MAC's Magic Of The Night Collection is a true party collection. There is nothing here that is soft and subtle or especially day-appropriate, aside from maybe Please Me lipstick.
If you like smoky sultry colors shot through with beautiful sparkles and shimmer, high-sheen skin, or intense lip shades, this would be a good release to check out.
Must Try:
My favorites in the range are the 4 lipsticks. Really, I like all the shades. They’re all fab. Especially All Fired Up, an intense fuchsia red. It looks a little more pink/cool-toned in press visuals but the actual shade is slightly warmer/redder.
Evening Rendezvous is a daring plummy-violet, and Dark Side is just a great Fall/Winter noir lip in a creamier texture. Please Me is beautiful but a re-release (or permanent in some markets), and I do recommend the shade for girls who like softer lips.
Also Cool:
The 5 Colourdrenched Pigments are pretty interesting. I thought they would be like Luster shadows; crumbly and un-pigmented. But they’re dense, slightly creamy-feeling sparkle shadows suspended in matte bases. The only thing is you can't be color-shy. They are extremely bling.
My tip for using these is to pack on a layer with your finger for maximum intensity first, and then using a soft brush to blend out the edges. These don’t get ruined when touched with fingers, the way some of the other regular shadows do. But if you want to use a brush, use a flatter, slightly firmer brush rather than a soft fluffy one so it grabs more pigment.
All the eye looks I have here were done without any base or wetting the shadows. Night Thrill, the soft blonde gold, is slightly crumbly swatched on the hand, but packed on lightly in a small area like the inner corners, or down the center of the lids, it goes on beautifully.
I decided to do additional eye swatches because this is a pretty new formula that most people aren't familiar with, and I know some of you are afraid to buy shadows based on wrist swatches since the payoff can be different from when applied to the lid with brushes.
I would say only Ascent of Glamour (violet) came off a little softer on the lids, but that was also because I didn't spend much time building it up. And again, I think you get the best effect applying this formula with a finger first.
Optional:
There are 4 pencils with this collection. 2 Lip Pencils, and 2 Eye Pencils. I think the 2 sparkly eye pencils are beautiful. Very smooth and buttery, and the sparkle in them is gorgeous. But I find the shadows compete with them, so you might not need both, or at least you don’t need to wear them together in the same look.
