The Modern Renaissance is the Palette I Never Knew I Needed.

Almost everyone is aware of one of the most raved about makeup products of all time: the Anastasia Beverly Hills Modern Renaissance Eyeshadow Palette. Often coined as the "warm toned eyeshadow lover's dream" this palette's hype still hasn't died down and is still heavily featured on beauty blogs and YouTube videos. That says a lot considering how fast paced the beauty industry is with its constant flood of "new-in" products.

I'm pretty late in purchasing this palette, but the reason is that ever since the palette first came out, I was in a constant back-and-forth debate with myself deciding if I truly wanted it. As I said before, this palette is best known for its warm tones, and as I'm one who inclines towards the more cool to neutral tones for the majority of the time, I was hesitant if the palette would get used enough by me.

So, based on photos and swatches, I broke it down. I looked at the palette shade by shade and envisioned the variety of looks that I could do and wanted to do with the palette. Looking at each shade, I realized that there are only 5 extremely warm shades in the palette: Love Letter, Burnt Orange, Red Ochre, Venetian Red, and Realgar. The rest are slightly cool or neutral. Since I do dabble in warm tones once in a while, especially during the autumn, I actually also see myself using the rest of the warm shades, which can be quite wearable. Overall, I've realized that this is indeed a well rounded palette!

    My shade descriptions (I found that ABH's own descriptions were vague): 

Tempera - satin cream 

Golden Ochre - matte light mustard 

Vermeer - shimmery light pink champagne  

Buon Fresco - matte cool lavender/mauve 

Antique Bronze - satin bronze with plum undertones 

Lover Letter - matte raspberry red 

Cyprus Umber - matte deep brown 

Raw Sienna - matte tan brown 

Burnt Orange - matte orange-brown 

Primavera - shimmery gold champagne 

Red Ochre - matte maroon red-brown 

Venetian Red - matte deep cranberry red 

Warm Taupe - matte taupe 

Realgar - matte deep orange 

When it comes to quality, I'm sure it's already well established how amazing it is. The shadows are extremely pigmented and blend beautifully and easily. The shadows do have kick-up as they are quite powdery, but they do not translate into heavy fallout once applied onto the eyes. Each shade is soft to the touch, although the most shimmery shades (Vermeer and Primavara) are very soft, to the point where they feel like creams. I love this as the shimmer pigment is amazing!

Before ending off this post, I'll also quickly note the packaging. The colour scheme is so pretty with the lavender front and simple white font along with ABH's rose gold logo. The case is felt/velvet, so I have to be very careful that it doesn't get dirty. The magnetic closure opens up to a relatively large mirror and inside also contains a dual-ended brush of which I'm not a huge fan of as the blending side is quite scratchy.

Final thoughts: I love this palette! I also adore the concept behind the palette as it represents Renaissance art, which means that the shades in this palette were well researched, which I highly appreciate. It's difficult to compare this palette to my other favourite, the Tarte Tartelette in Bloom Eyeshadow Palette*. The Tarte one is more neutral and natural, whereas the Modern Renaissance is more bold. I truly believe that having these two palettes really complete my eyeshadow collection and I'm not really longing for any shades now that I have this new palette. Do you have this highly raved palette? What do you think about it?

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