NYC South Street Seaport: Review and Swatches

NYC isn't a brand commonly raved about in the beauty community. I love their Blushable Cream Sticks (which, unfortunately, I believe are discontinued), but besides those and some of their nail polishes, you don't really hear much about the brand. Sold in all drugstores and known for their New York themed line and affordable products, I decided to divulge and try something standard: an eye shadow quad.

The packaging reminds me of something the Elf Essentials line would do: plastic and flimsy, prone to breakage after a lot of usage. It's something you would expect from an affordable drugstore brand, and honestly there's nothing to particularly like or dislike, aside from the fact that the product-to-packaging ratio is terrific. Not too much excess packaging, and a tiny slot for a tiny applicator (which I have removed). Other than that, it's very standard. 

The color scheme for this palette is more on the darker browns/purples side. There's a shimmery, lilac magenta-purple, a dark, warm-toned brown, a matte white, and a medium brown/mauve color. Each color has a pyramid design in the powder, very reminiscent of the NYX powders. I like it!

While colors 1, 2, and 4 are nice, the matte white (#3) has zero pigmentation. Seriously, no color came off on my skin at all, and no color comes off on my brush either. It makes no sense, as the other colors have a richer payoff. White shadows sometimes don't swatch on your finger but have a great brightening effect (Bobbi Brown's Navajo eye shadow, for example) but this one does...well nothing. It's unusable.

Well the other colors are much more pigmented, they still aren't the best formulation I've used. I can think of a half dozen other lines I would go to before I came back to this one, but the color scheme is something I haven't really seen before. The brown, color #2, wasn't as smooth as the first and last one, and the last one isn't as smooth as the first one. The lilac-purple-pink shade is my favorite and really lovely, but as its in a quad with other colors I probably won't use, it doesn't get much use either.

Overall, this is just meh for me. I would recommend this for someone younger or just starting out in makeup, but if you're a beauty junkie with the best eye shadows in the market at your fingertips, I would skip it. These quads retail for $3-4 and are available wherever NYC products are sold.

Have you tried anything from NYC?
xoxo
Alyssa