My 1st ever post about Dior, a brand which comes out with the best fragrances, in my opinion. I was a big fan of Dior perfumes for years and have run the gamut of their fragrances ranging from the very famous like J’adore, Dior Addict, Dior Addict 2, Dolce Vita to the less well known and discontinued Chris 1947, Forever and Ever and I Love Dior. I have always purchased these fragrances abroad or in duty free, never had any inclination to purchase locally for certain reasons, such inclination being strengthened by my most recent visit to one of their counters.

While they do come up with some interesting designs for their palettes from time to time, the eye shadow shades have never captured my attention for longer than a few seconds. This is a brand which should appeal to someone my age yet why do I always find their make-up collections rather yawn-worthy?

Most of the times when I have swatched the eye shadows, the colours have been predictable and boring. Sometimes the colours are so bland that I wonder why such a prestige brand can’t do better. Actually, that was good for me since I could pass them by without regretting that I hadn’t got anything. I have never even purchased any of their eye shadow palettes from previous years’ warehouse sales. However, all that was about to change when I had a look at their most recent collection. Garden Party Spring 2012 Collection.

There were 2 palettes in particular, Garden Pastels and Garden Roses. Okay, Garden Roses was easy to pass on by as they are just ordinary colours to me, pink, silver. violet. Garden Pastels on the other hand looked really promising as they are bright and beautiful. If they managed to stop me in my tracks, they definitely had me at hello.

Garden Pastels has yellow-green, mint-green, white and pink. I guess a lot of people will be raving and admiring the raised rose motif on the shadows but if the colours weren’t a little more outstanding than the typical Dior colours, I couldn’t care two hoots what the design is. The quality of the shadows matter much more than any design. In this regard, Garden Pastels is a winner in terms of pigmentation, colour pay-off and general tones. The fact that the rose design was somewhat gorgeous was an added bonus.

Swatches from Garden Roses (top) and Garden Pastels (bottom):-

So there I was on the verge of succumbing to temptation yesterday at a place of availability which shall remain unnamed. Let’s just say Ms. Frosty’s attitude helped kill the lemming instantly. So although I was 99.9% about to leave the place of availability with Garden Pastels, I saved my money thanks to Ms. Frosty. I won’t go into the details here but suffice to say I am not too disappointed about it. Perhaps I am not destined to purchase anything from this brand locally at retail.