At this point it should be no surprise that I go bananas over every new Anastasia Beverly Hills Glow Kit launch. It first started with Gleam, then I fell madly in love with Moonchild and Sweets, and then finally I tried out the Nicole Guerriero palette. So I was ecstatic when we discovered that the new Aurora palette was going to be available at IMATS New York when we were there last month!

I had a few up and down moments with this palette. The shots online looked absolutely glorious: the shades were very different than the previous Glow Kit launches and they seemed really, really beautiful. However, when I got my hands on it IRL, I felt a bit deflated. The colours seemed less saturated (possibly a good thing), but it also seemed like the WEIRDEST mix of colours for a Glow Kit. (That being said, there’s so many highlighters on the market that it can be hard to top every previous launch, so I do understand why the colours are a bit kooky.)

As a result, I spent a bit of time looking at this palette being like “what the heck?”. And I think I finally figured out why I felt that way: on my skin tone, the shades I was most excited about (Spectra and Orion) verge on being unwearable. I’ve seen a few people commenting that this is much better for deeper skin tones than myself, so that may be a potential factor.

Taking a look at the shades, four of them are “easy enough” to wear: Eclipse, Luna, Helia and Lyra. Spectra and Orion are extremely colour heavy and when I wear them on my face I feel like I am overtly aware of my highlighter. I know that’s a weird thing to say for someone who does love off-colour highlighter (blues and greens are my favourite), but there’s something about those shades that just doesn’t work for me right out of the gate.

Anastasia Beverly Hills Glow Kit in Aurora – Face Swatches

Let’s take a look at the individual face shots:

In the pan, Eclipse looks very peach but I feel it comes out more pink-toned on my skin.

Luna is a silver-white that would fall under your basic “silver-white” highlighter category.

Spectra is very, very interesting. It a pigmented purple with a pink reflect. The face shot is not showing nearly the amount of pigment that comes off on this colour – it can be very difficult for me to wear. I can’t go in full blast and I do have to have a bit of a tan (my body is tanned and I’m wearing a darker foundation in these shots) to make this colour work.

Helia is the most incredible looking colour in the pan – it’s a weird green-yellow hybrid that comes off a lot more golden on the cheekbones. This is a LOT more wearable than the pan makes it look.

Orion is a total failure on me and I have no clue how to make this one work. While the shot above looks okay-ish, in person it’s a disaster. This is a straight up blue streak on my face with a highly reflective sheen.

My favourite of the whole lot is Lyra. In the pan it’s very orange (which I’ve been looking for in a highlighter), but it comes out beautifully peachy on my cheeks. This shade does have some specks of glitter in the pan – which doesn’t bother me, but I know some people do not want glitter in their highlighters.

Final Thoughts

I don’t know how I feel about this palette. Maybe just neutral? The Aurora Glow Kit has a nice array of shades that haven’t been available in any of the previous Anastasia Beverly Hills highlighter palettes. I appreciate this, but I’m also starting to feel totally tapped out on highlighters now because I feel like we’ve explored every single shade that’s out there that could be workable. It’s entirely possible that this Kit would look better on a deeper skin tone and just missed the mark for me in that respect (which is fine! Not everything is or should be tailored to paler skin tones!). Alternatively, you could also use these as eyeshadows but that’s not something I find myself doing with highlighting palettes.

In the end, for me, I do feel that this is a barely wearable palette and I much prefer the Moonchild and Sweets palettes (which are still available on their web site). So if you want to pick up a Glow Kit, I’d steer you more towards those.

If you’ve tried this palette out, I would love to hear your thoughts!