I’m not going to mince my words with this one – I hated the Anastasia Beverly Hills Subculture palette. I was so, SO excited to get my hands on it – I snapped it up the day it was released on Sephora. I started to use the very next morning… only to discover that this palette doesn’t hold a candle to its predecessor – the Modern Renaissance palette.
While I don’t normally turn my swatch posts into review posts, I did want to talk a bit about this palette since I won’t be doing a full on review or video about it. Where the Modern Renaissance was dusty and kicked up fallout when you stuck your brush into it, it at least had the ability to stick to your eyelid and blend out beautifully. The Subculture palette has none of those things. The kick up is more intense than the MR palette and it has zero ability to stick to your lid without getting blended away into nothingness. The primary thing that this palette lacks is binding agents that are going to get this to stick to your skin, and really, there isn’t a whole lot we, as consumers, can do to cure that.
I’ve heard the arguments in favour of calling this a “pressed pigment” palette or “this if for makeup professionals”. Pardon my language, but that’s way too much fucking bullshit for my liking. ABH is not a pro-geared brand, nor was this marketed as palette that was for MUAs. It also was NEVER MENTIONED that this was a pressed pigment palette. The only things we heard in the adverts for this palette was that it was the new sister to the Modern Renaissance palette, that it had a more nighttime vibe, and that if we loved MR, we would love Subculture just as much.
And frankly, I don’t. I tried two eye looks the morning after I got this and it looked like I had no idea how to apply eyeshadow. Some people may not like my technique, but I think we can all agree that I didn’t start wearing eyeshadow yesterday and therefore I shouldn’t look like I threw powder at my lids and expected it to stick there. I didn’t photograph the looks because I had no time that morning (although Snapchat did see my utter failure there! (my snap is muyourmind)) and it just wasn’t worth it. I returned the palette that same day and said good riddance.
I wanted to love it, I thought the colours were gorgeous and I loved how many mattes there were. But it wasn’t the promised sister to MR, and I wanted nothing to do with it. However, if you love the colours, I’d encourage you to check out JustEnufEyes’ video on duping the Subculture palette with Inglot shadows.
So the swatches are below in case you want to see them, but please keep in mind that, as always, swatches never tell the whole story. These look super pigmented, because they are, but they lack the blendability we all look for in an eyeshadow.
If you’d like to try your own luck with this palette, it can be purchased at sephora.ca for $55 CAD or on sephora.com for $42 USD.
Anastasia Beverly Hills Subculture Swatches
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Sucks about the formula. ABH messed up with this release and what’s worse is how they’ve handled the backlash. Thanks for the swatches and the link to JustEnufEyes’ video!
stashy recently posted…Taking a Break
Seeing how brands respond to backlash has been particularly horrible lately. Like don’t these people know how to address the public? Ugh.
Maggie (JustEnufEyes) did a GREAT job with her dupes. I much prefer Inglot anyway, so I’m glad she did this!
I’ve been Dying for this review from you! This is one of those situations that I think shows a youtubers true colours. I saw how much trouble you had with it on snapchat and then watched a few YouTube reviews, its totally obvious that the palette was crap but some youtubers were making excuses left and right for Anastasia? I actually unsubscribed from 1 or 2 because if they are not going to be totally honest in their reviews then buh bye!
💙
I wasn’t going to say much about it because everyone else had already said it, but when I was putting up my swatch post I was like ughhhh because the swatches actually make this palette look really, really good. So I figured I had to say something because otherwise it just looked really misleading. And of course… once I got started typing I couldn’t stop.
Like you, I was grossed out by the excuses that some YouTubers were making for this palette. My feed had been full of negative reviews, so I looked up a few additional reviews from people I had long stopped subscribing too just because I wanted to see more balanced feedback/see what others were saying. Almost everyone I had dropped from my sub list loved the palette. And I was like… okay yeah, I knew there was a reason I unsubbed from you guys – because you’ll make any excuse for a brand and I don’t trust your opinion any longer. (Was kind of a reaffirmation that I had made the right choice to unsub to them!) Good on you for unsubbing from content you can’t trust. It’s disappointing, but hey… if you can’t trust who you watch, then what’s the point?
Axis looks like such an amazing colour, but I have seen this colour (and some of the others) just turn into a hot mess on the lid. Such a pity about this palette. I think it’s definitely false marketing to compare it to (and not just that… call it a SISTER palette) when it performs so differently! Anyway, glad you were able to return it.
Ugh tell me about it. I’ve got an Axis dupe in an Inglot shade so I’m suuuuper happy about that!
I wonder how the Prism palette will be. I’m definitely not picking that one up until I see an ingredient list!
I’m sorry to hear you had a bad experience with this palette, I heard it was getting a lot of negative feedback for fallout and stuff. I remember I was debating to get their MR palette, but when I saw the tester of it in Sephora, it looked so messy and dusty and I felt discouraged. Apparently there has been a fair amount of fallout with ABH palettes. It’s like they’re so used to sticking to brow products that they still are getting the hang of making everything else as a makeup line. With that being said, I have no interest in this palette, but mainly because the colours in it don’t speak to me: I have to picture them on my eyes, and if I can’t, then I don’t buy it. And now I have another reason to not spend my money on it. I’ll just stick to my Too Faced and Sugarpill palette (Sugarpill palettes are the best since you can make them!)
The MR palette is definitely fall out city. But the colours are so rich and they actually adhere to the lid that I have no issues with it. Subculture was just such a different story. It was like two separate brands had made the palettes!
Has Sugarpill released any new shades recently? I need to go take a look…