Beauty Bay Age of Opulence Review + Swatches

Hi everyone! So I wasn’t planning on buying any more palettes but then Beauty Bay released their Holiday 2021 collection. Unfortunately their holiday launches are usually limited edition and this is no exception. Last year was the Book of Magic which sold out pretty quickly. I skipped it just because there was a lot of light and medium shades and it’s very similar to my other palettes. I also haven’t bought Wilderness since again, I have very similar tones and I’m not the biggest fan of red. However this palette was right up my alley and I bought this straight away.

There are 20 shades and it retails for €18. This is very similar to the Book Of Magic but from reviews I’ve seen comparing the two, they’re not dupes.

I’m a big fan of the Beauty Bay formula. I have two of their older launches; the Berry 9 pan and the Nude 9 pan. I think even the older formula is beautiful but the shimmers are really spectacular now.

I would have loved a dark green here to complement the teals. Interestingly, in the 1920s the 4 main shadows were blue, green, brown and black.

As always, swatches are over Makeup Revolution primer in natural light and then with the brightness turned down. I panned my Prime&Lock primer so I used the Cut Crease Canvas base which is a holy grail for me.

I LOVE these rows. It would make for a beautiful nine pan if you took out the matte beige. If I were to make a palette, it would look like this but with maybe a navy shimmer and a green. The deep brown metallic is beautiful and I don’t have a dupe for ‘Champagne’.

I think this would be another great nine pan too if you removed the beige. It reminds me a lot of my bPerfect Love Tahiti palette which I’ll talk bout later on.

Wear Test and Look 1:

hair is edited to fill in gaps but everything else isn’t

I used the shades ‘Lavish’ and ‘Curfew’ in for transition and outer corner shades and ‘Decadent’ on my lid. I used ‘Champagne’ on my inner corner. As you can probably see, my left eye isn’t properly blended and that’s because I went in with way too much shadow. I would recommend building up slowly otherwise the shadows will stick and become patchy.

If I were to rate the metallics based on Juvia’s Place super foiled formula to Glamshop’s extremely sparkly, I would consider these somewhere in between. I had issue with ‘Crush’ and ‘Champagne’ having flaky fallout when I tried to pick it up on a pencil brush.

My camera isn’t great but ‘Decadent’ is just absolutely stunning. I wore it for a total of 10 hours and I found the shimmers creased a bit after 6 hours, it wasn’t noticeable unless you were up close but it usually doesnt happen to me regardless of what shadows I wear so it must be the formula. If you have oily eyelids, it might be an issue. I used ‘Noir’ to set my liner for all three of my looks. I also applied all shimmer on my lids with my finger which is what I do for all lid shades.

I used the shades ‘Flapper’, ‘Dandy’ and ‘Velvet’. I used ‘Ace’ on my lid and ‘Crush’ in my inner corner. I found the pinks and purple far easier to blend than the blues, I think it’s because I used less shadow this time.

I used ‘Hope’ and ‘Rich’ as transition and out outer corner shades and ‘Curfew’ on my lower lash line. ‘Vintage’ is on my lid. Again, ‘Champagne’ is my inner corner highlight. The teals blended very well.

Comparisons

I thought I’d do a few comparison swatches because this reminds me of some of my other palettes.

Beauty Bay -‘Flapper’, bPerfect ‘Magenta’ and ‘Fruity

BB – ‘Dandy’, bP ‘Grape’

BB – ‘Velvet’, bP – ‘Blackberry’

BB – ‘Lavish’, bP – ‘The Deep’

BB – ‘Noir’, bP ‘Black Beach’

BB – ‘Crush’, bP ‘Rose Pearl’

BB – ‘Jazz’ , bP ‘Rum’

BB ‘Ace’, bP ‘Amethyst’

I thought that these might dupe each other but they’re not similar at all. I think I prefer the Beauty Bay formula over the bPerfect one though.

Conclusion

This might be my favourite launch of the past 2 years. It’s just my dream colour story and I’m really glad I bought it. I love the shimmers even if they did crease a bit. Beauty Bay are pretty serious about things being limited edition too so once it’s gone, chances are it won’t be restocked.

Pros:

• Beautiful colour story
• Shimmery but smooth shimmers
• Pigmented and blendable mattes

Cons:

• The two pinks look similar
• Unnecessary beiges
• Shimmers creased after a while
• Has pressed pigments which aren’t considered eye safe in the US
• Limited Edition

Have you tried this? What’s your favourite colour story?

Thanks for reading!