Yves Saint Laurent 4-Colour Harmony for Eyes #5 Tawny Review and Swatches

Yves Saint Laurent 4-Colour Harmony for Eyes #5 Tawny (Price: $52)Yves Saint Laurent 4-Colour Harmony for Eyes #5 TawnyYSL is possibly one of the dearest brands I have purchased till date. When I bought this one, I was actually looking at the color and marvelling at the very clever combination of gold, brown, plum and blue, and well, probably my mind was not too much on anything else but getting my hands on this beauty. So the purchase went through, and I was considerably poorer for the next few days. However, that did not stop me from buying, did it?Yves Saint Laurent 4-Colour Harmony for Eyes TawnyThere are six different combinations that I could choose from, and I chose Tawny because I felt that my skin tone would suit this the most. Also, I was looking for a quad that I could easily apply when I was going out, and which would go with most of the things I wore. This quad seemed to suit my purpose, and generally, I have noted that gold-toned things seem to be the easiest to work on my skin tone, so I chose this one in the end.

Packaging – Packaging is simple. A gold square YSL package, prone to getting dirty with fingerprint smudges when manhandled (guilty as charged!),and looks quite similar to the YSL blush package, encasing four very workable colors. There is one dominant shade, two semi-dominant shades, and one tiny shade in the package. I think the fourth shade is like a bit of an afterthought … put there to sharply contrast with the rest of it, an unpredictable element, which can be worked with occasionally. I have to say, I like that.

Shades – colors are as follows. The dominant shade is a lovely dark gold with subtle shimmers, bordering on a satiny honey shade, which goes gorgeously on my skin. I have used this color as a highlighter, all over my eyes, as a highlighter for my cheekbones, and also on the corner of my eyes, and it works every time to really bring in a bronzed out, very exotic finish to my face. Although I am no expert in eye makeup, I do believe the base color is something I can use every day. In fact, I have used it as an allover color for my eyes with formal wear, and then added a bit of brown and black to it after a long day to really make it scream “party time”. With eye primer, this stays on my lids for about 8 hours easily, and 6 without. It is easy to work with, fantastic as a base for other colors, and although has a bit of fallout, an excellent color to blend with.

The second and third colors of this palette are a plum-brown with shimmers and biscuit brown with shimmers in it. These two colors work excellently all over the eye lid, or on the crease of my eyes, and complement the base color excellently. They are really good to blend in, and yes, although has a bit of fallout, that’s pretty much kept to a minimum and can be worked with and has excellent pigmentation (as you can see from the swatches, which were one swipe of the brush on my arm).Yves Saint Laurent 4-Colour Harmony for Eyes #5 Tawny swatchesHowever, the one color that puzzles me is the matte electric blue shade in the corner. It has virtually no pigmentation, and I had to really RUB before any of it came up on the applicator. I was very surprised by that, and I think this shade is supposed to be a color meant for the crease or corner of the eye, or should be used wet, on the lower lash line, to bring out the tawny colors properly. Experimentally, I wet the applicator, and squealed with joy when I saw my formula working. The tiny sponge applicator this comes with has one wide tip and one thin one, which makes it easy for me to work with it.

What I liked

  1. Great packaging (sucker for YSL)
  2. Lovely colors
  3. Heavily pigmented
  4. Blends easily
  5. Stays for 6-8 hours on my oily eye lids

Improvements

  1. The blue color has very little pigmentation
  2. Availability
  3. Expensive

Overall Thoughts

I am quite happy with the quad and would recommend it virtually everyone who has a yellow-tinged skin tone. The colors make it easy to work with and this is definitely becoming my go-to quad for virtually everywhere. I would only want the blue to be slightly more pigmented. That would make it easier for me to work with it, and personally speaking, my only reason for not giving this quad 5/5.

Ratings: 4/5

Written by Poorna Banerjee

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