NARSissist Brings Some Edgy Vibes to Holiday 2018 | Hot Tryst Cheek Palette & Little Fetishes

NARS began this holiday season with a bang (and a plethora of spikes and studs!). I can safely say that no other brand went with this theme for the holidays, and beauty enthusiasts are certainly eating it up.

"Spiked with color. Studded with style". NARS is appealing to the rebel in all of us! Don't worry NARS, we see you <3

I picked up the Hot Tryst Cheek Palette and two of the Little Fetishes sets which include:

• Bronzer and Highlighter set (Laguna Bronzer + Fort de France highlighter)
• Audacious Lipstick set (Mona and Rita)

The Hot Tryst Cheek Palette is the shining star of this collection (at least according to Social Media). But really, who can resist a 6-pan blush palette in shiny, studded packaging?

 The description reads: "Contour, highlight, and pop with natural-looking dimension in a palette of six limited-edition, sheer-to-buildable shades".

The palette features four blushes and two second-skin-effect highlighting powders. You can apply any of these dry for a weightless, natural glow or wet for a high-impact effect. I personally prefer to apply dry, but applying the blush shades wet around the eyes can look really cool. Highlighters, of course, are often applied wet to give a more intense glow, but I'm not sure that applying powder blush wet to my cheeks is for me.

These powders are lovely; buttery smooth and finely milled. They don't even really feel like powder but are more silky to the touch. There is a minute amount of glitter but rather than looking glittery on the skin it brings out that luminous sheen that satin-like blushes often create.

The pink and berry tones of the blushes are perfect for Winter and the highlighter shades complement each well. I like pairing the white, opalescent highlighter with the pale pink and raspberry blushes, and the shimmery taupe highlighter with the coral or magenta blushes for a warmer look.

The two berry blushes look similar in the swatch picture below, but they are quite different (granted, you may not need both). One is a shimmery magenta color and has more red undertones whereas the other is a raspberry with gold shimmer giving it more purple undertones and a more intense sheen-like effect on the skin.

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The Little Fetish sets are the type of product that when I see them released online I get super excited but in the back of my mind I know that in a few months that cute little plastic, spiked container that I thought was soooo cool will be sitting in a drawer somewhere. This is probably true of these products, so I do encourage you to look past the cute plastic pods with the spikes and studs and the edgy imprinted logo before spending your money.

So. Why did I pick these two up then? Firstly, I already wanted the lipstick shade Mona and the highlighter in Fort de France. Also, my old Laguna bronzer hit hard pan and to be frank I'm too lazy to do the whole scraping the hard product off and hoping the product underneath is good to use. I also travel a bit and small products like this are useful to have. BUT, I only want small products I will actually use (not like Sephora PLAY! which was filled with some cool products and some products I ended up giving away after they had sat for months, lonely, amongst all the other lonely, never-used products. A regular "Island of Misfit Toys" for deluxe-sized makeup.

 Looking at the products, Mona is one of my favorite Fall lipstick shades (you'll be seeing it in an upcoming "favs" post), and Rita, while I don't often wear reds, is a nice-to-have shade that my mom will almost certainly get some use out of too.

Laguna is a great bronzer to have and I was missing mine, but as I have so many bronzers I didnt want to buy another. Having a mini size for travel is perfect.

Fort de France was the product I was really after here and it's lovely. It's a pale, white-gold champagne shade that will flatter my skin tone during the pale months of Winter or the tanner months of Summer. I was expecting the powder to feel chunky or at least heavier than the highlighters in the Hot Tryst palette, but it's just as silky and light as those two. It's also a nice alternative shade as the two in Hot Tryst.

 

I found the release of this collection a bit overwhelming as there were so many products (no complaints there!) but it seemed that every product was only released at one or two retailers. This made it difficult to "catch them all" (though maybe my wallet is thankful for this). But really, it just made it a bit frustrating to keep track of what is releasing where and when. I know how retail distribution and marketing works so I get why this was done this way, but really, a cheat sheet would have been helpful NARS =)

Thanks for reading! <3

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