Product Review: L'Oreal High Intensity Pigment Concentrated Shadow Duos

As a woman of color I usually can't wear eye shadows from drug stores because they are too light and wind up looking chalky against my golden skin. Or the color usually isn't saturated enough to show up vibrantly on my skin, so trying those products are usually just a waste of time and money for me.
After seeing the L'Oreal campaigns for their H.I.P. or High Intensity Pigments line I was glad that an inexpensive, yet major cosmetics company that finally decided to include women of color within their market. Yet I was less than enthused to try the products because of the tacky ads which feature Beyoncé and Scarlett Johansson with three or four shadows, in colors that don't go well together, packed onto their eyelids all at once, and with equally bold lip colors. Instead of looking sexy or appealing the models in the ads look clownish and scared me from trying the product.

I was given a compact of duos in Spirited which features a faded denim color and a darker midnight blue. I thought it was a really great product. The color is saturated but when it's first applied it isn't as dark or intimidating as it looks in the package.

For instance, after applying the first coat of the faded denim color, I was left with a gun metal gray color, that was soft and pretty and appropriate for day. But after applying a couple of more coats the blue became apparent. When I wanted the achieve exactly the same shade of blue as the one in the package, all I had to do was wet my eye shadow brush slightly and apply more of the color. I was surprised to see the same faded denim color show up on my brown eyelids, even more vibrant and intense than it looked in its container. It also stayed put for eight hours, when other eye shadows usually fade away in half the time.