As I start this post, I would like to remind everyone that I am not a person who supports cancellation of a brand for past mistakes. I really admire the approach of blues musician Daryl Davis to painful and contentious differences…I know I have linked one of his TED talks on my blog before, but you can click his name for a link to an article about him if you are not familiar with his history of seeking out and making friends with members of the KKK. I feel that if we never allow others to move from a position of being punished and shunned for their mistakes that we leave no incentive for anyone to evolve their positions. So if I use a brand you personally won’t support, that is absolutely fine for you to make that decision for yourself, I will just ask that you respect that I am going to make shopping decisions based on how I feel about the quality of the product and not the mistakes of the brand owners.
This is a topic that could easily get out of control and become a novella. While the pandemic and difficult economic conditions in certain areas of the market are starting to thin the number of indie makeup brands, still there is a heavy field of brands outside of those found at Ulta or Sephora contending for your makeup money. I am sticking to discussing the eye shadows in this post because you can get decent drug store lip glosses easily, but the same isn’t necessarily true for the shadows. And, often if you want a dramatic, colorful eye look that will last all day, sometimes your money is better spent shopping from some of those indie brands. If you walk into an Ulta for example, you’re going to see colorful offerings from Colourpop, Makeup Revolution and their many brand offshoots, BH cosmetics, Juvia’s Place, LA GIRL, Milani, elf, NYX, and Morphe.
My personal experience is that Colourpop is usually a great choice for neutrals…but bright colors are hit or miss. Makeup Revolution and their many offspring brands- I hate working with their formula and won’t buy it anymore based on the experiences I’ve had. And now that they’ve bought out BH, I’m not even sure I’m going to be comfortable recommending that brand going forward. BH started out with some OK’ish formulas, and moved on to produce some great palettes that compete with high end brands for quality…but all bets could be off there going forward. Juvia’s Place, I generally like the quality of their eye shadows with the exception of their purple mattes…which get patchy, don’t blend as well, and are fussier to work with. LA GIRL, the shimmers are chunkier than I’d like but surprisingly good for a drug store brand…but their non-neutral matte colors don’t build, blend, or layer well. Milani, oh hell no, I hated the colored mattes formula so bad I washed it off and redid my makeup with a different brand, so I don’t even have a picture to show on that one. Elf and NYX can be weakly pigmented, fade or don’t layer well, they’re just not a great experience for me personally to work with compared to some of the indie brands. Now that could be great if all you want is a gentle and subdued wash of color, but that isn’t the direction my makeup usually goes. Morphe, some of their palettes with vivid colors perform great (the Jaclyn Hill Vol 2 colab, Cherry Cola Colab) but others are really crummy and the colors won’t blend well or will fade even with a good primer.
The indie brands I love the most might be different from another person equally passionate about their makeup products because I have my own aesthetic preferences, and certain products that I prefer based on how they work with my primers. I will give you a quick run down of who I think rocks my preferences, but then I’m going to finish up by giving you a couple of recommendations for determining whether or not you wanted to try purchasing something from an indie brand without an extensive and established track record. And pretty please don’t judge me on how much eye shadow you think I might have. First, I purchase a huge chunk of it on-sale. And that is what I get for pretty much every gift or special occasion…and for those of you keeping track, the VIV leggings I last reviewed back when I was still shopping at Amazon all of those years ago? Still wearing the ones that haven’t developed holes. I don’t spend money on myself in most other areas. Moving on…
Often when I am creating a look, I pull from multiple brands and palettes, which makes it more difficult to give a specific picture for each brand’s products, so that’s not necessarily represented here. For mattes, Jeffree Star cosmetics is consistently a great performer, even for difficult to formulate colors like purples or greens. His shimmers perform well, but generally I have brands that I love to wear more when it comes to shimmers because they are more foiled or have color shifts. Give Me Glow Cosmetics is great for mattes and shimmers, and I love (love!) their purples…literally one of their purple mattes is probably in 70% of my looks with purple. I feel the same about Menagerie Cosmetics. Sydney Grace easily out performs many Ulta and Sephora luxury brands in colors and neutrals. I have never had a bad experience with Shroud cosmetics, even their pastels perform great and are opaque with one layer, which I love. Devinah produces some of my favorite shimmers and multi-chromes. Sigil Inspired has great quality mattes and shimmers, but this is a Russian indie brand that has already been hit hard as a business by what is going on, so I don’t know how easy it’s going to be to get products from this brand right now even if you are interested. Terra Moon, Notoriously Morbid, and JD Glow have fabulous shimmers. Lunar Beauty generally has good quality products. There’s a whole lot of indie brands I just have one palette from that I love how it performed, but I feel like one palette isn’t really enough experience for me to put them up in my list of favorites that way.
If you’ve seen a review of an indie product and you are trying to decide if you want to risk it for yourself, my first piece of advise would be to watch carefully how the shadow applies. Is the reviewer having an easy time getting it blended out? Was there a pause and a video edit skipping parts of the process while blending out a shade? If so, that could indicate that the shade is hard to work with and the reviewer doesn’t want to antagonize the brand and show that. How many layers did it take to get the shade to appear with the depth the reviewer or you would like it to? Some products only need one layer…some, you’ll be going back in the pan several times to deepen it up, if the color is even that buildable.
While crummy eye shadows can come from anywhere, sometimes items mass produced in China can have more quality control issues than those produced in Italy or the US in my experience, so I would watch multiple reviews for a brand that is selling items bulk produced from China because that might give you a better idea of whether or not the formula is consistent. Also, be aware that many reviewers aren’t mentioning how the shadow held up throughout the day, just how it applied in the moments they were filming. So trying to find reviewers that mention wear time before fading or creasing is also advisable. I personally prefer products that will survive everything a good 12 hours of my day will throw at me, which is a big ask when it comes to cosmetics.
Also, pay attention to how other people feel about the customer service of the brand. The quality could be great, but if you get an item that arrives broken and nobody from the brand will respond to you, how the shadow would have performed undamaged won’t help you deal with that. Which is also why I recommend using PayPal whenever you can with indie brands…in case things go bad and you need an easier way to get your money back. I’ve never had to do that, but I like to be prepared for the possibilities.
Life can flash and blink away…for me, it is too short a time to spend it wearing eye shadows that don’t do the things I want them to. My wants might be different from yours, and that’s OK. For anyone who is a friend or a family member, you can always set up a time to come over and play with me and my eye shadow collection to test out something for yourself to see if it works the way you personally would want it to before you spend your money on it. Much love and hope this helps a little <3 Ari
