INGLOT, Where Have You Been All My Makeup Obsessed Life?

Confession: I was an INGLOT snubber. *hangs head in shame* For years I have walked by their Montreal flagship store downtown with my cosmetic snob nose high in the air ever since someone (erroneously!) told me that they were a MAC copycat. Wrong, so very very wrong! INGLOT doesn't need to resort to copycatting (?) because they are innovative, high quality, affordable, and unique. After seeing INGLOT featured by two of my favourite beauty bloggers, Lollipop26 and The Gloss Goss, I decided to check my preconceived notions at the glass door and discover INGLOT for myself.

First of all, their colour range is massive (over 200 shadows) and showcased cleverly against sleek and minimalistic decor. The glass walls, black displays, and white floor allow the kaleidoscope of eye shadows, nail polishes, and lipsticks to be the centre of attention, and rightfully so. There are wide open spaces so that customers can circulate and play at their leisure without feeling crowded or fighting for access to a certain product. Everything is laid out in a welcoming "come swatch me" manner.-a beauty lovers paradise.

The INGLOT "Freedom System" is very liberating (way to point out the obvious Lydia). Customers can choose the shape (square, circle, or rectangle) of their shadows and the size of their palettes (5 or 10 slots). How it works is that you are ushered to a long, overwhelming display of sparkly goodness, given a magnetic tray and told that you can design your palette with whatever colours you wish. The shadows (there are two of each colour-one square and one circle) are magnetized so they stick to your tray as you choose and eliminate colours for the next 30 minutes (at least that is how long it took me to decide). Once you have decided, the makeup artist assembles your palette for you and shows you how to open the magnetize top (apparently some people need that explained to them. Don't quite understand how "push and slide off" requires a tutorial). The palettes are stackable and the magnets in the covers will hold them all together for easy storage and they are incredibly durable =optimal for travelling.

The makeup artist that assisted me was very honest and informed me that the palette refills are all $10.00 even thought the squares have double the amount of product than the circles; so even though you are paying $65.00 for a palette of 5 rectangles instead of $55.00 for a palette of 5 circles, you end up saving money in the long run because you have double the amount of product AND refills are the same price. Does that make sense or are there a distracting amount of numbers??

On to the best part-what I purchased! I was tempted to fall back into my neutral shade comfort zone but I am happy that I resisted and opted for more smokey tones (with one exception. You know what they say about teaching an old dog new tricks).

INGLOT shadows have bumped MAC off the pedestal of shadow supremacy in my mind. They are so soft they almost feel like cream and nearly obnoxiously pigmented. They require the slightest tap in the pan with your brush to pick up enough product to do both eyes and still have some left over. The texture and pigmentation remind me of the shadows I reviewed from Stars Makeup Haven (review here), except without the fall-out. The swatches below show one light swipe in the product.

The shimmer is so refined that you do not feel any of the grains when you are blending or lose the impact of the iridescence.

Now that I have outlined the numerous pros of INGLOT, here are the cons.

1) For such an innovative company, their names of products are completely unimaginative and, thus, not memorable. The shadows are named numerically (ex 176, 201..)

2) Once your palette is assembled, you can not see the number of your shadow so you had better write it down beforehand. You can not simply pop the colour out-you have to go into the store and have them do it for you.

3) They are addictive. I want to own them all. My bank account is bracing for impact into a red zone (not really, afterall I do possess some self-restraint.....)

In Canada, INGLOT is currently available solely in Quebec. Visit http://www.inglotcanada.com/ for a full listing of stores. For my American neighbours, INGLOT has a store in New York near Times Square. I am unsure of other locations so a Google search is in order.