Fresh off the heels of the holidays, Violet Voss has released their latest palette, Hashtag.
And I won't be buying.
I feel like I maybe should put a disclaimer right at the top that things might get a little petty in this post (#Hashtag).
When I first saw this palette, I was immediately intrigued by the vibrant color scheme and thought it would fit in nicely with the 2018 Pantone Color of the Year (ultra violet). But that was immediately eclipsed when I learned that this palette's name is Hashtag. That snapped me from my "oooh, pretty colors" trance and put me back in touch with reality and why I'm just not the biggest Violet Voss fan. But we'll get into that in a bit.
Let's look at the palette:
I've included two pictures here because the palette looks different in both of them, and they are both promotional pictures provided by Violet Voss. In addition to the photos looking different from one another, both pictures (to me) look oversaturated. I wouldn't be surprised if the colors in this palette are actually significantly muted when compared to these photos.
I would really like to talk about the colors in this palette, but I'm not sure which photo to base my thoughts on.
The only row that kind of looks the same in both photos is the last row. Otherwise, these look like two different palettes.
To me, the worst offenders are:
- Fresh (top photo: light pink; bottom photo: cream)
- Sauce (top photo: deeper pink; bottom photo: milk chocolate)
- Savage (top photo: blood orange; bottom photo: light orange)
- No Filter (top photo: bronze/copper; bottom photo: gold)
- Throwback (top photo: copper; bottom photo: darker gold)
- Lit (top photo: cranberry; bottom photo: bronze)
- Vacay (top photo: red; bottom photo: copper)
- FOMO (top photo: gold pink; bottom photo: champagne)
- Living (top photo: violet; bottom photo: light cranberry)
What's curious is that the top photo is the "official" product photo, but the official swatches look like the bottom photo (see below). I believe it's worth noting the discrepancies between these photos, especially since Violet Voss has advertised the palette with both photos.
Like all Violet Voss palettes, when I look at this one I see a lot of repetition. And for $45, that's unacceptable. That's always one of my biggest gripes with this brand. I don't need three gold shadows. Nor do I need four shimmery purples with very little distinction between them. I feel like Violet Voss often tries to do a gradient with their shadows so that the shadows look different in the pan, but when applied to the eyes, the difference is marginal at best.
Let's look at swatches:
This swatch picture was also provided by Violet Voss as a promotional picture, and it is shown on the Sephora website alongside this product. This picture also looks oversaturated to me, and like colors in the image have been heavily edited. As I mentioned, these swatches look more like photo 2 above than they do photo one. For example, Fresh looks like a cream instead of a pink, and Sauce looks like a warm brown instead of a deeper pink.
As a consumer, this is frustrating. Many people like to buy items as they release, and they use these images to gauge if they want to purchase. This swatch photo and the top photo are both on the Sephora website alongside this product, and the colors don't even look that similar. It makes it incredibly difficult to make an informed decision on whether or not to buy when the colors are this off on multiple promotional images.
When I look at the swatches of this palette, I feel like I see only five distinct colors:
- Cream
- Black
- Red-orange
- Gold
- Violet
I see those colors in different finishes and in slight variation of intensity, but I really only see those colors. This palette contains 20 shadows, so for there to only be five distinct colors is pretty alarming.
I wrote an anti-haul post on the Urban Decay Naked Heat palette, and I said that one of the reasons I wasn't going to buy it is because all of the colors look the same and I couldn't see myself being able to create more than one or two looks out of it. Several people have written to me saying that they purchased that palette and love it (which is great), but I've also seen it pop up in so many end of the year declutter videos or "Worst Makeup of 2017" videos. And the reasoning people always give about why they are decluttering it is because every single look they try to do ends up looking the same no matter the shades they use.
I think the exact same thing will happen with Hashtag. Since there are three main color groups (I'm excluding the cream and black since there is only one pan of each color in the palette), I think people will be able to get about three looks out of this. And they will be a purple one, a gold one, and a red-orange one. And even that number of looks can be deceptive since those three colors are very distinct. People may buy the palette, do those three looks, and think the palette is very versatile. But it's not. Because if you use different shadows within the same color schemes, my bet is that you will still come out with the same looks. The cream will be used as a brow bone highlight or as a shade to set eyeshadow primer, and the black will be used to add depth or smoke out a look. And that's it.
This is something that I see all the time with Violet Voss palettes. They take a general color scheme and repeat the same shades over and over in the palette and then charge a mid-range price for it. This palette costs $45. For 20 eyeshadows, that may seem reasonable when you compare to brands like Urban Decay and Too Faced that charge upwards of $50 for 12 to 15 shades, but you have to keep in mind that these are not exactly 20 unique shades.
