you can get a lovely color story, and one that is very much inspired by this "Egyptian" theme (with a few curveball names thrown in?) 

I think what each quad offers is very specifically tailored, with an interesting color combination, like the warm tones with a touch of forest green edged along the lash line would be absolutely fantastic. 

With the palette itself, Sphere and Obsidian are underperforming shades that are chalky and take time to build up without much payoff - in this sense, the palette fails a bit to me because the quality of some of the shadows really don't perform to the normal standard, and are subpar along a star studded cast of palettes. Leaving out Sphere, the palette is very much more neutral, and with the case of Osiris and Throne, the inability to get the jeweled tone, deeper shades to work in this palette - you're really looking at a whole palette of golds and neutrals. I also find Dimension a great color but really needs to be integrated with the more interesting colors - which don't perform as they should. 

In this case, these neutrals are fine, but I wouldn't necessarily go out of my way to use a palette in which I would only use half of the colors provided, and have to work harder for the rest of them - especially with the high price tag and typically higher quality eyeshadow from ABH. 

To me, the PRISM palette is definitely one of the more disappointing line ups of the ABH offerings, and I would not buy this at full price. 

I do believe that if you are interested in these colours and generally gravitate towards these shades, that this would be an investment worth making if you're fine with two out of 14 shades being hard to use or using any sort of fixative to help those colors along, but I would recommend looking at a sale because of the two duds in the palette. 



Additionally, here's a picture of Sphere with three different fixatives, yet the effect of those just shows the strangeness of Sphere.

The top is Sphere swatched with a finger, second row is Sphere with UD's All Nighter spray, third row is Mehron's mixing liquid with two passes, and the fourth row is Mehron's mixing liquid with one pass.
All of these are relatively similar and don't blend out too well, which is disappointing.