Pictured from top to bottom; Urban Decay NAKED palette, Urban Decay NAKED2 palette, Urban Decay NAKED3 palette. 

Good Morning Class,

After spending hours awake last night with my brain tick-tick-ticking I decided what I’d like my next blog post to be about. I am a member of several makeup/girl/beauty related Facebook groups and lets just say my news feed is crammed with makeup posts each day. A common topic I’ve noticed on these pages is regarding the creme-de-la-creme of eye shadow palettes… the Urban Decay ‘NAKED’ palettes. Which one should I buy? Which is good for [insert eye colour here]? Which one has the best colours? Which is most pigmented? What if I’ve already got [insert dupe here]? Luckily for all of us (and unluckily for the boyf), I’ve taken the liberty of acquiring all three so that I can review and recommend appropriately.

The Urban Decay NAKED palettes include 12 matte and shimmer shades selected from the Urban Decay shadow collection. They are all neutral shades with each palette having its own theme of colours. These palettes are perfect for creating quick on-the-go looks because they come with so many shades and each one has a double sided brush and mirror. I use these palettes regularly to create simple looks for school and I can quickly sparkle it up with some of the gorgeous shimmery shades (which the kids LOVE). I have been told “Miss White I love your eyeshadow today!” after using one of these palettes.

Today I’m going to tell you my thoughts about each palette and I might even spill which one is my number one favourite palette from the collection (which happens to include my second favourite eye shadow of all time!).

I have to start with NAKED as it’s the first palette and I’m far too much of a perfectionist to stray from starting at the beginning – although to be completely honest this was the third palette I purchased from the range. I am unsure why I purchased the other two palettes before this one because now that I have it – I absolutely love it. I think when I actually started to have enough money to buy expensive products the second one had just been released and everyone was talking about it and then history repeated and the third one had just been released and it was so pretty that I totally forgot about the fact I wasn’t buying them anywhere near in order. Finally, I got a real job and I congratulated myself by splurging on makeup – more specifically, this palette (what else?!).

The NAKED palette is more of a warm-toned neutrals palette with some absolute stunners. It’s got a lovely mix of bronze, gold and highlight shades and the different looks you could do are endless. I do think this palette would be perfect for people with more olive skin and/or green eyes just because of those gorgeous golden colours. (Perhaps this is why it’s taken this blue-eyed girl so long to purchase it!) It comes with only two matte shades and they are both medium brown colours (one lighter shade and one dark one). Personally, the only matte shades I go for regularly are browns so that doesn’t faze me, however I can see it being a problem for some beauty buyers. Some of the stand out colours for me are; Half Baked which is an amazingly pigmented warm golden shimmer. Sidecar which is a glorious bronze shade with gold shimmer – it reminds me of the dress on a Christmas angel I once has on top of my Christmas tree – simply angelic. Sin and Virgin which are two stunning highlight shades (although Sin looks amazing on the lid as well). I wish I could rub these shades all over myself and bathe in a pool of Sin and Virgin. 

The only gripe I have with the palette is the packaging. I understand it was the first of this range to be produced, and for that, it’s slightly different to the rest. The packaging has a velvety texture which is cool and unique and all that, but boy does it get dirty! It picks up every speck of dirt and glitter and sucks it into it’s velvety goodness never to be released again so that every time you look at it you see the dirt and glitter and makeup crying for help but no matter how much you attempt to rub it away it’s stuck there. That and the fact that I don’t particularly like the feel of velvet on my hands. It’s one of those textures that gives me a bit of a shudder if I think about it too much as I’m touching it.

Overall, I bought it third for a reason. An amazing palette full of fabulous colours, but not the number one for my boring blue eyes and the packaging is ‘meh’.

NAKED2, my first Urban Decay purchase, my first high-end palette purchase, my baby. You can see it’s been well used and lovingly adored by yours truly and it’s to blame for starting my palette obsession. It’s a brilliant range of shimmer and matte cool-toned neutral shades that go perfectly with my (and your) blue eyes. The packaging is like a sturdy tin which is easy to open and close and dirt is able to be wiped off so that on the outside it always looks like perfection. I like the simplicity of the packaging and the even the colour of it tells us that it’s more of a cool-toned palette (note the cool, calm beige of the exterior).

THE stand out shade out of all of the Urban Decay palettes is nestled in the joy of the NAKED2. When I look at it I can almost hear the angels singing and a beam of light shining down from the heavens. Bootycall. BOOTYCALL. The only kind of Bootycall I want at 2 am is from the NAKED2 palette. It makes me feel like Homer Simpson does when he looks at food. It is one of THE most beautiful highlight shades on the planet. Photos will not do it justice. The only way you can understand is if you experience it for yourself. Other honorable mentions are Chopper which is almost a rose gold bronze shade and is delightful on the lid, Half Baked features is this palette again, and Verve which is a shimmery silver “Frozen/Elsa” sort of colour. This palette has three matte shades, a medium brown, a black and a yellowy-beige colour.

Overall; Super versatile, has the best brush out of the three, includes BOOTYCALL and it includes Bootycall. We will leave it there.

I feel like the NAKED3 palette is one of those things that look much more amazing than what they actually are. As soon as I saw this babe advertised I had to have it because it just looked so darn pretty! However I wasn’t disappointed, but it didn’t work for me the way I expected it would. It’s a selection of 12 shimmer and matte rose-gold toned shades. So, expect a lot of pink. Pink being my favourite colour made it impossible for me not to buy this.

The issue with this collection of shadows is a mix of pigmentation let-downs and the fact that rose-toned shadows are harder for me to pull off. I would definitely say that this palette is slightly less pigmented than the other two. The shades are not as sleek and buttery, and I think that is because they are of a more glittery texture. Don’t get me wrong – they certainly are beautiful, pigmented shadows! They’re just not quite the same quality as the other two palettes in my opinion. They’re a little more powdery and flakey.

However, the colours are simply gorgeous. Trick is a fairy-inspired bronze shimmer colour which I love, Limit is one of my favourite crease colours and reminds me of Mauve in the LORAC Pro Palette, and Blackheart is a matte black with orange shimmer throughout it.

Overall, great packaging, I found it difficult to make the colours work for me on my skin tone, pigmentation/texture is not as great as the other two palettes, but some stand out colours.

So, the question now is – which palette should you buy? To answer it, I’m going to tell you which is my favourite one of the three and why. I feel like it’s sort of obvious by now, but NAKED2 is the gem that works best with my skin tone and eye colour. It includes my favourite shade, it has three versatile matte shades, it has the best brush of the three, fantastic packaging, great pigmentation and buttery texture and it includes on of my favourite shadows from the NAKED palette too which is an added bonus. I’m not going to say go out and buy this, because it is expensive. But, if you want to splash out on one of the NAKED palettes then this is the one I would recommend.

If you have green eyes however, the NAKED palette could be better suited to you (although you could just as easily make either of the other two work for you as well), and if you LOVE pink and rose gold tones like me then I’d definitely recommend the NAKED3 palette as well.

I buy mine from http://www.beautybay.com which is an authorized seller of Urban Decay products and they cost around $67 AUD with free shipping! (Yesss! Gotta love that free shipping).

Let me know which one you love, or what shades are your favourite! If you have any other palette recommendations then please let me know too!

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