Review of the Shanghai Nights palette by Cargo Cosmetics

Hello beautiful people!

I'm here with my very first post and it is going to be a review of the Cargo Cosmetics Shanghai Nights palette. Cargo Cosmetics is a high end Canadian make up brand that I personally discovered through Tati, who has a YouTube channel called GlamLifeGuru. She was raving about the Vintage Escapes palette a while ago, then more recently she gave the Summer In The City palette a very positive review. So naturally when I was lucky enough to receive this palette from a good friend/business woman I was over the moon.

The packaging itself is stunning, really colourful cardboard with bright pictures of "Shanghai at night". I'm an eyeshadow junkie and this palette really stands out in my collection with this bright packaging, making me tempted to reach for it. It opens up to quite a substantial mirror, 12 beautiful shades and a little dual ended brush. This brush is fine, nothing great but definitely preferable to the typical sponge tip applicators that often come with palettes. Despite being made of cardboard I think it feels very sturdy and looks like a nice, high end palette. It sells for $39 (I assume, Canadian dollars) on their website and $59.80 AUD on beautybay.com which ships here to New Zealand.

Now the product inside is what we're here to talk about. I have taken photos of swatches with and without primer. Overall I found this palette very disappointing, especially for the price. The shadows weren't as pigmented as I was expecting, especially the bright purple and the blue that I was hoping were going to be beautiful, bright shades. They're nothing like they show in the pan. The shades in here are quite neutral based but with beautiful pops of colour.

Starting with the top row from left to right there is: a deep, cool toned matte taupe shade, a bright, satin blue which I thought was going to be stunning but really just doesn't show up very well, a lighter, cool toned matte taupe, a gorgeous pinky champagne, shimmery shade that actually swatches and goes on the eye beautifully, a shimmery mid toned brown, still on the cool side and finally a shimmery white shade that doesn't show well on my skin but makes a truly beautiful inner corner highlight.

The bottom row left to right is: a matte off white shade, perfect for a browbone highlight if you don't like shimmer up there, a deep army green-ish grey, shimmery shade that swatches quite true to colour and I like a lot, a really pretty deep gold, shimmery shade, a more true army green shimmer shade that doesn't swatch well, another huge let down which is a bright, satin purple and finally a shimmery black that I personally like and is definitely quite pigmented.

Swatches with primer:

Shade names: Wai Tai, Skyline, Bund, Lychee, Jin Mao, Neon
Hu, Street Style, Ginger, Jade, Bar Rouge, Night Life

Swatches without primer: 

There were a bunch of hits and misses in this palette but I feel like for the price, the good shadows don't make up for the bad ones and I could never justify purchasing this. I love the concept of it and the way the shades are laid out, if it was of better quality you could definitely do many many eye looks with it on its own. It's more on the cool side and the pops of colour would be stunning if the pigmentation was better. Personally I wouldn't bother with this particular palette in the range. If you have this palette let me know what you think?

Thanks so much for reading,

WannabeMUA (Enya) xx