em Michelle Phan Shade Play Montego Bay Teals Palette Review

Recently I had the opportunity to try out the new em Michelle Phan Shade Play Montego Bay Teals palette. This was my first introduction to the Michelle Pham cosmetics line. I know many of you have expressed curiosity over Michelle Phan’s line, so I’m glad to be able to show it to you. Let’s take a look!

Pr sample.

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Top left is the pale beige highlighter. Top right is the dark grey liner.
Middle left is the nice peach nude, which is a good contour shade. Middle is the nice teal lid shade.
Bottom left is the light blue turquoise with poor color payoff. Bottom right is the dirty grey teal liner with poor color payoff.

The Website Says
inspired by the girl who loves to decorate her eyes with color and shimmer. create the perfect look with creamy, high pigment colors that blend like a dream. each shadow palette contains liners (top right, bottom right), all over (middle), high lighters (top left and/or bottom left) and crease (middle left and/or bottom left). refer to the video tutorial for shade descriptions.

• special shade combinations in each palette allow you to wear all together or alone—matte, metallic and shimmer textures provide easy blending and mixing
•  high pigment, high perle levels for rich color quality
• creamy texture for smooth blending
• em tip: your eyes are the windows to your soul… enjoy decorating!

Price
$38 for 5.1 g/0.180 oz at emcosmetics.com

Shades Available
Montego Bay Teals
Seoul Sweets
Bali Bronzes
London Greys
Paris Pinks
Casablanca Neutrals
Shanghai Lavenders
Sahara Nudes
Madagascar Taupes
Amalfi Coast Aquas
Melbourne Blues
Dublin Khakis
Tokyo Plums
New York City Smokeys
Los Angeles Purples

Ingredients
TALCTRIISOSTEARINHYDROGENATED POLYDECENEMAGNESIUM STEARATESYNTHETIC WAXCALCIUM SODIUM BOROSILICATECALCIUM ALUMINUM BOROSILICATESILICAHDI/TRIMETHYLOL HEXYLLACTONE CROSSPOLYMERCAPRYLYL GLYCOLPOLYETHYLENE TEREPHTHALATEALUMINAACRYLATES COPOLYMERPTFETIN OXIDEOCTYLDODECYL STEAROYL STEARATEBORON NITRIDETRIOCTYLDODECYL CITRATETRIDECYL NEOPENTANOATEDICAPRYLYL MALEATETOCOPHERYL ACETATELAUROYL LYSINEPOLYURETHANE-11DIMETHICONE [+/- MAY CONTAIN / PEUT CONTENIRMICACI 77891 / TITANIUM DIOXIDECI 77491, CI 77492, CI 77499 / IRON OXIDESCI 77007 / ULTRAMARINESCI 77742 / MANGANESE VIOLETCI 77000 / ALUMINUM POWDERCI 77400 / BRONZE POWDERCI 77400 / COPPER POWDERCI 75470 / CARMINECI 77510 / FERRIC FERROCYANIDECI 42090 / BLUE 1 LAKECI 16035 / RED 40 LAKECI 77289 / CHROMIUM HYDROXIDE GREENCI 19140 / YELLOW 5 LAKE]

Packaging
The plastic packaging is white and sleek, but heavier than it looks. The logo is .em michelle phan. There’s a mirror on the inside, which probably adds to the heft of the palette. I really like that it has the words ’emerge, emotion, embrace, empower, embody, esteem, embellish, embark’ on the front. It’s white script on the white acrylic. I really like this because I feel like the words are encouragement for positive self esteem. While the heavy white packaging isn’t my preference, I can see how it would hold appeal for others. I will say that the palette is sturdy enough that it can stand up without falling over.

The palette comes with 2 brushes, one of which is dual headed. The brush quality is meh. I really think it would have been better to omit the brushes and include another eyeshadow or bump up the size of the smaller eyeshadows. I personally will never use these brushes because they’re so tiny and I have better quality brushes.

The bottom half of the swatches are on primer. The top half is on bare skin. You can really see how the lid shade teal is vibrant, as is the deep grey liner. The nude peach makes for a soft contour shade that works on my skintone. The creamy beige highlighter is very pretty. The light turquoise blue almost has a glowy quality to it. The dirty grey has light turquoise shimmer in it, which would be nice if the color showed up better.

I think these 3 are very nice.

To me, the eyeshadows do not live up to their claim of high pigment. The shadows do have a creamy texture that makes it easy to blend, so I give them high marks for that. 4 of the 6 shadows had pretty good pigmentation, while 2 were weak. The dirty grey teal shade had poor pigmentation as did the light turquoise blue shade. I do really like that the shades are coordinated and work well together. It makes it easy to blend the middle lid shade teal into the dirty grey teal liner shade. or the light turquoise blue shade.

With the light blue shade, I could see using it as a pop of color at the tear duct, which might make its pigmentation workable. The dirty grey teal doesn’t have enough pigmentation to be a liner to me. It might work as an inner lid shade.

For the look I did, I applied the bright teal to the center of my lid. I used the dirty grey teal at the outer corner of the lid and the light turquoise blue at the inner corner of the lid. I contoured the eye with the nude peach and highlighted under the brows with the light creamy beige. For the lower lash line I used the light turquoise blue at the inner, the dirty grey teal at the middle and the dark grey at the outer lower lash line. The colors blend together seamlessly and easily. I got about 6 hours of wear on TFSI before I started to see any wear. There was no creasing, but minor fading.

From my understanding em Michelle Phan products are targeted towards teens to people in their 20s. With that target demographic, I feel like the palette is overpriced, especially in terms of the shadow quality and the amount of product you’re getting. However, the packaging does say ‘luxury’ on the back, so maybe that’s why there’s a hefty price tag. The em palette states that it contains .18 oz of eyeshadow, which isn’t a lot of product for the price. By comparison, a typical Sugarpill quad palette contains .48 oz of product for $4 less. At $38 it breaks down to about $6.33 per eyeshadow. I don’t think this is a particularly good value for the price because you’re  not getting a lot of product.

If it were me, I would re-work this palette by removing the brushes and adding another teal shade, maybe a more blue-based teal or a deeper teal matte. Or I would increase the shadow sizes of the shadows, still omitting the brushes.

I really feel like this palette is meant for someone who is just getting into color, because overall the colors are muted.  However there are 15 different color palettes available in the Shade Play line, so if Montego Bay Teals isn’t for you, another one might be. I like the looks of Bali Bronzes and Amalfi Coast Aquas. The line also has some products that look really interesting, like the Chiaroscuro contour and highlighter stick duo or the lipsticks.

What do you think of the em Michelle Phan Shade Play Montego Bay Teals Palette? Love it? Hate it? Let me know!