One of the items I was most excited to try from QUO‘s Holiday 2017 range (you can see a ton from that launch in this video where I do a PR haul) was the Illuminating Palette!
With three highlighters, a blush and two bronzers, this seemed like such a great deal for $22 CAD! The pans are huge, so there’s more than enough space to get your face brushes in there. The only thing that kind of threw me off was that this is said to be an illuminating palette, so I actually thought these were all highlighters till I flipped it over and read the instructions that indicated there was a blush, bronzer, etc.
Swatched out, I’d actually go ahead and say that aside from the coral-pink blush shade, the rest of the colours really are highlighters. The deeper shades – the bronzers – are fundamentally too shimmery and a touch too orange to be used as a bronzer.
Face Swatches
I’ve swatched these on my face in the order in which they appear in the palette – left to right, top row then bottom row. All swatches are on my cheek/cheekbone and done extremely heavily – about five layers for the highlighters and bronzers. The blush was done lightly.
More of a pearlescent-white sheen, Highlighter #1 was the most reflective in direct lighting.
Highlighter #2 leans more pink, but loses a lot of of sheen on the face.
The Blush is GORGEOUS! Super stunning colour with excellent payoff and easy to blend.
Highlighter #3 is a beige-cream highlighter that provide a faint hint of sheen.
Bronzer #1 delivers a muted orange-gold sheen.
Bronzer #2 is a touch deeper than Bronzer #1, but the colour tone is roughly the same.
Final Thoughts
Sadly, the QUO Illuminating Palette isn’t for me (or for very many others, I imagine). I found the powders just didn’t give me what I was looking for in a highlighter (not enough sheen) or bronzer (*definitely* not the right tone). The only shade I truly loved was the blush, but that’s not enough of a reason for me to want to buy this palette. The highlighters provide a very soft subtle sheen, but I found it was often gone by the end of the day. The “bronzers” are not bronzers – they’re basically warm-toned semi-shimmery highlighters. On me, the colouring of them wasn’t great, and they definitely would not work on deeper skintones as a bronzer – maybe as a highlighter?
Hard pass on this one I’m afraid. Womp womp.
The QUO Illuminating Palette can be found at Shoppers Drug Mart for $22 CAD.
The product featured in this post was sent to me for consideration.