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L’Oreal Feria’s New Midnight Collection M32 Violet Soft Black – Review

ByCordelia

This past Saturday I purchased a permanent dye from L’Oreal Feria’s new midnight collection, M32, Violet soft black. This color is states it is a black with warm violet tones. Since I’ve been feelin’ very Faye Valentine about my hair, this sounded like the perfect permanent option to use to achieve that look, since I’ve been tired of dealing with semi-permanent dyes.


The Website Claims:
With Feria, what you see is the shimmer. Multi-faceted shimmering color with 3x highlights delivers intensified, brilliant results. Inspired by cutting-edge fashion, Feria’s prismatic color spectrum is custom-blended by L’Oreal master colorist. Pure Shimmer. Silky Conditioning. Midnight Star is a warmer shade that adds violet tones.

Ingredients:
Aqua/water, trideceth-2 carboxamide mea, propylene glycol, hexylene glycol, peg-2 oleamine, polyglyceryl-4 oleyl ether, oleyl alcohol, alcohol denat., ammonium hydroxide, polyglyceryl-2 oleyl ether, oleic acid, sodium diethylaminopropyl cocoaspartamide, pentasodium pentetate, ammonium acetate, parfum/fragrance, 2-methyl-5-hydroxytoluene, p-phenylenediamine, sodium metabisulfite, p-aminophenol, erythorbic acid, resorcinol, phenyl methyl pyrazolone, p-methylaminophenol sulfate, 6-hydroxyindole, alpha-isomethyl ionone, eugenol, linalool, citronellol. color optimizing creme: aqua/water, hydrogen peroxide, cetearyl alcohol, trideceth-2 carboxamide mea, ceteareth-30, glycerin, pentasodium pentetate, sodium stannate, tetrasodium pyrophosphate. care supreme conditioner: aqua/water, cetearyl alcohol, glycerin, behentrimonium chloride, candelilla cera/candelilla wax, amodimethicone, cetyl esters, isopropyl alcohol, parfum/fragrance, methylparaben, trideceth-12, hexyl cinnamal, linalool, benzyl alcohol, chlorhexidine dihydrochloride, cetrimonium chloride, butylphenyl methylpropional, limonene, amyl cinnamal, ppg-5-ceteth-20, geraniol, benzyl benzoate, oleth-10, citronellol, disodium cocoamphodipropionate, alphaisomethyl ionone, lecithin, cnnamal alcohol, phosphoric acid, tocopherol, ethylhexyl salicylate, phenoxyethanol, methyl-2-octynoate, ethylparaben

Price:
$9.95 from most places. I purchased it from Ulta.

Does it live up to its claims?
Oh Feria, Feria. Again you lure me in with your siren song of promises of multi-dimensional color, only to let me down. Let me count your faults. To begin, the color you delivered is not warm violet. The color is a very dark burgundy red shade. While pretty, it’s not the color I was looking for. Second, despite the fact that I mixed the color very thoroughly, there are a few places where I have red patches, rather than evenly distributed highlights, which is odd. Third, the box claims that this product provides silky conditioning, but my hair felt a little rough afterwards. However, it was nothing that Tigi’s Dumb Blonde couldn’t fix. The only claim that this product did live up to is that it does have gorgeous shimmer and shine.

Would I purchase again?
Probably not. If I wanted to go black with deep burgundy highlights, I would purchase this again. However, since I want to have black hair with dark purple highlights, this is not the hair dye for me. It’s too bad I have a second box of it sitting around because I bought a back up. This dye is great in concept, but a very poor implementation. The color results really need some work.

Product purchased by me. All opinions are my own.

Cordelia Frost is the creative force behind Phyrra, a treasure trove for cruelty-free indie and goth makeup enthusiasts. She's the author of the game-changing 'Hooded Eyes Makeup Manual' a must-read for hooded eyes makeup.

Cordelia's world is a kaleidoscope of alternative beauty, gothic fashion, and life-enhancing tips, making every visit to Phyrra a journey into a more colorful and inspired self.

31 Comments

  1. I am mortified! I have been looking for very dark violet tones for a
    long time but most look more of a red violet and are far too light for
    my naturally very dark brown hair. This colour claimed to be BLACK with a
    violet hue which perfectly fit the description of what I wanted. I have
    been dying my hair soft natural black for years and with my naturally
    dark colour and time, the difference between my roots and the length is
    very minimal. I dyed my hair with this colour today and am supposed to
    be going out tonight… My lengths appear unchanged from the almost
    black they were which is ok because I want black…. but my roots which
    were a very dark brown have been LIGHTENED to a deep red tone!!!!! I
    wanted DARKER! and now I have red hair that turns black about 3 inches
    past the scalp!

    I have put a different even lighter violet tone
    onto multi- coloured hair with multiple levels of roots from previous
    dye jobs before and it had come out darker than this and perfectly
    even… This is a disaster. I did not expect this and now I am going to
    look like a clown for this important night.

