Brief Impressions – Sigma Bare, Dare, and Flare Palettes

Recently I’ve been ranting a lot about Sigma. I’m sorry if that seems obnoxious or too repetitive to some of you, but I just have some major issues with this company. But, I was interested in seeing what they would be doing with their booth at IMATS. As far as I know it’s their first time at IMATS (right??). I know it’s their first one at IMATS LA… anyone know if they’ve been at the past shows in other locations?

Anyway. The booth really wasn’t that exciting. They weren’t selling anything – just had some samples of their products out to look at, and information about their affiliate program (eyeroll). I guess Tiffany D was doing some makeovers or demos or something but I wasn’t there when she was (which is unfortunate because I think Tiffany is lovely and would have liked to meet her).

Towards the end of the show, I finally made my way over to the Sigma booth to check out the eye palettes. I swatched some of the colors, and I wanted to give you my brief impression of the palettes from playing with them at the show. I didn’t talk to anyone at the Sigma booth and frankly I felt awkward being there because the girls were all too busy taking pictures with the bronzed hunk from the South Seas Skincare booth instead of, you know, talking to me. No, seriously. I mean you’d think they’d want to talk to someone wearing a press badge? So I didn’t stay in the booth very long because I was annoyed.

I tried to be as unbiased as possible even though I don’t care for them overall as a company. I actually like some of the shades quite a bit. I was surprised to see that the majority of them have very nice pigmentation. Here are the quick swatches I was able to get:

Please note that you can click that image to make it larger. I felt like these swatches were a pretty good cross section of colors from all three of the palettes. That deep dark black is from the Bare palette. I believe it’s called Shine, and it has glitter in it. That shadow was actually really lovely with excellent pigmentation. A truly good black is often hard to come by from budget brands so I was happy about that.
The brighter colors (the lime green, the teal, and the purple under the teal) are all from the Flare palette, and I liked those, too. Their names are Oversee (teal), Define (lime) and Allure (purple). The orange (Grasp from the Dare palette) was also pretty pigmented. Some of the lighter, more matte colors can barely be seen on my hand and would need a lot more packing on to get much impact on someone of my skintone and shade, but I think it could be done. 
As you can see, some of the more matte colors don’t have quite as much impact. But matte colors are tricky and often don’t swatch well. Without playing them more like actually using them in an eye look I couldn’t say for certain if they were much good. 
Overall I’d say if you usually use drugstore shadows you probably will be happy as a clam with these. They’re on par with brands like NYX, in my opinion. For $35 you get the shadows and one double-ended brush, which is a decent deal. However if you’re used to using products from higher end makeup brands you will probably find these lacking. They take a little more finessing to get high performance out of (stickier bases, maybe even a colored base to get more impact). If you’re a pro or a product snob (hey I say that with love!) go ahead and skip these.

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