NARS Limited Edition Night Series Eyeshadow Palette for Fall 2011

Along with the four Night polishes, NARS released a limited edition Night Series eyeshadow palette. I have very mixed feelings about NARS shadow, especially the Night Series shades. On one hand, I know that I dislike the formula and I'll never use them because of it, but on the other hand, the Night shadows always look SO COOL in the pan that I can never convince myself that I don't want them. Same thing happened last time they did a Night Series palette; bought it and now I never use it but it sure is pretty to look at. Anyway, here's this years Night Series Palette.


It comes in the familiar rubberized NARS compact, this time with a very sexy looking black-on-black design instead of the usual white print.


The shades are listed on the back. Enlarge the image if you'd like to view the back label in detail. Note that it does not include an ingredient list. The ingredients are listed on the box.



Lots of different angles and types of lighting to show the sparkle in the shades. Very hard to capture tiny sparkles in black shadow, but I think they showed up fairly well in a few of these pictures. The shades are: Night Star, Night Clubbing, Night Poter, Night Rider, Night Flight and Night Breed.


With flash, without flash. Tried to get the little colorful sparkle pearls to show up, you may need to enlarge these to see them. Swatched very heavily over Urban Decay Primer Potion. Left to right: Night Star, Night Clubbing, Night Porter, Night Rider, Night Flight, Night Breed.


NIGHT STAR is a pale, yellow-toned beige shade with subtle white-silver microglitter.
NIGHT CLUBBING is matte black with iridescent gold and green microglitter.
NIGHT PORTER is black with emerald green shimmer.
NIGHT RIDER is light mauve-purple with chunky silver flakes.
NIGHT FLIGHT is matte black with shiny cobalt blue microglitter.
NIGHT BREED is matte black with chunky silver glitter flakes.

I already knew exactly how these would wear before I bought them, but I still ended up getting them anyway. The Night shadows... They look so cool but they're just not good. There, I said it. They're just not. I've never been able to get any use out of them and I've bought and returned Night series shadows more times than I care to remember.

The main problem is that the glitter never shows up. It all falls out of the shadow when you try to apply it, and forget about blending. You can pat it on over a sticky base to get some to show up, but it's just such a pain. They work decently when used wet as eyeliner, but still not much colored shimmer shows up.

They have massive fallout combined with a chalky texture which doesn't help, either. These new ones seem to have a stickier texture than the ones I've used before, so they've improved a little in that respect, but still... They're a pain to use. They just look like plain black shadow unless you keep re-applying the color after you blend.

In my experience, Night Rider is the worst of the bunch. It just applies as weird giant flakes that don't stick to the eye. I'm really puzzled by this one. It's slightly different from the other Night Rider I own as well- the glitter is larger and the base color shows up less. I don't really see the point of this one.

Night Porter is the best. It's still chalky and hard and loses most of its shimmer when blended, but it does actually show up as a green-tinted black on the eye whereas the others just look plain black.

Night Star is okay but all the glitter falls out onto your face instead of staying on the lid.

I've never been able to get these shadows to work for me and I know I really shouldn't have ordered them... But they're just SO DAMN PRETTY! In the pan, at least. Really, they look amazing- all that sparkly multicolor microglitter set against a sooty black base. Absolutely gorgeous. That's what sucks me into buying these over and over.

So... that's my experience with the Night Series palette. As always, your mileage may vary. I haven't had any luck using them, but maybe there's someone out there who loves them.

Both the NARS site and Nordstrom have this; $55.