Urban Decay Naked Basics 2 : Review, Photos & Swatches

So there’s a new Naked Basics palette in town. And for once, here’s a review before it launches!

Essentially the Naked Basics 2 is a cooler cousin of the Naked Basics palette that launched before.

Packaging wise, it’s a no fuss design. The shell is made of hard plastic and is a matte surface that doesn’t attract fingerprints. The good sized mirror this carries is also rather handy if you need to touch up your eye makeup on the go.

Within there are 6 full size eyeshadows. All matte except for one, Skimp which is an iridescent oyster ivory.

The colours coordinate well with sufficient light, medium and dark shades and is a very well curated palette in my opinion.

Let’s take a look at swatches.

Skimp – Shimmering ivory. This applied sheer and was slightly powdery.

Stark – A matte, warm peachy cream. This too was powdery and slightly dry.

Frisk – A matte taupe with slight warm undertones. The pigmentation of this was medium. Applied smooth and was very soft to the touch and finely milled.

Cover – A medium brown with red undertones. Application was smooth and pigmentation was good.

Primal – A medium-dark matte brown leaning slightly warm. This was a tad powdery although it didn’t translate powdery when applied on the lids.

Undone – A neutral dark brown. This was the driest of the 6, and applied rather patchy. It was significantly difficult to blend due to it’s texture which made this the poorest performer in the palette.

Observations

On the whole, the texture of all the eyeshadows were very workable except for Undone. which seemed to stick to wherever it was placed and was quite stubborn as far as blending went.

Also worth noting, Skimp and Stark that swatched powdery never looked powdery once applied to the lids. In fact all I noticed was that some of the product seem to get lost between application and I could clearly see it flying all over while applying (nothing settled under my eye though thankfully).

All in all, the quality of the shadows were ok.

Now on to a softly defined day time look I created using this palette.

Starting with the full list of products I used for this look,

Complexion– Make Up Store CC foundation as base (which is actually a tad too dark for me so I had to take it down the neck also), Shiseido Powder foundation for setting, CDP Concealer for under eyes and covering redness.

Eyes– Edward Bess eye primer, Shu Uemura gel eyeliner (My HG), Dior IT Lash Mascara

Brows– Anastasia Brow Wiz

Lips– Nars Matte lipstick in Montego Bay.

Eyeshadows I used

Skimp, Stark, Cover, Primal & Undone.

Here’s one more set of swatches for easy reference 🙂

Stark was my all-over-lid base shade, following with Skimp in the inner eye area. Then I used Cover for slight crease definition, and added Primal for outer corner shading and lining the lower lid, finishing off with Undone for lining outer corner of the lids before I went over with the Shu Uemura liner to add more definition.

Bottom line

Overall, these eyeshadows were very fine in texture and were soft and blendable. Even though some of them were on the powdery side, it didn’t necessarily affect the finished look. What I considered was that it was a well curated palette that performed well and works great for day to day makeup.

If you already own the Naked Basics palette and debating getting this, I can say that this palette leans considerably cooler compared to that and you won’t be duping it by any means.

*On a side note, the matte formula and relatively easy pigmentation made the colour Frisk an excellent contour shade (for pale complexions). The colour had enough grey in it to mimic natural shadows that occur on the face and is light enough for those of you who are very fair and find it hard sourcing an appropriate contour shade.

Product information

The palette comes with 6 x 1.3g product and retails at  SGD45

Available at all Sephora outlets 30th Oct onwards.

*Mine was a press sample sent for review.