Whilst I am a fan of subtle contouring (trust me my round face needs it), I’m not totally mad on highlighting, not on an everyday basis anyway. So when yet another drugstore contour and highlight palette was released towards the end of last year, I was hardly jumping up and down with unconfined excitement. This one in particular is a collaboration between mainstream giant Revlon and Aussie beauty Youtuber, Chloe Morello. Put them together in an equation and you get the Revlon Sculpt & Highlight Contour Kit (only available in Australia and New Zealand I believe).
So why did I pick this particular kit up I hear you ask with curiosity? Well nothing like a promo to push me over the line and add this to my basket. I’m talking about the Priceline, 2 day, 40% off all cosmetics promo which I believe only happens a couple times a year (don’t shoot me if I’m wrong). Not going to lie but cosmetics and skincare is pretty expensive in Australia so when you see a fairly big discount, you make the most of it.
The Revlon Sculpt & Highlight Contour Kit comes as a quad rather than the excessive-for-everyday 6-pan palette, meaning it is compact as it is cute. Inside the black, square compact reveals a full size mirror on one size and 4 pans of product on the other. I picked up Medium/Tan, the darker of the two shade selections available as I felt the lighter one might be too ashy or too light that it might struggle to show up on my warm skin-tone. In hindsight however, I wonder how it fairs against the Medium/Tan.
If you are familiar with the Australis AC on Tour Contouring & Highlighting Kit then you may feel, as I do, that this is very similar. Like very, very similar. I’d almost bet my bottom dollar on it that they were produced in the same factories or using the exact same ingredients. Just like the Australis offering, the powders within the Revlon Sculpt & Highlight Contour Kit have that very soft texture that kicks up a tonne of product when you apply a brush to it. I always make sure to tap of the excess (and there’s plenty of it) before I apply to the face otherwise you run the risk of having way to much product on the face then you know what to do with. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, although a bit of a waste of product, as the pigment you get in return is unquestionable. A very little goes a long, long way and because the product is so soft, it blends incredibly well.
However, where the Revlon Sculpt & Highlight Contour Kit falls down against the Australis AC on Tour Contouring & Highlighting Kit is on the shades of some of the powders.
Banana
The yellow, ‘banana’ powder is your matte, brightening powder designed to set your concealer under the eyes whilst giving a brightening affect at the same time. The yellow is darker/warmer when compared to the Australis banana powder. I actually used it to set my entire face and found that it did a good job.
Glow
The highlight shade surprised me in that whilst it looked quite pink in the pan, it actually comes off more gold on the face. The affect is a subtle, warm, peachy gold duo chrome which is very flattering on my skin tone whilst the finish is that sheeny, almost ‘wet’ look (me likey) rather than a sparkly, glittery, frosty look (me no likey). Of all the powders, the highlight is by far the softest of them all.
Bronze
The bronzer is matte and very warm. Too warm for my liking but I think it could potentially work for some skin-tones. It’s not the worse but I prefer my bronzers to be more of a neutral tan shade. This bronzer has very little brown to it and a hell of a lot of orange.
Sculpt
The matte contour, for me, is the biggest disappointment in the kit. I expect a contour powder to be much cooler, to mimic that real life shadow-like effect. However, this contour powder has a strong red undertone to it that makes it warmer than the bronzer. As a result, the powder looked too warm on my skin when trying to sculpt out my cheekbones and coupled with the bronzer, let’s just say I was a shade close to Oompa Loompa!
What started out as rather promising turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. I say ‘ a bit’ because the highlight is lovely and the banana powder does the job. However, the bronzer was a tad too warm and the contour powder, which for me should be the one powder of the lot that needs to be perfect to warrant purchasing (I purchased purely for review purposes), way just way, way off the mark.
If you’ve tried the Revlon Sculpt & Highlight Contour Kit, let me know what you think below.