Cargo Let's Meet in Paris Palette

I'm a fan of neutral palettes. They're easy, no fuss, and usually a good value for the daily use you can get out of them.

And then sometimes a palette just grabs you by the throat and says "BUY ME. I'M HIGH MAINTENANCE AND YOU WILL LOVE EVERY FREAKING MINUTE."

The Cargo Cosmetics Let's Meet in Paris is such a palette.

The lush but still relatively classy exterior brocade of the packaging implies that this will be a nice palette for a night out, but in a somewhat traditional kind of way. Dinner and a movie, though probably the midnight showing.

Oh no. This is a palette that will take you to an underground speakeasy at 1am, discuss Rimbaud and then dance on tables for good measure.

This palette is intense, kind of crazy, a little hard to deal with but fascinating and layered and awesome all the same.

You have to know that this is not a stand-alone palette. There is not a matte among the shades here - even the ones that look matte-ish are actually loaded with micro glitter. If you want the safety net of transition colours and a cream highlighter, you will need to look elsewhere. Here it's all bling, all the time. You get deep frosts, and glitter-loaded mettalics and those afore-mentioned deceptively sparkly mattes.

Texturely, it varies quite a bit. Straight on shimmers and frosts like Baguette, Macaron, Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Croissant and Creme Brûlée are the epitome of the (much) over-used "buttery", "creamy", "dense" and "pigmented". They make Urban Decay eyeshadows look like they're trying too hard.

The other half of the palette...well, you need a firm hand, a good primer and a mixing medium to really appreciate how awesome it. Versailles, Bonjour, Café, Madame, Bastille and Beret are all just as pigmented as the previous shades, but they have textures that vary from a bit powdery to downright crumbly. They swatch well, but when applied to the eyes they really need to be pressed on over a sticky base, and you are still likely to get a fair bit of glitter fall-out.

However, applied wet or mixed in a medium, they are STUNNING. Metallic, sparkly and hyper intense, they make for a killer jewel-toned smoky eye, the kind that only gets better as the night goes on and it starts getting less glitz and more rock.

Left to right: Macaron, Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Baguette, Croissant. Versailles

Macaron is a champagne metallic, very dense and pigmented. Eiffel Tower is an old gold metallic, also very smooth and deep. Louvre is a pale steel metallic frost, intensely pigmented and creamy. Baguette is an ultra-smooth pale peach-beige shimmer. Croissant is a maroon-teal duo-chrome shimmer with fantastic pigmentation. Versailles is a deep green with a smoky undertone, loads of silver-aqua glitter and a very crumbly texture.

Left to right: Creme Brûlée, Bonjour, Café, Madame, Bastille, Beret

Beret is a rosy gold metallic, very intense in pigmentation. Bonjour is a dark brown shimmer with olive bronze glitter and a crumblier texture. Cafe is a soft brown matte with gold micro-glitter and is both pigmented and powdery. Madame is a satin eggplant with silver micro-glitter, and somewhat powdery upon application. Bastille is a smoky silver metallic with teeny silver flecks, the sheerest of the lot, though still pigmented. Beret is a charcoal satin-matte with silver micro-glitter, quite powdery.

And these are examples of the more troublesome shades applied wet: Beret and Versailles, and then Bonjour and Madame.

Essentially, the left side of the palette is near-to-perfect. Amazing payoff, superb texture, great blend-ability and very good wear. The right side is finicky, problematic and gorgeous on a whole other  level when applied wet.

It's up to you whether you want to deal with the bad to get the awesome,.

The palette itself doesn't seem to be available on the Kohl's, Macy's or Ulta websites in the US, or on the Murale site in Canada...but it might still be in stores. It was 39$ US, and possibly around 42-45$ CAD. If anything, it might pop up on Hautelook as some Cargo items did recently.

(I purchased this item. This post is not sponsored or compensated, all opinions are my own.)