MAC Taste Temptation Eye Shadow Quad Swatches, Review & EOTD

To end up the year, MAC has released a smallish, cool-toned collection called Taste Temptation.  Though I’m neutral and can wear both warm and cool tones, I don’t generally gravitate towards cool colors… especially on my lips.  Even so, the shades of this collection, with their tones of purples, were really calling to me in a big way.

For this first post I’ll be featuring the core product of the collection, the Taste Temptation Eyeshadow Quad.

What the MAC website has to say about the Taste Temptation Eye Shadow x4:

An Eye Shadow Quad in dramatic shades that intensify eyes with a smoky gaze. The highly pigmented powder formula applies evenly, blends and builds beautifully.

5.6 g / 0.19 US oz

The Taste Temptation Eye Shadow Quad has four shades – Look at the Eyes, Stay Sultry, Naval and Carbon.

Look at the Eyes (light violet, frost) is the nicest shade of the four in terms of pigment, but even for a frost it didn’t light my fire.  It took more layering than I wanted to do to make the inner corners of the eyes pop, though it was perfect for blending out above the crease.

Stay Sultry (deep navy, satin) looks purple to me.  Right?  Maybe it was navy but the slight reddened shimmer gave us a purple.  The formula was dry, but was decent to apply with a firm shadow brush.

Naval (navy blue, veluxe) we’ve seen several times before and it seems to be popular.  This was a bit more dry than Stay Sultry.

Carbon (intense black, matte) is a permanent shade.  It’s likely you have it.  As far as mattes go there are smoother and more pigmented black ones out there, but people seem to like to use this for a liner.

It doesn’t swatch well, but when packed on the eye with a firm brush (MAC 239) it wears nicely.  However, under normal circumstances, I probably wouldn’t use all four of these shades together.  I think if for some reason you don’t already own Carbon (which would be a miracle unless you’re new or just really hate it) or other mattes of similar shades it’s nice to own, but you can find a matte palette with smoother shadows for less.

Actually, this would be a great quad if you like to use shadows as liners.  Though this is meant to be a sultry quad, an all over wash of Look at the Eyes with one of the other three shades as a liner would be stunning.

For this EOTD I started off with a thin layer of UDPP.  I put Look at the Eyes at the inner corner of the eye and Stay Sultry all over the lid.  Naval is in the crease and Carbon in the outer V to deepen it (though you really can’t tell lol).  I also used Look at the Eyes to blend out the crease.  The top liner is NARS Koala Eyeliner Stylo and I have Make Up For Ever 11L Purple on the bottom.  The mascara is MAC Plushlash.

For more information on this collection, please see the Official Press Release.

The MAC Taste Temptation Eye Shadow x4 retails for $40.00 and is available for a limited time at your local MAC counter (try Nordstrom) or store, as well as online at maccosmetics.com.

/ Filled Under: Blushing Noir, Review, swatches