Let’s talk about summer glitter: the kind of glitter which, at sunset, looks as though it was always meant to be there. The kind of glitter which is pretty much invisible until you animate, at which point it leaps for the light.
Beauty School Dropout has a thing for glitter, it’s true, but that seems only reasonable when the glitter in question is as ethereal as Stila’s Magnificent Metals Glitter and Glow. This stuff is made up of delicate particles of beautifully pigmented sparkle dispersed in a light, and faintly cooling, gel. It is not meant to be precise – it is designed to look scattered. Bestowed. But, once applied, it doesn’t migrate like many of its cousins. It stays put. Because, as we all know, wandering glitter makes us look deranged.
Its chiefly flattering characteristic is the lack of metallic base. There is perhaps something rather hard-nosed…dated….ageing…about those tinny tones, wherever we put them on our faces. No, there is something rather magical about this stuff which comes in an entire, other-worldly galaxy of shades. BSD’s favourites are ‘Monarch’ which has a hologrammatic, did-I-dream it quality; ‘Rose Gold Retro’ which has a burnished, slightly thirties feel and ‘Kitten Karma’ because its Champagne and copper tones are pure disco, but still subtle.
Glitter & Glow is billed as a liquid eye shadow but, dotted across cheekbones or over lipstick, it delivers that Titania-esque, haughty luminescence that has the power to make us all feel like Fairy Queens. In a totally dignified way.
Stila Cosmetics, Magnificent Metals Glitter & Glow Liquid Eye Shadow, £24
