Hello everyone!
This time we are doing something a little bit different...
I thought I would be doing this in February, but Catrice have decided to launch the new seasonal refresh sooner than usual, so I guess I am doing this now! And what comes before the new stuff arrives? A huge sale - a bunch of products 50% off! Look at all those yellow 50% off stickers!
The biggest shock to me is that the entire ICONAILS range is marked yellow... are they seriously replacing that??? They are, no pun intended, iconic! Why change something that is already beloved and great? Well, we'll see what the replacement is like I guess. Besides that, it's a good assortment of various products on sale, so, if you wanted to buy something, this is the best time to do that - provided you manage to get to the shops before it is all sold out! Man, the items go flying off the shelves extremely fast here... it's a bloody miracle there still was so many products available.
So... of all the items on sale, what am I interested in? To be honest, very little. The previous refresh was very disappointing to me, so I bought just a couple of items overall during the past season. I only ended up buying the Thirsty Nails Gel Serum... meh, at least it's something?
NOW
Let's look at the subject of this post: the Spring/Summer 2025 refresh! Hopefully, it is better than the last one!
To make things simpler and easier to digest, I will break this down in sections, going by face/eyes/lips/nails. I feel like this is more organised.
FACE
I figured that it makes the most logical sense to start with the face items, i.e., foundation, blushes, primers, etc. Because those are typically the first items to be applied. So, what's new? As you can see, quite a lot! Though some products are just new shades in already existing product ranges, like the AirBlush Matt, Blush Affair Liquid Blush, All Over Glow Tint, and More Than Glow Highlighter. I... don't like any of these new shades and I don't think they would fit my pale skin well anyways, which is going to be a recurring issue with this refresh - but I am getting ahead of myself here.
The Under Eye Brightener... don't even get me started on that. While I always crave a good brightening undereye powder, this ain't it, chief. If you care to know about my opinion on these pink undereye things, check out this review from the 2024 Advent Calendar. The blush sticks I really don't care for because blush sticks just don't work on my skin type; and besides, the colours are not very flattering, especially those last two that for some reason have shimmer. Liquid bronzer, the same thing, and it's also too dark even with the lightest shade.
I left the three remaining products for last here, because they are interesting. Though, the Soft Glam Filter is just a low-medium coverage foundation in a stick with a glowy finish. No thanks. I need coverage and I need it to be matte; my skin is already plenty oily all by itself. Plus, stick foundations have, in the past, been too greasy for my skin anyways. Not to mention that there's only 4 shades!! You know what else has a miserable shade range? The Instant Bright Serum Concealer, which has a measly 5 shades available. I am glad that there is a fair shade, but even that seems to be too dark for me... at least I got something remotely acceptable, unlike tan and dark skintones. What's the point of releasing base products for only light/medium skintones??? Catrice got my hopes high with the Invisible Cover Foundation, which had like 40 (!!!) shades available... what happened to that diversity? And lastly, probably the only product that truly interests me, the Magic Shine Eraser Gel To Powder. I like its swatch on the website, it seems like a decent mattifying powder with a unique formula... which has meant "troubling" in the past, but I digress.
So this was not a good start...
EYES
Quite possibly my favourite part of the face to do makeup: the eyes! And the selection of new stuff is not impressive... guess they went all in on the new nail polish. So, what do we have here? I appreciate the addition of tools, tweezers are always useful and an eyeliner brush is a good thing to have, but it is way too thin for my liking. And I already have good tweezers so I'll pass. New variants of already existing products are the Glam & Doll Volume Brown Mascara, Cluster Lashes (technically), Space Glam Chrome Eyeshadow and The Dark Cocoa Eyeshadow Palette. I already used a Glam & Doll mascara before and I quite liked it, but I already have a brown mascara now so I don't need it. Plus, the result on the model is very disappointing. The Dark Cocoa palette is gorgeous - and I love the name, as a chocoholic - but the colours are far too orange for my skin. I already have issues with most nude/brown colours turning peachy/orange on my skin. So that's another product ill-suited for pale skin... and not the last - not even in this section! Because the new Space Glam Eyeshadow shades exist and they are really not appealing on light skin, let alone pale skin. The only one that looks decent-ish is the green shade, the rest are barely visible on light skin. Great. And I have issues with the whole "multi-chrome" / space theme both Catrice and Essence are diving headfirst in. Listen, the results are bad like 70% of the time... I don't get why they have been so obsessed with this specific effect in the past 1/1.5 years. Lastly, the Cluster Eyelashes. I love the idea of customising your own falsies look but I really don't have the time nor willpower currently in my life to stick on individual eyelash clusters. Plus, being the klutz that I am, I would probably lose a quarter of them anyways...
Now, the entirely new things, of which there are few. I am gonna completely skip over the mascara primer as I fully believe that they are useless most of the time. Since it's black, all you are doing is applying a coat of mascara... before "real" mascara... think about that. Using mascara primers often leads to mascara clumping so no thank you. No point. The Tiny Treasures palettes look cute, but the packaging really is giving cheap. The previous 5 In A Box Mini Eyeshadow palettes (like this one) looked far higher quality. The colours are decent, but again, wayyy too orange - or way too pink.
