NARS Ramatuelle Trio for NC 42 Skin Tone

My fellow blogger, Pink Sith published a post on the Ramatuelle trio, from the NARS 2012 line. She tied it in with a lovely story about driving down the coast of Santa Barbara for the first time with her husband, well before they were married.

(narscosmetics.com)

I love how she ties each color with reference to the most delicious apricot she's ever tasted. The skin of the peach was like the delicate peach shimmer (middle shade). The ripe flesh of the fruit was like the same matte apricot shade here (right). The bluish silver frost was like the morning dew on the fruit.

Damn, that is some apricot and damn, this girl can write. I've always been a huge fan of her blog and an even bigger fan of her writing style.

Okay I'm not going to rewrite her review because that would be wrong and I'd lose a blogging buddy. Why am I calling attention to her post? She mentioned how this shade would look on someone darker.

So here I am - all swarthy NC42 me. I'll do a comparison of these shades on our very different skin tones:

Here's the swatch on Pink Sith:

She picks up more of gold tones of the peach frost and orange from the matte apricot shades. Also her skin warms up the icy silver frost.


And here it is on me:
The icy silver is cool, the peach frost is a very soft peach gold and the apricot is a very muted tangerine.

Here's an EOTD (eye of the day) swatch on Pink Sith:

And here it is on me:

I want to point out that our lighting sources were probably different - she may have used natural sunlight (arm swatch) and I used bathroom lighting at night. I do agree with her that this trio suits many skin tones. Since I was really skeptical at first, I asked a NARS makeup artist how to intensify this color on my skin and she suggested I used Super Orgasm Illuminator Liquid. It does add an extra layer of peachy gold to my lids with lots of shimmery glitter. I don't mind glitter as a base color. I didn't use the Super Orgasm in the picture above since I wanted to stay true to the look that Pink Sith did in her photo. I used the middle peachy champagne shade as my base, matte apricot as my crease color and the icy bluish silver frost as my brow highlight shade. I am going to take a guess that Pink Sith used the apricot as her base and peachy champagne as her highlight shade and perhaps the icy silver either mixed with the peachy champagne or used on top of the apricot base.

In terms of staying power, this stays on my lids the entire eight hours on top of a primer, I love my Too Faced Shadow Insurance and I also love NARS Smudge Proof Eyeshadow Primer. I am delightfully surprised how much I like this trio. I was very dismissive at first - I immediately thought that this would be too sheer and wouldn't do much for my dark skin tone. But I should know better, NARS has great colors for everyone, including us tan skin gals! And there's always a trick to learn to make colors work. I have been using the trio more than I thought I would. It's a great palette to use when you don't want to spend too much time on your eyes but you do want a bit of effortless polish. Naturally, this is a great trio to use if you want to focus on a bright/dark lip look with sculpted cheeks.

I also like the surprise of a subtle shimmer summer trio. The matte peach keeps up with the tangerine/orange vibe for Summer but it doesn't entirely jump on the trend bandwagon. I wouldn't have thought to use the Super Orgasm Illuminator if I hadn't asked a MUA. I am even more delighted about that because now I know what to do with my deluxe sample tubes - I don't like wearing chunky glitter highlighter on my face.It's frowned upon at my buttoned down office.

I hope you enjoyed this comparison. If anything we hope that we encouraged you to stop by the nearest NARS counter to swatch this palette. I can't think of a better way to get me in a Summer state of mind. Especially, since it hits upper 60's, at best, here in the Bay Area in July.

Please see Pink Sith's original post here. Photos and content used with her permission. THANKS GIRL, I OWE YOU!!

Ramatuelle and the entire NARS 2012 Summer collection is available at department, Sephora stores and online retailers that  carry the  NARS brand.