When news hit about YouTube beauty expert Michelle Phan teaming up with L’Oreal to launch her cosmetic line, Em Michelle Phan, we couldn’t wait to check out and see what products would be launched. The brand boast a range of products from foundations to lipsticks and concealers, including the much buzzed Life palettes. In fact, it was the latter that had us most intrigued. Needless to say, we have finally decided to pick one up. Here is our review and swatches of EM Cosmetics by Michelle Phan The Love Life Palette.

Inside The Love Life Palette

With six different Life Palettes to choose from, we opted for the ‘Love Life’ since it has a nice range of color options we could see translating from winter to summer. According to emcosmetics.com, the theme of the palette was inspired by:

michelle’s favorite things, from looks she always wears to colors she can never live without.

The palette comes with 24 eyeshadows (ranging from matte, shimmers and metallics), 4 blushes and 8 lip colors.

Price: $59

Included: a mini duo ended eyeliner brush and blending brush, and dotting-like tool

The Four Quads in One

What makes the Life Palette an interesting concept is how it’s divided into four parts, so there’s eyshadows, lip colors and a blush color we can use to create a look. The best part is that everything can be easily popped out (because of the metal pans) and transferred to a travel-size palette (free with a Life Palette purchase) with the dotting-like tool that is included.

Eyeshadow Swatches The shades for the most part have a smooth texture which we do appreciate, however the pigmentation on most of these shades are not as impressive as we’d hoped they would be. In fact, it was necessary to use a primer to really pick up the color of most of these eyeshadows. We also noticed a few of them we’re powdering when we’d dip a brush in them. To avoid major fallout underneath our eyes, we had to tap the brush into the shade, tap the excess and then pat the color on the lid. When we look at similar eyeshadows from Urban Decay or Inglot and we can’t help feel let down by the color pay off of many of these eyeshadows.  The metallics shades were the only ones that really stood out. They had a great sheen and applied nicely on the lids. If all the shades in the palette would have followed the same formula, it would have easily taken the palette to the next level.

Eye Looks

Blushes & Lip Colors We actually really like the selection of blushes in the palette. There is a soft coral pink, light baby pink, a matte mauve brown and a rose blush–ideal for any makeup look we want to do. ‘The Real Me’ (mauve brown) actually works nicely as a contour blush without looking too orange on the skin. These blushes also have decent pigmentation, and blend easily. What we like to do is use The Real Me as a contour blush and add one of the other blushes on top.

In terms of the lip colors, it was a hit and miss for us. We like the fuchsias and berries, but would have loved to see a red in the mix, especially since there’s a quite a lot of black smokey shades in the palette. Several shades in the batch were opaque, but others were very sheer, which we assume was designed to appeal to different preferences. But again, we felt there was a missed chance to really pack a punch on the lip colors especially considering other similar price range brands.

Packaging

As design enthusiasts, we know how important packaging is to showcasing and marketing a brand. EM Michelle Phan is almost there, but not quite. The crisp, sleek color scheme is very much a reflection of Michelle Phan. We even her personal touch of inscribing the inspirational words on the lid of the life palette. But where the design goes astray is the transparent acrylic lid. Some of the complaints we’ve seen over the Life Palettes is how cheap the plastic makes the product look. And we’d have to agree. When we look at the travel size compact that comes with the life palette, we actually prefer the look of this instead. If the transparent lid would be switched to a white coated background (shown on the above photo) it would makes the overall feel more sleek and minimalist. Another complain most have is the size of the life palettes, especially in terms of traveling. This actually doesn’t bother us since we can easily lift any of the shades, blushes and lip colors and transfer them to the travel compact when we need something more compact. The major con of the packaging comes with inside the palette. In theory having our lip colors, blushes and eyeshadows in one quadrant is ideal. Unfortunately, it’s not practical. The fallout of these eyeshadows especially the darker shades made it almost impossible to avoid some of the colors from getting into the lip colors. And this almost makes having the convenience of everything in one palette almost moot.

Overall

While we don’t think the Love Life palette is necessarily bad, especially if we consider the amount of product given, we just don’t feel it wows. Since EM is marketed as a mid-level to higher end cosmetic line, there’s a higher expectation for quality and overall performance we hold them to given the $59 price tag. Some of the shades were very nicely pigmented, but the rest were just flat. If we look at the quality of L’Oreal’s own color infallible eyeshadows at the drugstore, the Life Palette isn’t there quite yet.

For more info on this Life Palette, click here