What happened to using cool-toned browns, what have they done that they are so ignored? Note the special effect eyeshadow in each of these palettes; I have eyeshadows with this exact effect and it is not as spectacular as you might assume. The eyeliner? Ehhh... I am really not feeling it. First off, 2 of the 3 colours look terrible on light/pale skin, so that's already just fricking great. The blue one looks okay, but man, the silver one looks so bad. It looks like you just glued a piece of aluminium foil... again going all in on the whole space theme. And I LOVE Sci-Fi and spacey stuff, but not like this.
The very last eye product is the only one that interests me: the Metallic Spark Cream Eyeshadow. Specifically, shade 020. Dunno why, but it just looks cool! It's a cream eyeshadow, so I can already tell it's going to have issues on my oily eyelids, but I just want it!
Cool... just one (1!!!) product truly interests me...
LIPS
Now, my second favourite part, the lips! Oh I just love to use all kinds of lipsticks, be it liquid or standard, and I especially love lip glosses! So, is there anything interesting here, among all the new stuff? Well, before answering that, let's see what is just new shades and what is entirely new. New shades have the Lip Lovin' Overnight Lip Mask, Glossin' Glow Tinted Lip Oil, Holiday Lips Caring Lip Balm, and the two Lip Boosters. Right off the bat - I am not interested in any of these. The lip mask is too peachy, the tinted lip oil is far too dark, the Holiday Lips lip balm is meh, nothing special, and the Lip Boosters? I am strictly on a no-menthol regimen as my lips always react very poorly to menthol. I am not allergic, they are just very sensitive to it. Also, chili extract makes my lips chapped and dry.
The one thing that's really bothering me about these is that they are all red-toned - even the lightest shade. I wish there was a nude rosy colour. The other ting that really bothers me is that they are lip stains, in essence. I hate when products stain my lips semi-permanently, so I shall not be buying this. Now, the Diamond Glaze (not Diamond Haze, that's the highlighter...) Lip Gloss looks definitely like something I'd like... if the colours looked at least halfway decent on the models... which they don't. Again with the whole spacey thing that is executed poorly. Most colours look muddy on light skintones, even though I adore the extremely shimmery finish. Seriously, who thought that those colours were good to go, good enough to be sold??? It's a question I have been asking myself more and more often with this new refresh...
The Melt & Plump Juicy Lip Plumper is just a plumping variant of the Melt & Shine Juicy Lip Balm. It's literally mostly the same, with quite similar colours. I never ended up buying that one because I have issues with stick lip balms, they just never show on my lips particularly well, so I skipped that product. I will most definitely be skipping the plumping version as well; like I mentioned, menthol + my lips = a bad time. And I seriously doubt the results are that noteworthy.
 |
| "Butta Together" is literally almost the same name as one of the Butter Drippin' lip balm shades... |
Now the last one, saved for last because I immediately noticed something sus about its name and design. Butter Drippin' ...? And what other brand had had very popular butter-themed and butter-named products in 2024? Yeah, I am talking about NYX. As soon as I saw the name of this lip balm, I clocked that they were riffin' off the whole Buttermelt range. Nothing wrong with that - just an interesting thing to note! Also, the ever classic Butter Gloss, but that is not new. Anyways, I already have a lot of lip balms to go through, so I probably won't be getting any of these, though the colours do look appetising to me. Butter Together would probably be the best for my skintone but since I am an autumn appreciator, I am leaning heavily towards that Maple Latte! Is it too orange? Oh for sure, but the name is just gorge!
And again, scarce few - if any - items that interest me. You will notice that, even here, there are a lot of colours that just flat-out don't work for pale skin... again.
NAILS
The other 2 products are variants of already existing products. And I don't want either of them. These special effects top coats always look meh on nails; I don't even particularly get the whole "broken glass" effect. It just looks like shimmer on product photos? And there's a new Sheer Beauties shade, a lavender/pink kind of colour that looks too, idk, cutesy? for me? I am still not over them replacing the More Than Nude range with the Sheer Beauties, it's a downgrade imo.
GEL AFFAIR
So now we finally come to what I've been waiting to discuss: the Gel Affair Nail Lacquer.
This is what Catrice intends to replace the classic ICONAILS range with. Now, yes, the ICONAILS are gel-like nail polishes, but they don't usually feel that gelly. This, on the other hand, looks much more gelly and cheap, comparatively. I will, however, buy a few of them just to see how it compares to the ICONAILS.
And I am 90% sure there was a bright, vivid blue like 027/Your Royal Highness. And the shimmery light pinks are also pretty much reused, but from the More Than Nudes range, rather than ICONAILS. While the colour range is phenomenal, the textures leave a little bit to be desired. There's only a few shimmers, and even fewer ones that have different colour shimmer from the base. ICONAILS had a greater diversity of both colours and textures, so this is a bit of a letdown.
Now, I said that I would buy a few of these nail polishes, but which ones? Since I already have the ICONAILS 153/Ibiza Feeling, I am going to get 001/Ibiza Feeling, for a direct comparison. But there is one other one that I desperately need! Check out 005/Today Was A Fairytale... that name. That name warms my Swiftie heart! I really love that song so there is literally 0% chance that I won't get this colour! The fastest way to get me to buy something is to make a Taylor Swift reference, haha!
OVERALL
So, this was a pretty meh refresh to me. I really only want a few things... maybe some other refresh will be more to my liking? Perhaps the Essence one will be better?
Well, that's all from me for this!
Next month is when I will likely have Essence's S/S 2025 refresh to check out!
See you soon!
Maja
Maja
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