Morphe 35D palette breakdown review |Smugnificent

Morphe brushes is one of the most talked about makeup companies on the internet nowadays which is a fact attributed by many to the company's great PR policies and her strong relations with many known blogging and YouTube personas. Besides all this discussion the company has a lot of supporters who find their products to have a good quality for a great price, so I think it really worths to check if there are real reasons behind all this hype. I have already tried and reviewed (and here in Greek) for you some of their eyeshadows which I got as singles and they were a selection of shades from the Jaclyn Hill favourites palette and I found their quality very decent for the price. 

But even I first tried those shadows I had always in the back of my mind a doubt about how these stand alone eyeshadows, single-handedly selected by Jaclyn compare with the non named ones contained in the large 35 palettes. I admit that since I started getting into makeup I never felt attracted to these large multicoloured palettes everyone had and I have never owned something similar. But  a couple of these Morphe 35 palettes look quite attractive and have nice colour combinations so I decided to get the 35D (35 color dark smoky palette) and put it to the test.

The packaging of these palettes is not really special or high quality; black plastic, not really sturdy but also not bulky, no mirror, just the Morphe brushes logo on the lid and a small 35D sticker on the back. When opening the palette you see 5 rows of 7 eyeshadows each, not named or numbered so I numbered them in order to make swatching easier. All sides included are dark (don't wait to find a stand alone palette here with its medium crease and light highlight shades) and there is a great range from dark taupes, golds and browns to jewel-toned greens, purples and blues.

I am swatching every row one by one so you can see how each shade performs individually and I have marked my favourite shades with a red star.

As you can see from the swatches, there are many rich and very pigmented shades but there are also some quite patchy which do perform quite poorly. 

I am quite pleased overall with the three first rows but on the contrary I am not so impressed from the shades included in the last two. 

Most of these ones perform mediocrely and my main problem is that many look quite similar to each others and not distinctive enough. I found the matte shades to perform poorer and this is actually in sync with my first impression on the individual shadows I had tried earlier. This is a characteristic of many companies and it is not surprising but in total the shimmery and satin shadows are much more pigmented and impressive.

Another important thing is of course the ingredient list of these eyeshadows. Talc, mica, mineral oil and Kaolin are on the top of this list and they are followed by different parabens. This is for sure not the ideal ingredients you search in high quality products but they are not uncommon in lower budget choices. Keep in mind that most of the times there are things you might need to "sacrifice" to achieve a low price and as a consumer you have to do a proper research and set priorities.

So what do I think about this palette? I think most shadows performed at least averagely and I really liked (a lot) 15 out of 35. I got my palette from Cosmetics Obsession where it retails for 28 CHF (23 USD on the Morphe site). For this price and a quantity of 1.6gr per shadow, these shadows costed me 0.8 CHF per piece which is quite amazing I should say. Is this the best eyeshadow palette out there? For sure no. But it is a good deal and I still think of getting the 35O and 35T ones I am eyeing since some time. And I recently got my hands on one of these 12 pieces Morphe palettes, so I can't wait to see how those ones compare! Would you like to see a review of that one too?