Other palettes with similar color schemes include Huda Beauty Desert Dusk:
And Lorac Desert Sunset:
Other violet-heavy palettes include Natasha Denona Lila:
Ciate London x Chloe Morello Pretty, Fun, and Fearless:
Laura Mercier Artist Palette:
And Viseart Theory Amethyst:
In my own collection, there's BH Cosmetics Zodiac:
I know on the surface Zodiac and Hashtag don't look overwhelmingly similar, but Zodiac has the five general colors that are in Hashtag plus more. This palette is also $22 and is of fantastic quality, which, in my opinion, makes it a better buy than Hashtag.
And finally, the palette in my collection that most suits this color scheme is my duped Desert Dusk palette:
I was recently put into a situation where I could have been away from the vast majority of my makeup collection for at least six months. That situation didn't come to fruition, but it did make a real-life version of "If you could only have one palette, what would it be?" I cheated because I chose two, and it was my duped Peachy Matte palette and this one. The most ironic thing about it is that out of my entire collection, the two palettes I could not live without are actually a collection of single shadows.
And I think this is especially appropriate to mention when discussing the Hashtag palette because, as much as Hashtag might have pretty colors that draw you in, I think it would be a much better and cheaper option to buy a few singles instead. I've said a few times in this post that Hashtag is essentially made up of three colors plus a cream and a black, and I think it would be a much wiser decision to just buy three singles in those three colors if you don't already own them.
That's the other thing—you probably already do own them. When I look at the two promotional photos for this palette, I am actually quite drawn to the color scheme, and I recognize that there is not a palette within my collection that has the exact color scheme. So my brain gets tricked into thinking this is a new and different palette, but the reality is that it's not. It's hard to even say which colors I'm most drawn to as the two promotional photos vary so drastically. I like the colors in photo one more, but I have a feeling the colors in photo two are more true to life. The reality is that I am most drawn to the violet shades in the palette because I have golds, coppers, and cranberries in spades in my collection. But, as you can see from my custom palette above, I also have violets in spades as well.
My guess is that most people interested in buying this palette are also after the violet and reddish shades. I also assume that those same people have at least one gold, bronze, copper, and cranberry in their collection. And while it might seem tempting to have an entire palette full of those colors, I can guarantee that you don't need that many colors that have so little difference between them.
To conclude this post, I would like to talk about Violet Voss and some reasons why I am not personally excited to buy from the brand. I will be transparent here and say that I have never owned a Violet Voss palette. I have swatched and worked with Violet Voss palettes, but I have never personally owned one. My opinion of the brand is that I am really stunned that they have somehow ended up in Sephora. When Morphe showed up in select Ulta stores, I wasn't really upset about it. Ulta has always had a solid drugstore makeup section, so I didn't feel like adding Morphe was that much of a stretch. And Violet Voss certainly has prices that put them in the mid-range of brands, so in that sense I can see the move to Sephora. However, I am surprised that Sephora added what I consider to be an overpriced internet/social media brand.
I was not impressed when I worked with Violet Voss palettes in the past, and the quality reminded me a lot of the original Morphe formula. The shimmer shadows swatched well, but the mattes did not, and the shadows smelled really bad, just like Morphe. The packaging felt cheap, and the palette overall felt extremely overpriced. If Violet Voss charged BH Cosmetics prices, I feel like that would be more appropriate. Even so, I have been more impressed with the BH Zodiac palette than I was with anything from Violet Voss.
I also very much dislike the "hip, internet lingo" that Violet Voss has adopted in their product names (Holy Grail, Ride or Die, etc), especially since a lot of it is appropriated from Black American culture.
And that brings me to the pettiest point in this post and also the thing that I hate the most about this palette: the name.
Hashtag. This palette is called Hashtag. That is the most "How do you do, fellow kids?" marketing I think I've ever seen.
Hashtag means nothing. Actually, it means that Violet Voss knows that young people use social media and use hashtags. It has absolutely zero relevance to the theme of the palette, the packaging, or the colors inside. It is literally just "a word the young kids say."
And for me, this kind of marketing is a major turnoff. And it's not just because that marketing is definitely not targeted at me. It's because that marketing is lazy. "Holy Grail" at least kind of made sense, because the palette was full of red shadows and it came out when those colors were just starting to be on trend. "Ride or Die" also kind of made sense, because the palette was huge and filled with every neutral color (repeated five times over), and so could be seen as the one palette people would ever really need. But Hashtag? That doesn't mean anything within the context of this palette.
What appeals to me most about this palette are colors that I already own, that are likely of better quality. There's nothing about Hashtag that I need, and I won't be buying.
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