Well, lovelies…I recently when a-hauling last week Thursday at Sephora and picked up a number of goodies with their special 15% off discount for VIBs and the cute Sephora bag of samples galore! Finally, I cowed down and picked up the Urban Decay Theodora palette. My inner evil witch cravings had to be satiated after all these months since I got the Glinda palette but I’ll save a Theodora review for later.
In any case, while I went a-hauling I noticed that the Charlotte Ronson line was being discounted for “a limited time” by a number of signs in-store but after some prying it seems like the brand is permanently on the out and out by autumn. So, if anyone was a fan of Charlotte Ronson’s makeup line at Sephora then now is the time to stock up on your favorites while the prices are hot before the line goes bye-bye for good. Now, if you’re like I was, you prolly walked past the Charlotte Ronson products at Sephora and never gave it a go and are skeptical about buying anything when there were other goodies nearby. I bit the bullet and picked up a boxed kit of Charlotte Ronson’s On-the-Glow because it was 30% discounted plus my 15% and it had a ton of full-sized products kitted together for less than if you bought the products individually. This review is gonna be big and picture-heavy.
Overall it came with an All Eye Need Eye Shadow palette in Nicole, All Eye Want Eye Liner pencil in Ali, A Perfect Kiss Lip Gloss in Eleanor, and 3x Charm Luminizer, Blush, Bronzer in Shoshanna. All are full-sized products so if you don’t care for the set you can pick up the individual pieces by themselves and in different colors with some exception of the pencil liner comes only in a giant eye pencil kit. If you can tell, almost all of the colors are named after one of Charlotte Ronsons’s friends so the names aren’t going to be a big clue as to the colors without some swatching. So far a lot of product to go through all at once but let’s get cracking!
Let’s start with the Nicole eyeshadow because I heart eyeshadow. The palette comes with four colors each 0.08 oz worth per shade. Checking the Sephora website, the product is named after Nicole Richie supposedly after her “natural glow.” I didn’t make it up! All the colors have one little blurb or another about Charlotte’s friends that she named her products after which I could take or leave but it doesn’t tell me much of the palette in-store unless I looked up online which Dani, Nicole, Henrietta she’s talking about but I digress, I’m still giggling about one of Kat Von D’s eyeshadows named the “Violator.” As you can see, the palette is a summery set of golden undertones and glowing coppers and browns.
In swatching, they are pretty darn close to pan shade. It’s very orange-ish and shimmery in the coppers and not everyone is going to dig that much orange or that much shimmer but they are definitely fun, youthful colors if you wanted to buy the palette indvidually discounted at $15 USD. Colors have decent pigmentation and the wear time was suitable for an evening with a good primer. I was only disappointed by the yellow…I just wanted it a bit more saturated.
Drum roll please and now we have 3x Charm Luminizer, Blush, Bronzer in Shoshanna with 0.29 oz of product per pan. At first I thought, hey, a luminzer, blush, and bronzer all in one palette that doesn’t cost me an arm and a leg? Overall I was the least impressed by this product. Oh, sure, the colors you see above look pigmented enough in swatches and they do blend well and have a modest amount of shimmer to them but in all honesty their lasting power was…non-existent. After 2-3 hours it was very faded, 4 hours and they were gone. My makeup pet peeve is staying power and the last thing I recommend is stuff disappearing after a few hours so this is a fail.
Now, as for the shades themselves, the bronzer is a little orangey for pale skin tones. If you are lucky enough to be able to work orange bronzer (bless your heart) then the next problem you have is this won’t last you half the day. The blush is an adorably cute pink shade but little lasting power just nixes this for me when I have drugstore brand blushes that last longer than this. I LOVE the shade of the blush but…it just doesn’t last at all on me, phooey! As for the luminizer? It’s not enough to save this palette. It’s nice blended out for a decent highlighter but there are so many better ones on the market and if you’re not careful it will come out like chalk on some skin tones.
The A Perfect Kiss Lip Gloss in Eleanor is next containing 0.08 oz of product. It’s a sheer pink gloss which looks alright swatched on my arm but the color is too sheer even when layered to appear on my lips. This is a skip unless your lips are paler than Eleanor but even if darker I’m just not uber-excited about the gloss but it does apply smooth with no tacky texture.
Finally All Eye Want Eye Liner pencil in Ali. It is 0.04 oz of product and comes off as a gold. The pencil comes with a smudger on one end so in swatches I have on left the bold line to show off color, middle line showing it blended, and right line to show just how it comes off in one stroke. It goes on smooth but overall it didn’t last as long on my eyes as I would have liked and it faded after a few hours. Couple this with the fact you can’t buy the shade individually even if you wanted to means you’ll have to buy the full pencil set as of right now $34 USD on discount. This makes for one unhappy camper. Not a good recommendation.
Alright lovelies, that’s my take on some of Charlotte Ronson’s products in a nutshell. I think the eyeshadow palettes are worth looking into if you have a chance but otherwise I was either disappointed or not blown away by the other products. Let me know if you’ve tried any of these products and have better results than I did! 😦
Makeup Noir 
I saw these on discount @ Sephora’s too (I practically live there-freaking embarressing when I go in & they all look at my guilty face!) The eyeshadow palette with this set was just the absolute wrong colors for me. I look awful in yellowy-coppery shades. I’m more of a cool toned gray, purple, taupe girl. I always walked past these too. I hate palettes that don’t give any indication of the colors inside and instead choose to go with cutesy names that have zilch to do with anything makeup. I MAYBE might get the eyeliner set since it is a huge varied set of colors on discount and you can never have too many eyeliners! Do you think the eyeliner set would be worth it? Wonder what the price would come out to after discount here in the US? I’ll have to look that up:) Thanks for the review. I’m following your blog now because I love makeup blogs and yours is informative, funny, and personable all while being very accurate (IMO) from the stuff you’ve reviewed that I own. I’ll def keep reading!
Thanks for the awesome feedback. I was so disappointed with most of the Charlotte Ronson stuff too despite the tempting clearance prices! I’d give the eyeliner set a skip. Currently as of today it’s marked at $34 on clearance for the 8 pencil set. It’s at a very tempting price point but at the same time with my experiences with the gold, it gave me lukewarm feelings about the rest of the set because of its poor lasting power especially after comparing it to my drugstore or even the generic Ulta-brand liners that had better stay time. Secretly, I’d just wait for that set to drop to 50% off in a month or two and if its still around by then then it was meant to be otherwise I’d save the 34 bucks for a new palette. After all, something has to fill that Charlotte Ronson shelf. 😉