CHANEL Eye Collection 2019

[productsample] I would say to every woman with silver or white hair to grab the new grey mascara (Volcan) from Chanel as fast as you possibly can! Grey mascaras are so few and far between that when they do occur, a certain amount of hoarding is needed.

There’s a theme going on for the new eye collection from Lucia Pica – bear with me when I say that theme is ‘blurry’. It applies more to the four new eye palettes (coming up tomorrow) but the general vibe is softness – think chiffon if you need a textural connotation and the best thing about it is that it suits absolutely everyone. It’s a move away from the depth of colour and hyper-brights we are more used to seeing on Instagram and a return to a subtle colour merging that prioritises emphasising your eyes rather than your make up palette.

Coloured mascaras are tricky in composition unless you’re going full on neon which is a whole other look. The shades need enough black behind them that you get lash definition, but not so much that the colour effect disappears. I love, love, love a coloured mascara, particularly, as I said at the beginning, if you have grey, silver, steel or white hair and black is too harsh on your lashes.

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The shades, from bottom to top are: Deep Eros, Intense Teal, Jungle Green and Volcan. Deep Eros is a burgundy shade, Intense Teal avoids any Princess Di blue lash connotations by bringing down the blue tones with grey, Jungle Green is a khaki tone and Volcan is a deep grey. They’re all fairly nuanced – a good coat build (2 or 3 and do it quickly before each coat sets) gives plenty of volume and they still look dark enough to frame the eyes. I’d say they’re a play on black mascara rather than a dominant colour on their own. The more you surround your eyes with like shades, the more the colour nuance emerges…

…and speaking of surrounds, there are five waterproof liners accompanying the collection.

I test a lot of this type of liner and can hand on heart say that Chanel liners are amongst a very few that don’t break in the swatch. Whether I’m just too heavy handed I don’t know but I try to apply lightly and yet, so many of the ends just buckle off. These glided on my arm delivering a line of colour without any trouble at all. They’re creamy and precise (with a little sharpener in the other end) but if you don’t want precision (in this ‘blurry’ look) they’re easy to smudge close to the lash line with a fine fibre brush. I always smudge – I can’t think of a time where I’ve successfully achieved an absolutely precise line that was good enough to wear out. So, for safety’s sake, I always smudge. I love the Jungle Green shade that looks almost metallic (before smudging).

I’ve used a bit of extra light in this picture so you can see the colours, but they are rather darker in real life than they appear here. From bottom to top: Brun Agape, Forest Green, Intense Teal and Black Wood. It’s interesting that Intense Teal and Brun Agape are the only two that aren’t limited edition (all the mascaras are limited) and that might tell us something about future collections.

The mascaras are £28 each and the liner are £22. Everything launches on 14th June.