Beauty Review: Huda Beauty Mauve Obsessions Eyeshadow Palette

Huda Beauty Obsessions Palettes are the more compact eyeshadow palettes in the Huda Beauty line – they’re small and fit into your palms, but still contain a good variety of eyeshadows with 9 shades across different textures. From what I’ve seen, the Obsessions palettes go by a colour or gemstone theme, and they recently expanded the offering in this range and they look amazing – unfortunately, I bought mine sometime ago. The one I did pick up was Mauve Obsessions, which has a rosy colour theme.

As mentioned, Mauve Obsessions Palette contains 9 shades with matte, satin and foil-effect textures in rich rosy and neutral taupe shades. Each shade weighs 1.1g. The palette is made in the PRC, while their Rose Gold Remastered Eyeshadow Palette is made in France and Italy; I am not prejudiced against any country’s products, but I did notice a difference in quality and that was why I checked the manufacturing country in the first place. This costs £25 on the Cult Beauty website, which is where I got mine.

The packaging is a simple cardboard box, with a very decent size mirror. A lot of people complain about cardboard boxes in makeup packaging, but personally I’ve found that they stood up better than metal casings. I can’t explain it, but I have a lot of eyeshadows in sturdy metal casings that broke in transit while eyeshadows in cardboard boxes made it through intact. I like that it’s very compact, and fits into pretty much any small makeup pouch.

The eyeshadows in the palette are not individually named, so I will just number them according to the sequence stated below. Since there are too many shades to individually review, I won’t be describing the quality and application of each eyeshadow but tried my best to describe the colour and the overall quality.

From Left to Right, from the First Row to the Bottom Row:
#1: dark burgundy with warm red undertones, matte
#2: coral with orange undertones and pink shimmer, shimmer.
#3: light pink peach, metallic
#4: medium red with pink sparkles, metallic
#5: light neutral taupe, warm
#6: muted medium warm red, matte
#7: deep warm plum, matte
#8: light beige with yellow undertones, matte
#9: dark wine red, matte

I like the colour range, as I find that it fills in a big ‘gap’ in my eyeshadow collection in terms of deep dark plums and more wine reds. However, I do think that it’s definitely not a colour range for everyone because it can be quite difficult to work into a daily look.

Most of the matte shades are dry and powdery, unlike the matte shades in Huda’s larger palettes. Because of its dryness, it wasn’t as pigmented as they look and needed some primer for the powder to stick to in order to achieve full colour. I also find it quite hard to blend as it tends to ‘skip’ given the dryness. The mattes did wear well and lasted through the whole night. #8 stood out amongst the mattes, because it was decently smooth and buttery, and applied easily. #5 was a close second, though it was slightly powdery. In my swatches, I swatched all the colours twice so they have nice smooth finish with strong pigmentation – the colours are buildable and can achieve its full potential, it just needs a little more work.

Across the shimmer and metallic shades, the quality is much better – they are less dry, and applied much more smoothly. They have good colour payoff, and applies well using brushes; they also feel denser than the mattes, giving it a softer and creamier texture. They wore very well through the night, with no fall outs even from the shimmer or sparkle bits.

Overall, I find that the quality is a slight let down after experiencing the great quality in their Rose Gold Remastered Palette; of course, I did not expect the same level of quality between a much larger and more expensive palette versus its smaller cheaper sister, but the quality disparity is quite large. I have to say that a lot of my thoughts are framed by the fact that I own a better quality palette from the same line, so I’ve come to expect the same quality. Without the comparisons, this Mauve Obsessions is actually quite a decent palette. But would I pay £25 for the quality? Probably not.