Chantecaille Glacier Eye Shade Trio Spring 2015

Welcome to beauty world where spring happens before Christmas! I think everyone knows that we’re eating Christmas cake and mince pies in summer at the Christmas in July events, but all the seasons are muddled up, not just Christmas. This is to allow for magazines with long lead times to get products photographed for their pages – some magazines will be well into completing their spring issues already.

Chantecaille have taken on something rather adventurous here – remembering that these highly embellished palettes always give a percentage to charity – the issue of global warming. And if you never thought you’d see that in picture form on your make-up, look again. At £62 per palette, the 5% that goes to the National Resources Defense Council quickly adds up to something meaningful.

You have to remember what I have here is a sample so the pans are not sitting quite as straight as they should in the final version, but each colour depicts an iceberg and the iceberg is a frosted complimentary colour to the base shade. The Chantecaille Glacier Eye Shade Trio Spring 2015 is something of a triumph of neutrals – so far away from the slew of nudes we’ve seen lately. It’s full of nuance.

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From top to bottom in the above picture is: Polar Light, a silky matte taupe, Iceberg, a golden, pearl shot creamy-white and finally Arctic Dusk, a greyed-down lilac shade. The shimmer disappears after first use so you are left with one solid colour.

I know that there are many Chantecaille palette collectors around and the Chantecaille Glacier Eye Shade Trio Spring 2015 is just the latest version of creative and conscientous thinking from the brand. Chantecaille throws up all kind of surprises – for example, in the Iceberg shade (although I don’t know why it’s not in the other colours) is brown seaweed extract to help the skin on the eyelid maintain firmness and elasticity – if it’s at a meaningful quantity, and you have this on your lids all day, then it’s an absolute bonus.

This brand doesn’t shy away from thorny global issues – they were the first brand to put shark fins as decoration on one of their palettes – it’s easy to love the turtles and the elephants – sharks, maybe not so much, but they’re a threatened species. I see these palettes as sophisticated awareness raising – there’s going to be a little snapshot of why we need to look after our planet in every single store that has a Chantecaille counter from February onwards. Whether you buy one or not, you will pause for thought.