Ho Ho Ho! It’s that time of the year again when beauty brands go crazy with their holiday releases and make us go bankrupt by releasing shiny, glittering makeup with the “limited edition” tag. I live in Australia and here we get all the holiday releases starting from late October all through December so that we get enough time to get gifts for our loved ones. Though we get most of the international makeup brands here, the holiday releases and the special editions are limited and less when compared to the US. So in this post, I just want to give a rundown of the important holiday releases and also show you guys a glimpse of my haul (most of them will be lip products as I am a lipstick junkie). Let’s sort this out one brand at a time, so are you ready guys?!
- NARS: Nars is my favourite brand and also let me start with the most glittery one. Nars came out with a new collection called as the “Studio 54” range with a set of their lip crayons, power matte liquid lipsticks and Audacious lipsticks in a shiny packaging. There were also some face palettes, and mini blushes with lip balms. I liked the whole collection but I got the powermatte lip set (All Access Power Matte Lip Pigment set) which consists of their three full-sized liquid lipsticks with two new shade. They have killed it with the packaging of this set – the lipsticks comes in a shiny red sequin duochrome bag with a beautiful golden NARS keychain. This bag is everything guys and I am still drooling over this beauty!
- Stila: Stila has very few holiday releases this year and most of them are boring. They have a mini liquid lipstick set with boring n*de shades. They also have a mascara set, an eyeshadow palette and their famous liquid eyeshadow trio set. Firstly, I was not really interested in their launch, but when I swatched their liquid eyeshadow trio (The Highest Realm Glitter and Glow Liquid Eyeshadow Set), I fell in love and grabbed it.
- Bareminerals: Bare Minerals came up with quite a few mini sets this year. Though they may not be sparkly and shiny, they were neat and clean and are at a much more reasonable price. They have an eyeshadow palette, brush set, mini liquid lipstick and lip gloss set, face palette, liquid eyeshadow trio, mascara and blush set. I got two products from their collection – a set of their two full-sized Barepro Matte lipstick set(Lip Service Set). This set is a steal because you get two full-sized lipsticks for the price ($23) which is lesser than the price of a single lipstick ($34) – the formula on this lipstick is bomb. The second product that I picked up is a face palette (Glow on the Go Palette) which is a trio of blush, bronzer and highlight. I love this palette its very versatile and suits my tan skin tone well.
- Smashbox: Smashbox came up with a new “Cosmic Celebration” collection for the holidays. They had a lip gloss set, a brush set, trio of eyeshadow palettes, a primer set and a liquid lipstick set. I liked only the liquid lipstick set (Cosmic Celebration Always On Lunar Liquid Lip Set) which contains five mini liquid lipstick set, there was three matte shades and two metallic shade in this set. This set was pretty reasonably priced as well we get five mini liquid lipstick for $38, when a single liquid lipstick is priced at $37 and also the mini lips are not tiny and have a decent size.
- Laura Mercier: Laura Mercier came up with quite a few holiday sets this year, there was a set of their famous caviar eye sticks, a set of their mini velour matte lipsticks and they also came up with a palette of their highlighters. Most of their sets were pretty pricey, but I found their velour matte mini lip set pretty reasonable. So, I got the mini lip set( Velour Extreme Lip Duo) – it has two of their best-selling shades of their mini velour lip crayons. I loved the selection of colors in their lip sets as most of the time in lip sets brands add their dud colors amidst their best selling shades to make a bargain but that was not the case with this brand.
- Drunk Elephant: Drunk Elephant is a pricey skincare brand with rave reviews, and I had wanted to try this brand for so long but the price of the products kept me from buying them. So when they came up with sets of their mini size products I was determined that I was gonna get at least one of them. They came up with three big sets (Shelf Control Night Set, Shelf Respect Night Set, the Midi Committee Set). The sets are pricey but at least we get to try couple of their products at a time instead of shelling all the money on one product. I got the “Midi committee” set which comprises of mini size of the La La Retro Whipped Cream, Retinol Cream, B Hydra Hydration serum, Slaai Cleanser and the Bamboo Booster Exfoliant. I am pretty happy with this set and excited to try these products.
- Briogeo: Briogeo is a coveted haircare brand, known for their sulphate free gentle haircare products. They came up with some haircare sets like Dry Hair Duo set, Ultimate Hait Repair Vault, Be gentle kits, Healthy Hair Game set. I got the “Be Gentle, Be Kind SuperFoods Hair Bar Hair Set”, which contained full size Matcha + Apple Superfood Shampoo and Kale + Apple Superfood conditioner. This set also comes with the mini size of Banana coconut shampoo and conditioner.
- MAC: MAC came up with a “Starring You” holiday collection and honestly I didn’t see anything interesting in this collection. They came up with a set of their mini lipsticks of their famous shades in a bling bag ( Lucky Stars Lipstick set) but it was way too pricey three mini lipsticks for 59$. They also had new embossed glittery lipsticks (Kiss Of Stars), and new highlighters (Opalascent powders) and single eyeshadows(Spellbinder shadows). There was also a lip vault with mini lipsticks, eyeshadow palettes, liquid lipstick set, highlighter palettes, lip glass set, brush set and also a huge advent calendar with sample products for a whooping $360 bucks.
- Too Faced: Too Faced is the king of holiday themed collections, they have cute packaged, holiday themed and scented beauty picks each year. But I don’t why this year I was impressed with their collections, they just modified their last year collections and came up with new huge palettes. They launched a Gingerbread Extra spicy eyeshadow palette, a gloss set, Christmas Star Face and eye palette (a huge star shaped palette with eye and face products). There was mini better than mascara Christmas ornaments, gingerbread man and gingerbread girl liquid lipsticks which was released last year. They also came up with a palette in the shape of a snowman( Let It Snow, girl Set), and also a palette called as the “cookie House Party set”, which is face and eye palette in the shape of a house. They had lot of things but I feel nothing was innovative and it was very bulky who would want huge palettes in their vanity. So overall “Too faced” didn’t wow me this year.
- Fenty Beauty: Fenty Beauty just came up with few releases this year, one of their famous releases is the Glossy Possy mini gloss bomb set. They also came with a new dark burgundy shade in the “Stunna” lip paint collection. They also had a new kilowatt highlighter in a dark pink shade, apart from this they pretty much came up with mini set of their existing products.
- Fresh: Fresh came up with a wide variety of skincare sets in various price ranges. They had mask sets, cleanser sets, lip balm sets which are great options for gifting. I got a lip balm mini set from them.
- Hourglass: Hourglass came up with a Ambient Edit Ghost palette this holiday season, along Ambient lighting Blush ghost quad palette. I love their Ambient Edit palettes but this year, the packaging sucked their usual metal palette was replaced by cheap looking Applastic packaging which was not well received in the beauty world. They also came up with a boujee brush set, glitter eyeshadow set and a confession lipstick duo.
Other brands like Clinique, Bobbibrown, Estee Lauder etc just came up with sets of existing products, there was nothing interesting unique in their collection. There are hundreds of brands in the market and I have covered some of the most famous one’s, hope you guys enjoyed my roundup.
