Sunday Swatches: Urban Decay Naked Smoky

Sunday 6 September 2015

Following my last Smoky makeup look post, it's only fitting to follow up with the review and swatches of the new Urban Decay Naked Smoky palette!

As a previous Urbanette (someone who applied makeup for Urban Decay on a counter), you could say I have ample experience with the brand and am still a hardcore UD fan as many of my friends, family and readers will know.
I've loved seeing the brand grow from strength to strength, you can read my Urban Story and Naked History for some background info on my experiences!

I've had the pleasure of reviewing and creating makeup looks for all three previous Naked Palettes on this very blog, and came up with my own guide to which Naked Palette is for your skintone here.

However, this Naked Smoky palette is something slightly different; I have to say I was a huge fan of the Smoked palette and still dip into it now and then, but now the Naked Smoky palette is on the market with 12 shades of matte, satin and sparkle, it may well be the palette I reach for more when I need a quick smoky look.



The Naked Smoky palette consists of warm bronzes, cool bluey greys and matte neutral browns too.
It comes with a double ended brush with one end great for blending (or smoking out) and the other end for smudging.


Here's the palette swatched below without and with flash:

without flash
with flash
Packaging: 
The packaging for the Naked Smoky palette is hard semi transparent plastic as opposed to the previous metal and cardboard packaging. The corners are square as opposed to round and the shadow pans sit in a transparent base. It closes with a magnetic seal and has a full size mirror.

Colour & Pigmentation: 
The shadows are pigmented as usual; I found the satin/sparkly finished shadows had the same buttery texture as usual with Urban Decay, however the matter shadows seemed much more drier to touch.
I did also find that some shades in my palette were less pigmented than others and had to be swiped more than once; namely Radar, Password and Combust.
Nine of the shades are completely new with three exclusives from previous Vice Palettes (Black Market, Armor and Radar).
Despite the drier texture of the mattes, I found that using with the primer potion (as I always do) helped the shadows stick with no issues.

Longevity: 
As always, the UD shadows last very long, even without primer; I found that the darker ones (Black Market, Dagger, Smolder) can even leave the slightest stain which can only help with longevity.

Price: 
Priced at £38, each shadow works out to be £3.17 each which is significantly cheaper than Urban Decay's usual full size eyeshadow, but with the added benefit of being a cool and compact palette including a good quality double ended brush.. Despite the prices of the palettes going up, it still makes for great value for money compared to more premium brands that offer less pigmentation for the price.

FrootiFactor: 
I love the packaging and shades available in this palette. I do believe these shades would suit all skintones from fair to very deep compared to the Naked 3 which I would recommend for fairer skins mostly. I give this palette a 4.5 out of 5 simply because some shades seem a little less pigmented than I'm used to, but overall still an amazing palette:
 

The Naked Smoky Palette is available to buy from Debenhams, House Of Fraser and now John Lewis too.
How often do you wear smoky looks? Will you be adding this palette to your collection?
 
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