Saturday 9 January 2010

MAC All Races All Ages All Sexes Collection Haul

Wait, did MAC launch another neutral collection just 2 weeks after Warm & Cozy? Yes, they did. So of course I headed down and checked it out. What, did you think I would be able to contain myself and keep my credit card in my purse? Puh-lease.

You know what though? I was not super impressed with this collection. I wasn't sure about what I expected, and maybe I should not have brought Moose to the MAC store as it meant I couldn't spend a super long time poring over things. For example, I didn't even look at the brow products, although my store (did I ever tell you my MAC store is just 5 blocks from my house. Isn't that insane? Sephora is 7. New York can be a killer sometimes!) didn't appear to have it. As you probably should be aware, my biggest weakness is eyeshadow, and right now, particularly mattes. I was fully expecting to get at least 3 shades. I ended with just two: All Races and Showstopper. All Races is a lovely unique matte super pale gray lilac color. It is pretty pigmented but swatched pale on my warm. Showstopper is a matte dark charcoal brown. According to other bloggers, it is similar to Embark, which I don't have. I think that's also a little weird of MAC given that Embark was repromoted as part of Warm & Cozy. The other two shades, Cross-cultural, which was a mid-tone red brown, and Banshee, a shimmery pink, didn't catch my attention. Cross-cultural seemed pretty blah, and Banshee shimmer mayhem.





There were 4 lipsticks with this collection: Myself, Empowered, 5N, and Equality. Equality wasn't at my counter, Myself was soo extremely sheer that I couldn't see it, and Empowered and 5N were pretty. I ended up with 5N as it seemed to have a slightly more glossy finish.



Out of the 4 lipglosses, I ended up picking up 2: Liquer and Spirit & Soul. All but Glamour For All have a high shimmer factor. Glamour For All is a nice nudey pink, but I thought it looked dupable for Underage which I have and use regularly. Plus I seem to have a gazillion milky pinks from MAC right now. Equality was a shimmery cool gold, which might be flattering on some, but killed me. Liquer and Spirit & Soul are definitely in the browny gold family, with Spirit & Soul being slightly richer and warmer.



I did not end up getting any of the pigments or beauty powders. There has been a big furore over the change in pigment jar size (my mac store only has new pigment sizes, but I'll check Macys later today), but more importantly, I just didn't get too excited about the actual colors. Universal Mix seemed dupable with one of the white colors that MAC has (I did swatch this, I'm just having a brain melt here!), and Rich Ground was equally unimpressive, and the pigment wasn't super nice either. Meh.

The beauty powders both looked super neutral. At first I blew them off. As I type this though, I really feel like I ought to go back and give them some quality time thinking about highlighting and contouring when my store is quiet and I am not dragging an inquisitive puppy!

Do I think this was a stellar collection? Eh, no. Definitely not. Not even as strong as Warm & Cozy. Actually, I think it's a shame that neither of these collections were ohmigod amazing, as from what I can see from upcoming collections, we're not going to see any emphasis on neutrals from MAC for a while. It is is keeping with the very 90s feeling we all have going on here. I'm going to put on my flowery dress and heavy boots whilst slicking a brown shimmer gloss on now.

4 comments:

Michelle @Lipstickrules said...

I loved reading this review! Love your writing.

I haven't been wowed by this collection either but I might revisit Warm & Cozy...

Liquer is lovely. I bought it the last time it was out.

Michelle
xx

Fiona M said...

Aw thanks! I ended up doing 2 Warm & Cozy hauls, picking up a couple of shadesticks and By Candlelight as well. The SHAME!!

I am a MAC newbie, so things that come out a second time are extra scores for me. I usually work on the basis that if it was good enough to come out twice, it is worth a look...

Michelle @Lipstickrules said...

I'm trying to decide if I need/want By Candlelight. I have a bunch of rarely used MSFs.

You are lucky to be a MAC newbie :-)
I've been wearing MAC for more than 15 years. Craziness really.

Christina said...

Wow, you have a great blog. I love it :)
I love the showstopper eyeshadow :)
Sorry I didn't catch up on your blog sooner, my internet had been down. It seems to be all fixed now though :) x

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