I’m a bit late with my seasonal posting of QUO‘s fall collection, so let’s just dive right into it!
QUO does packaging extremely well. Their palettes are always compact and beautifully designed – the cases feel solid and they’ve always got enormous mirrors on the inside. The lipsticks themselves even have a bit of a new design too – these matte lipsticks actually have a snap closure at the bottom. To get at your lipstick, push the bottom of the bullet up, and the lipstick will snap back out of the packaging. I really, really like this design – I feel like it’s super secure because your lid won’t be falling off at any point if your lipstick is rattling around in your bag.
With the Fall 2018 collection, QUO has launched two new eyeshadow palettes – Lunar Rainbow (*love* that name!) and Fire Clay. For $20 CAD each, you’re getting 12 eyeshadows and a dual ended brush. I always think brushes in palettes are garbage, and I really wish brands would just stop providing them – so please QUO – stop with the brushes! As for the shadows themselves, QUO can be a bit hit or miss with their eye palettes and these two were no exception.
Visually, Fire Clay was the most appealing palette to me out of the two. This palette fits right into the warm, neutral loving era of makeup that we seem to be forever stuck in (which I’m still fully enjoying by the way!). This palette definitely focuses more on warm browns with oranges and golds. I like that they’ve provided several lighter shades as well so you’re not stuck using just one.
Fire Clay makes for a really beautiful eye look, but it’s definitely more subtle than I had expected, and sadly it’s down to the pigmentation. In a swatch, the oranges come across super strong and vibrant, but in practice I found that the shades just sort of dissolved on my eyes. I used the brightest orange shade on my lid here and it doesn’t look remotely like the swatch! Additionally, I used the darkest brown in the outer corner, and it was fine at first, but I found it faded significantly within an hour of wearing it. I don’t normally have fading issues with my eyeshadows, so when I notice it, it’s a huge warning sign for me sadly. So while the Fire Clay eye look is pretty overall, I found it to be far more subtle than what the eyeshadows lead me to believe based on the swatches.
Moving on to Lunar Rainbow. This palette really surprised me when I swatched it! QUO has a tendency to stick to flat out neutral, so I was impressed to see some vibrant teals and a golden olive shade in the mix.
And this palette definitely worked much, much better on my eyes. I loved that golden olive shade (inner third of my eye), and the darker teals were really, really pretty. I had a few blending issues around my lower lash line (which is half the shadow’s fault and half my fault for having to rush out the door to work!) but overall I was much more pleased with Lunar Rainbow in comparison to how I felt about Fire Clay. These colours are much more true to pan/swatch, and I didn’t notice any fading.
QUO Face Palettes are always excellent, and these Fall 2018 ones are no exception. There’s something about the powder quality that blends smoothly and evenly – the colours always end up being absolutely beautiful on the skin.
However, my largest complaint with their face palettes is that while they’re really good, they tend to get repetitive season over season. The “lighter” face palette (Sweet Magnolia) always has a cool-toned pink blush with a pinky-toned highlighter, and the “darker” face palette (Dragon Bite) always has a coral blush with a more golden highlighter. While both palettes work nicely on me, and I always, always love the quality, I would like to see a little bit more variety in their releases.
The bronzing shades in the Dragon Bite palette is slightly more intense than I would normally go for, so I just make sure to apply it lightly (I used the less shimmery bronzer all over my face along the perimeter, and then used the more shimmery, deeper one at the very backs of my cheekbones). As for the blush and highlighter – I mean they’re frigging stunning. I love those shades so, so much and they worked really well with the Fire Clay eyeshadow palette on my eyes.
Sweet Magnolia is one of those staple QUO palettes for me as the colouring always works on my skin tone. Despite me preferring coral blushes because I find them prettier to look at in the pan, it has to be said that pink tends to go great with every look and the highlighter matches it nicely.
To finish up the QUO Fall 2018 collection, we have the new Matte Lipsticks in three shades. I love the opening mechanism on these lipsticks (push the bottom to release the lipstick). I think they take the cake over even the magnetic closure ones for me!
Although there’s only three shades in the collection, they do a great job of providing options that suit the palettes. The pigmentation on the lipsticks is predominantly opaque – the only one that had slight translucency was Addict but that’s because it has a purple base and those shades are prone to pigmentation issues. I find that the formula glides on smoothly, but I did encounter a bit of gathering issues around the inner rim of my mouth after about an hour or so. This is easily smoothed out with your fingertip though. I would also suggest applying these with a lip brush to get a crisp line.
Seduce is a really easy colour to wear. I always forget how nice these kinds of shades look on me as I tend to go for more vibrant colours overall. I love how easily this paired with a warm eyeshadow look, but I feel like it would go equally well with a cool-toned one as well.
Date Night is *lovely*! I included it in my recent post on 5 Red(ish Lipsticks for the Colder Months because it’s a really stunning shade that suits the fall season perfectly. It’s a brick red with some burnt orange thrown into the mix.
Deep purple lipsticks have patchiness issues – we all know this, and I feel like I’ve tried out a lot of deep purples lately that continue to have really bad patchy problems on my lips. So I was really impressed when QUO‘s Addict shade went on my lips with little to no issue in comparison to the other ones I’ve tried recently. There is some translucency in certain areas, but it did apply and stay on my lips much nicer than others I’ve dabbled with in the last few months.
Final Thoughts
The QUO Face Palettes are always excellent products so I’d suggest picking one of those up if you didn’t already have one of their face palettes (due to the repeated shades). The eyeshadows palettes were a bit all over the place – for me Fire Clay is sadly a pass because the colours just didn’t come out as vibrantly as I had hoped. I love Lunar Rainbow‘s depth of tone, so I’d suggest that one over Fire Clay for sure. The Matte Lipsticks are lovely too, and I really love the shade selection they’ve put out with this launch.
QUO can be purchased in stores at Shoppers Drug Mart, or on their online retail platform too.
Products featured in this post were sent to me for consideration. Post contains affiliate links.
Oooh, I really like this collection. I wonder if it’s still around. I love the muted, yet beautiful colours. I’ve always wondered about their quality. I may have to look for these! Thanks 💗
I think so! I’ve seen it in a few SDM since I made this post! Depends entirely on location though obviously. BUT, their online shop does have the bulk of the products which is amazing!