Ranking my Anastasia Beverly Hills Palettes
There is a fun video subject going around the YouTube makeup community, that I believe was started by Kelsee Brianna Jai. She began it by ranking all of her Pat McGrath eyeshadow palettes. Now…I am not quite the level of baller as Kelsee is. I don’t own all of Pat’s eyeshadows. I own 2 of her full sized palettes, all of her minis - with the exception of the newest one - and one of her quads. So…not bad but still not baller status. So I decided to do this with Anastasia Beverly Hills palettes. Now, I don’t own all of the ABH palettes. But I own most of them. So this will still be a fairly comprehensive ranking. PS - the photo below is in order of release - not my ranking! Let’s get to it!
From left to right: Anastasia Beverly Hills Modern Renaissance, Subculture, Prism, Soft Glam, Sultry, Riviera, ABH x Jackie Aina, Norvina Pro Palette Vol. 1 and Vol. 3
It’s ironic that the first ABH palette I ever purchased is my least favorite. There is nothing wrong with this palette. The formula is great. I think I was just overall underwhelmed by it after watching it be hyped for so long. I purchased it as a birthday present to myself well after the hype had died down. And I remember thinking, “This is what everyone is raving about?” For me it just isn’t a palette that I reach for. I don’t find it all that inspiring tbh. There are lovely colors in this palette - Love Letter is probably my favorite. But if I wasn’t a bit of an ABH collector I probably would have decluttered it.
8. Prism
The individual shades in this palette are lovely. But as a color story, it’s a head scratcher. I find myself reaching for this for individual shades to pair with other palettes rather than using it as a standalone palette. The formula is great - consistent ABH formula which is one of my favorite eyeshadow formulas. The shades that I reach for the most in this palette are Throne, Lure, Lucid and Sphere.
7. Riviera
Riviera is another one I tend to use for individual shades rather than for an entire look. I don’t find the color story puzzling but when I look at it I immediately think of other shadows I want to pair shades with. But -this palette has one of my all time favorite gold shadows in it - Yacht. This shade is like molten gold. It’s so buttery and metallic that I can use it on it’s on as a kind of easy cut-crease. And the white shade, Sails is one of the best white shadows I’ve ever tried as well. So yes individually each shade is quite lovely - but I just don’t use this palette for complete looks.
6. *Norvina Pro Palette Volume 1
I bought this palette on a whim and I regretted it at the time. I’ve now come to use it a few times and I quite like it but I am ranking it pretty square in the middle for a few reasons: 1. The shades are repetitive - specifically the purples. Which yes, have varying tones, but there are still too many IMO. And 2. I HATED the way this collection was released. Mainly because if ABH had released all three palettes in this collection I would have just gotten Volume 3.
5. *Norvina Pro Palette Volume 3
I actually haven’t used this palette yet, but I am ranking it higher because the color story is far more accessible than Volume 1 or 2 (see a pic of Volume 2 here) . It has a nice selection of neutrals along with the greens and oranges and other pops of color. I feel like you could feasibly do an array of looks from natural to bold and colorful with just this palette without having to reach for another palette. Which I can’t say the same for with Vol. 1.
4. *Subculture
So many people struggled with this palette when it first launched and I feel it was either you loved or hated the formula. There was never any argument about how fantastic the color story is. It’s one of my favorite color stories and it’s quite inspiring when you look at it. I didn’t buy this palette until a good year and a half after the controversy around it died down. ABH had also reformulated the shadows and I believe I got one of the newer palettes. The main issue with this palette is that you have to know color theory to use it. If you mix certain shades together they will turn muddy (which is what a lot of people complained about). That has nothing to do with the formula and everything to do with color selection. Individually the shades perform well. But this is not a palette with which you can use to just quickly slap together an eye look. The shades take time to blend because they are highly pigmented (they are essentially pressed pigments which because of the high pigment factor can be harder to blend). But I still rank this palette high because I applaud ABH for doing something different and they essentially launched a trend with this palette that has been replicated and imitated a hundred times over.
I almost added this palette to my best of 2019 post but decided not to because I hadn’t used it as much as the other palettes on this list. I am ranking it high on the list for a few reasons: 1. The formula is amazing. Jackie Aina worked with ABH to tweak their formula and it shows. ABH has always had a great formula but it has been turned up to ten with this palette. The purple in this palette is the best purple I have ever used. I literally gasped the first time I applied it. Purples are notoriously hard to formulate and can be dry and patchy and hard to blend. Not this one. My favorite shade in the palette is Wiggaleese. A gorgeous metallic red. It’s STUHH-NING. I sometime just reach for that shade. This entire palette is beautiful. All of the shades are fantastic and you can do a variety of looks with it. It didn’t make my best of list but it still ranks as one of my favorite palette releases of 2019.
2. *Soft Glam
I had a really hard time choosing between the last two palettes. I love them both so much. And the irony of that is that these are the two palettes that I talked the most shit about when they were released and said I wasn’t going to buy them. LOL. Insert foot in mouth. This palette was my go-to palette in 2018 after Melt Gemini. The summer of 2018 I basically switched between those two palettes. Soft Glam is the palette you reach for when you want maximum impact with minimal effort. I can do an eye look in five minutes with this palette and it looks amazing. It also ignited my love of all matte looks. The metallics in this palette are nice, but aren’t my absolute faves. My favorite look with this palette is a 90’s-vibe, grungy all matte eye. I use Burnt Orange, Sienna, Rustic and Mulberry. And it’s beautiful every single time I do it. I need to branch out more with this palette and try more looks but whenever I use it I just go back to those shades because I love the look so much.
Oh, Sultry. I resisted this palette for as long as I could. I thought it was derivative of other ABH palettes - mainly Soft Glam. Until I saw it and swatched it in person. I was with a friend who was swatching shades from it and so I decided to swatch the metallics on her hand. OMG they were like BUTTAH. But still I resisted. She bought it. I did not. Until exactly two months later when it went on sale (the irony of that is that it was on sale when she bought it and I could have gotten it months earlier for the same price, but I digress) and I grudgingly ordered it since I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Warm neutrals have dominated the makeup industry for years now and it’s only in the last year and a half that cool tones are finally being given their due. The reason why I decided to rank Sultry over Soft Glam is for that reason. As much as I love Soft Glam I am more attracted and excited by the cool tones of Sultry. My favorite shades are Twig, Slate and Cyborg…which is the most amazing silver metallic shadow I have ever encountered. And I don’t like silver shadow! But I love this one and I always find a way to work it into a look when I use this palette. All of the metallics in this palette are amazing. I have always been more of a fan of ABH’s mattes. Their metallics have never been my favorite. But it seems like they tweaked something with this palette and that has continued in the releases that have come after (Riviera and Jackie Aina being two examples of this). I mean… Ember, Teak and Steampunk are amazeballs. But Cyborg is still my fave. My only issue with this palette is that random coral shade, Bloom. It honestly has no place in this palette and I feel like ABH threw it in there so they wouldn’t get called out for releasing another neutral palette so soon after Soft Glam. I have never used it and when I think of trying to incorporate it in any look I do with Sultry it makes zero sense. I wish they had simply swapped it out for something else. Maybe a deeper charcoal gray or slate blue.
Do yo own any Anastasia Beverly Hills palettes? What is your fave?
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