    1. If you read my review, you’ll see that I was extremely disappointed in how this dye turned out on my hair. I will not repurchase it. I also had weird red sections, despite mixing the dye thoroughly.

  2. I too am very disappointed with the results of this dye. I did mine last night and now I have purpleish roots with only a shade darker length. total disaster. I however dont have the funds to go to a stylist to fix it. Im going back to black. Maybe if I had bleached first then dyed the results wouldve been more true to the box but.. too late now. the wedding is on saturday.

  3. I’ve been dyeing my hair various shades of dark purple/blue black and black for years and every time I use Feria it fades horribly and unevenly, often to a brownish colour which I cannot stand. I am glad that you reviewed this as I had my eye on it and I think I’ll skip it now.

  4. My sister in law (she owns a salon) cringes every time I dye my hair at home with “box” color (but it’s ok if I buy all the stuff from a beauty supply store), and about bites my head off when Feria lures me in again and again. She always tells me that if I’m going to insist on using a box dye to use anything BUT Feria!

    I’m sorry to hear that the color was so off! =/

    1. This is why 99% of the time I go to Sally’s or use semi-permanent stuff, because most of the box stuff is such a fail whale.

      I’ve had the worst luck with Feria of all box brands, so I agree with her!

  5. i used feria once to dye my hair blue black, it looked nice for a little while. though it’s supposed to be permanent, it washed out or faded maybe within a month or two. Idk WTF happened but the black turned into some poopy strange brown color that i hated. it was really ugly brown. i vowed never to be lured in by their promises again. i’ve used so many different kinds of black permanent dye from all different brands, and have NEVER had that happen. damn beyonce making Feria look all good. so u might want to watch out for that Phyrra, idk if it will happen to you, but it happened to me.

    1. Thanks for the heads up! I’ve actually had a lot of blacks wash out. I’ve already got a plan to do a purple rinse in my hair 🙂

  6. I currently have my hair dyed that same shade. I was also hoping for a nice violet and ended up with red instead. I’m okay with that as it’s actually the color I expected the red black in the midnight collection to be (that turned out to be a dark auburn that was nowhere near black). I’m still looking for a black shade that I like, going to try the rest of the midnight collection to see if I find one since I’ve found Feria to be less damaging to my hair than other permanent dyes, got another 3 weeks or so before I need to dye again so I’ll see how that turns out.

    1. It’s so weird the way permanents turn out sometimes. That’s why I often prefer sticking to semi-permanents.

  7. My biggest beef with Feria is how quickly their red shades fade out. So don’t worry, this one won’t last long.

    I did love their color “Starry Night”, though. It was the prettiest blue-black in all the land.

    Until I discovered Schwarzkopf, that is. It’s good to be a professional, even though I don’t do hair anymore! XD

      1. Schwarzkopf is a professional brand of hair dye that you have to have a beautician’s license to buy.

        I use a violet based permanent black by Wella Color Charm. However, it does not have purple highlights. The violet is there only sufficiently to cancel the red that naturally comes out in people’s hair when they dye. This way you get a true black. Not bluish, not brownish.

  10. I’m sorry it ended up more burgundy than dark purple. It does look very good, regardless, but I still understand the disappointment when something doesn’t live up to its claim (or packaging swatch).

    (ALSO: Loved the Faye Valentine reference.)

  11. I, too, am sick of dealing with semi-perm dyes and the purple stains in the bathtub, towels, my pillow case, and skin in the mornings after my head has pressed against my arm or something. I “re-purpled” a month ago and despite vigorous shampooing (lathering up twice, something I don’t normally do – and also lathering up the length) it’s still just leaking everywhere. Ugh.

    Can’t bring myself to use a permanent dye, though. My hair is too long and in too good of shape to fuck up with that stuff. Shorties can get away with it since they can trim away or grow out the damage quickly. It takes too long to grow out bum-length hair. :p

    I know it’s not the color you were going for, but it looks really pretty! Even with the patches of lighter red colors. Will you post the eye look from these photos? I wanna know what that shadow(s) is! 🙂

  12. Alas, that was the problem with their Blackened Ruby color too. It looked fine the first few days, then it faded to this weird auburn color.

    The best purple black I’ve ever found is Garnier’s, but it’s not available in the ‘States. I had a Canadian friend buy me three boxes at a time and send them to me.

  13. This dye turned my brown-black hair a surprisingly bright red, I thought it was a fluke but did not dare try again. The color on the box is the color I really want my hair to be… still searching for a way to make it work.

    1. You can do it with semi permanent color. I used punky black with a purple shade and got it a few months ago. I was just looking for a permanent option

  14. That’s such a shame that it didn’t come out the color you wanted it! I have been using the Power Reds R68 Ruby Rush for the past 3ish years and it always looks amazing! However, I do know when I first started using it I went from a medium blonde to this color red and it was almost a bright raspberry color. I loved it, but it took a few months to achieve a toned down red.

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