Flashback Beauty Friday 19: Clarins Nature City Eyeshadow

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Hope you're all well this week. I'd like to say it feels more like Spring, it looks like it some days (beautiful blue skies and sunshine), but it's been absolutely freezing. We even had a few blink and you'll miss them snow flurries this week, it's crazy! Anyway, if you're new, welcome, Flashback Beauty Friday is a fun look back at discontinued or limited edition beauty products, mainly to ogle their beautiful or strange packaging. Obviously these products are no longer available to buy, so I'm not trying to sell you anything here, I'm just sharing my extensive makeup collection that I've built up over the past few decades (yes, I'm that old). I'm a hoarder and a collector, so I struggle to throw anything away and so many of these items evoke precious memories for me and I just want to share that because maybe you too have stories attached to some of these and if not, can just enjoy looking at these beautiful things. Last week, it was the stunning (and giant!) Lancôme Bamboo Bronzer, that I've never wanted to use, another thing I have difficulty with! This week I have a cute eyeshadow palette and a gripe about packaging.

So, this is the Clarins Nature City Palette For Eyes in 02 Tulip. I remember a mint variation and have a vague recollection of a face compact; a striped powder/bronzer type thing with embossed petals on it as well. I can't quite remember when it launched (maybe early 2000's) and for once I don't really have any nostalgia surrounding this.

The compact isn't any bigger than a normal single eyeshadow compact, but there's 4g of product in there. There's 3 main colours in the textured floral pattern; a plum, cornflower blue and neutral peach, with a small pale lemon in the centre. There's no overspray, the shadows look quite matte. I think I'd have the hardest time disrupting the blue and easiest swatching the plum tulip, as there's very little detail there. I haven't used it, I've always intended to if I'm honest, I'm not that precious about keeping it pristine.  I think it would be something I'd use with other palettes though, I couldn't imagine using all these colours together to create one look.  

The compact it comes in has a clear lid with the Clarins branding, but the base is a red rubberised material. You know that kind of suede feeling Nars style finish? At the time, Clarins used this on quite a lot of their makeup items. However, let me tell you, it doesn't age well and that's before we get into how finger-printy it is (not ideal for items where you're likely to have messy makeup fingers). I was going through my lipstick drawers and found several Clarins in this red packaging and some limited edition MAC items that have the same feel. It turns sticky over time. See how the base looks a bit shiny in some places? It's like the softer rubber scrapes off (without you doing anything to it) and leaves shinier bits, but overall just feels sticky. I stupidly photographed a MAC lipgloss with this lid on a glitter background (in my defence, not realising at this point it was super sticky) and now I can't get the glitter pieces off. We've tried washing it, baby wipes, sticky tape, rubbing it up and off the lid, but we just can't rid it of it's stickiness and glitter. It's hopeless.

I've been getting quite into Nars recently, but thankfully limited edition pieces that came in shiny compacts, but was sad to see (or feel), the lunar new year collection from MAC this year had the rubbery finish. I'll keep them in their boxes, but it still doesn't prevent them from turning sticky, as I've already found. I can only imagine how icky these would get throwing them into a bag or makeup bag, they'll pick up everything, ewww.  So my plea to brands would be to stop using this material.