For the Summertime de Chanel collection, I skipped the Sable Beige/Rose Luminous Bronzing Powder as I felt so underwhelmed by them for a number of reasons.  Firstly, I'm not a huge fan of bronzer and with my skin type I don't really need glowy bronzer.  I was also disappointed by the same sort of stripey powder palette again.  Yes I see why they used the stripes again but it just feels a bit boring to see the same sort of thing again.  And generally I feel I have to develop a better edit of products I buy from each collection - rather than buying something because it's the star product or because it's a limited edition collectable.

Anyway now to the product I am reviewing in this post.  By skipping the Luminous Bronzing Powder,  my budget allowed me to pick up Sable-Émouvant.  My first impressions when I saw preview images was yawn - another neutral eyeshadow palette (I have nothing against neutral eyeshadows but you only really need so many of them).  But I changed my mind once I swatched it at the counter.


I don't have any other Chanel eyeshadow duos so I didn't really know how big the product was going to be.  So here's a photo of a single eyeshadow, the duo and the quad.


The first (and probably most striking) thing I noticed about this eyeshadow duo is that it is pressed.  Here in the UK, Chanel eyeshadow quads are baked and many prefer the pressed US version.  I have other Chanel eyeshadows that are pressed (the singles and I think the Topkapi quad) but I never noticed the huge difference before.  This duo applies so much more smoothly and is much more pigmented than the baked quads in similar colours.


Being pressed, this duo also doesn't have the usual messy fall out (in the palette itself) like the baked quads.  I don't toss my Chanel eyeshadow quads about but they are a mess when I open them up.


Colour-wise, this palette is also a winner.  The slightly copperish chocolate brown with the champagne shade is elegant and flattering.  At first I thought I must have something similar in the other Chanel quads I owned - I was pretty sure Éclosion's brown looked pretty much the same - but I was wrong.


For some reason the differences in colour showed up better in photos taken with my iPhone.  The browns from Prélude and Topkapi are much darker, and the brown from Éclosion is much more red.  The highlight colours from Éclosion and Prélude also don't compare to Sable-Émouvant - side by the side the quad colours now look a bit frosty and pedestrian.


I'm not a huge eyeshadow fan but I'm glad I picked up Sable-Émouvant.  I can see it being a stable and the one to "go to" if I am travelling and want to bring an eyeshadow palette which goes with everything and is compact.