When Anastasia Beverly Hills drops a new Glow Kit, I stop, drop and order it. I have fallen in love more times than I can count with these Glow Kits, so I always want to ensure I’m getting my hands on the latest one!

ABH‘s most recent Glow Kit release is titled Dream, and it was developed with deeper skin tones in mind. Over the last few years there’s been a few mentions that highlighting powders tend to have too much white pigment in them which ends up looking quite ashy on darker skintones. The intent with this palette was to remove any of the white pigments used to create these highlighter with the expectation that it would end up looking better on deeper skin tones (however, it was also pointed out that these shades would also work on fair tones).

But sadly, I had a lot of problems with this palette. Starting off with the price point – they jacked the price up $5 CAD, which is not in line with any of their other highlighting palettes, including other six-pan iterations they’ve released.

However, my biggest complaint is that while the shade selection appears to be diverse, in practice, it really isn’t. Once buffed into the skin, each shade takes on a different hue of pink. Some shades have a stronger pink cast than the other, but fundamentally EACH shade has a pink reflection to it which makes having six shades utterly pointless.

Anastasia Beverly Hills Dream Glow Kit Face Swatches

Wish is probably the least pink out of all of them. It’s described as a “pearl base with violet sparkles”. Yes to pearl, but the violet is actually pink.

Unicorn is labelled as a “lavender and pink sparkle cluster”, but it’s really just a solid pink.

Magic is described as having an “icy base with a kaleidoscope cluster of red, gold, pink and blue sparkles”. Icy base? Sure. Kaleidoscope cluster with all of those colours? Oh hell no. This basically a patina shade with pink reflect. And although it doesn’t look super pink in the shot above, I promise you that in person the only colour I saw on my cheeks was a pink reflect with silver sparkle.

Ethereal is described as a “cool-toned lavender duo chrome with blue reflective sparkle”. Nope – it’s pink.

Oh man, I had hope for you Sunshine. Labelled a lavender gold shift, there was promise… right? Nope. It’s a pale gold with a super strong pink reflect.

And lastly, the shade I was the most excited about – Regal, a “golden pink base with a light kaleidoscope cluster of pink, gold, and blue sparkles”. Nope – it’s like a paled out peachy-pink. Definitely no kaleidoscope here.

What in the HELL happened with this palette? Maybe it’s truly not meant for me and it works on far deeper skin tones? I just don’t get it – the strongest colour that is present in all of this is a solid PINK.  I first noticed it when I was swatching it on my arm and I was a little taken aback since the pans certainly don’t LOOK predominantly pink at first glance.

I started to wonder if it was just me, but I went and checked out the reviews on Sephora and so many people are pointing out just how pink this palette is. And it’s irritating when the pans themselves are so deceiving – the swatches will let you think that this palette has a lot of variety to offer, but as soon as I buffed each shade into my face, all I ended up seeing was varying shades of pink. It was so weird!

The powders are also big on glitter, which is not necessarily a problem for me, but when you add in the fact that all six shades reflect pink AND glitter, it makes you wonder why they even bothered to put six shades in here. This could’ve easily been released as a split pan compact and you would’ve obtained the exact same amount of variety.

Application is also chunkier and harder than previous ABH palettes. I found I had to load up my brush and go in a few times in order to get the product to appear on my cheeks. Which is very strange, because if you stick your finger in the product it feel very soft to the touch. Impressively, the glitter DID stay put on my cheeks – it wasn’t falling out all over the place after I’d placed it on my face.

Final Thoughts

I wanted to love this, but I just don’t need that much freaking pink in my life. Six shades with varying levels of pink is just completely redundant to me. ESPECIALLY when they don’t even look pink in the pan to begin with.

This launch was a huge let down for me because I *adore* my Glow Kits – I have quite a few of them because they’re just so good. But this one isn’t versatile like the others are, and for me it’s a pass. If you freaking LOVE pink though? Get this – it’s all you’ll ever need!

The Anastasia Beverly Hills Glow Kit in Dream can be purchased at sephora.ca for $59 CAD and on sephora.com for $45 USD.

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