Erhmahgawd, so much red! I mean…I love wearing red, but I can’t possibly be the only person out there who looked at ALL OF THE RED in Chanel’s fall Le Rouge No. 1 Collection and thought, “There’s absolutely no damned way.”
Red lips? Yeah, I’m totally downtown, Julie Brown, but red lipstick, red blush AND red eyeshadow…? Seems a little out there! At first glance at this collection, I came so close to whipping my ponytail and spinning in the other direction in my high-tops. I didn’t think there was any way this much red could be wearable.
But then I tried it on!
And had a revelation.
Red on the lids? YAAAS, QUEEN. Same goes for red on cheeks. And when you put ’em together with red lips? C’est magnifique!
My reaction to this release is a far cry from what happened a few years ago when I tried wearing red on my lids and was so traumatized by the incident that I didn’t want to do it ever again. Because man! — that sh*t was baaaaad. 🙂 I looked like a woebegon side character from a Dickens novel where it rains all the time…
Sad panda. 🙁
But the collection’s quad, Candeur Et Experience, is a totally different scene. I mean, if these shadows were food, they’d be your cheat day. I’m talkin’ indulgent. They’re incredibly easy to blend — even the red, which hella intimidated me — practically melts into the delicious chocolatey browns.
And those three brown shades? Homie, they’re majorly key, because when you get them them up in the mix, they ground that red so that it doesn’t look as stark and disjointed on the skin. I was so, so TERRIFIED to try this quad, but trust — it all works. The pieces fall into place.
I think that crazy red blush is another standout in the collection. Again, I expected it to be like boarding a train to crazy town, but using it with the lightest touch of a blush brush — like a kitten nose tap — creates a healthy flush.
Of course, the Chanel Joues Contraste blush formula is also just as smooth, easy to blend and outright impeccable as it should be with a satiny red like this one, but I expected it to just be too much red when worn with the quad.
But it wasn’t. I think they look totally right together, like that time I saw Beyonce and Idris Elba in a pic from the Met Ball.
