The imagery for the NARS Sarah Moon Holiday Collection made me gasp. It was ethereal, beautiful,  futuristic and yet sensual and commanding all at once. It’s been quite a while since a makeup collection has grabbed my interest so intensely and I felt I just had to know more.

I’ll link you to the Wikipedia article, but, in short, Sarah Moon (born Marielle Warin) was a French model turned photographer throughout the 1970s. In 1985 she decided to focus on gallery and film work. This NARS holiday collection was created in collaboration with Sarah and the packaging focuses on inspired imagery from the movie Metropolis (1927) and the idea of transparency. This article from Independent explains a lot more about the collaboration and I encourage you to read it if you have the time/interest. It’s rare for me to look deeper into a collection, but there was something about THIS ONE that made me do so. Perhaps you’ll feel the same.

But anyway, let’s get into the makeup!

The Get Real Lip & Eye Set is jaw-droppingly gorgeous. The whole set comes packaged in a heavy-duty acrylic box with frosted imaging on the top lid. The lid lifts off to reveal a set that contains two mini Audacious Lipsticks and a full size Audacious Mascara. The products lift out of their separate plastic packaging and the whole box can be recycled as a beautiful keepsake box for you vanity.

The products in the Get Real Lip & Eye Set are healthy size products too – the NARS mascara is full size and the mini lipsticks are larger than any deluxe size sample I’ve ever seen in my life.

The NARS Audacious Mascara has 200 (!!) molded bristles and lengthening hooks. It’s a plastic bristle brush and it’s on the large side of things for a mascara wand. The bristles and hooks are also far larger than your average size brush, which means they’re also spaced out a lot more.

I was neither in love, nor hating on this mascara. It thickened my lashes more than it lengthened them and I found it could clump a little bit (not a bad thing for a volumizing mascara). I personally prefer a bit more of a taper to the ends of my lashes, but, as we’re all aware at this point, everyone has far different views on mascara so it’s really, REALLY hard to review one for someone else. This was neither a wet nor dry formula – it was kind of in between. (Please note, in all following face shots, I have falsies on.) I noticed a slight bit of flaking, but nothing like I’ve experienced in some other mascaras, and it really only happened after the six hour mark.

Also included in the Get Real Lip & Eye Set,  are two Audacious Lipsticks. And these lipsticks take a back seat to no one! I fell in love with them during the Fall 2016 launch, and these shades are just as impressive as those. My swatch shot shows basically no difference between the two shades, but the face shots definitely tell another story.

NARS Leslie was a slightly thicker and creamier formula for the Audacious line. I found I got a lot of pigment deposit, so I would suggest applying this lightly so that you just don’t end up overapplying. This colour shows up very terracotta with a hint of berry on me.

Despite my swatches, Bette comes out very dark in tone and completely dissimilar to Leslie. This was a thinner formula than Leslie and had a tendency to fade right on the center of my lips. I love the colour so much, that I’d just encourage you to wear a lip liner underneath.

There are a few other sets in the collection (which I don’t have), as well as a slew of individual products. Most of the products, of course, focus on tones of red which is entirely appropriate for a holiday collection.

I’m done saying I’m not a nail polish person, and NARS‘ Never Tamed nail polish may be the shade that pushed me over the edge. Having never owned a true red nail polish, this shade has had me staring at my fingernails in awe. It’s almost a week later since I took these pictures and am now writing this post, and I’m still looking at my fingernails and sighing in happiness. This shade is everyyyything to me right now. The formula was very easy to apply, although I did find the brush was identical in width to my pinky finger (never done a nailpolish application in one swipe before!). For full transparency: Because I always apply a glossy taco on top of my nails now (quick drying top coats are something I should’ve gotten into sooner), please be aware I’m also wearing Seche Vive on top. I’m also wearing two coats of Never Tamed.

New to me is the Matte Lipstick formula – I have the shade Fearless Red, and I think this is my also first ever NARS blush: Impudique. (“Impudique” is French for “immodest”.)

I’ve been wearing Impudique blush in all of the face shots in this post, but I’m also pairing it with Fearless Red matte lipstick in this shot. Impudique blush is beautiful – it is everything I want in a red-toned blush, and more. It’s super pigmented (so go lightly with your brush) and adds an unbelievable colour to my cheeks. It also has a sheen built into the product that I was not expecting – the first time I applied it I was so confused – although I had not, I looked like I had applied highlighter on top! (I’m not wearing highlighter in any of the face shots in this face.) This is also the perfect shade to make it look like you just came in from the cold winter air.

I have mixed feelings about the Fearless Red lipstick. The colour is fantastic, there’s no doubt about that, and  I really like how I look wearing this shade (you can see me wearing it in my Drugstore Favourites video). It also feels “comfortably” dry. That being said, I also had varying results: with no primer applied, this lipstick wore well through a lot of talking (my video), but, I wore it the next day to work and coupled it with H&M’s lip primer, it did not do so well. My suggestion would be to wear it without lip primer, even if you feel you usually need one.

So there are the pieces from the NARS Sarah Moon Holiday collection that I’ve been playing around with! My recommendations are towards that stunning nail polish, the Impudique blush (*swoon*) and anything involving the Audacious lipsticks (there’s even a set with eight of the lipsticks!). Let me know if you were intrigued by this collection and whether or not you plan to pick anything up.

Several sites have sold out of various items from the collection, but you can take a gander at them on sephora.com, nordstrom.com and narscosmetics.com.

The products featured in this post were sent to me for consideration.