Hello and welcome, Urban Decay Vice 4 Palette!

For fall/winter 2015, Urban Decay introduces its fourth iteration of the Vice palette. I’ve previously tried the Vice 3 palette and I was left unimpressed, but the Vice 4 palette is pure love. Like the other Vice palettes, the Urban Decay Vice 4 palette contains four rows of five eyeshadows in varying textures from mattes, to satins, shimmers, metallics, and glitters.

My first thought upon receiving this palette is that I absolutely love the packaging. I read somewhere that the inspiration was derived from an oil spill and the way the oil colours move around on the surface of the water.

Row 1

• Bones – shimmery ivory that’s relatively sheer but a great highlight colour
• Grip – satin light grey that’s extremely sheer and chalky, one of the worst performing shades in the palette
• Deadbeat – glittery gunmetal grey that’s pigmented but with glitter and powder fallout
• Beatdown – metallic rich royal purple that is beautifully pigmented and smooth
• Pandemonium – metallic rich eggplant that is also very pigmented and smooth, with amazing adherence to the skin

Row 2 – the second best performing row of the palette

• Framed – matte peach, relatively sheer but smooth
• Fastball – metallic peachy coral that’s almost a duochrome, also smooth but semi sheer
• 1985 – beautifully metallic fuchsia that’s pigmented
• Underhand – satiny metallic plum that’s very pigmented and smooth
• Harlot – metallic lavender-grey that’s semi-pigmented

Row 3 – the best performing row of the palette

• Discreet – matte dusty pink
• Grasshopper – beautifully rich shimmery green
• C-Note – metallic sage green that’s very smooth and pigmented
• Arctic – metallic emerald blue that’s also very smooth and pigmented
• Robbery – shimmery taupe

Row 4 – the worst performing row of the palette, less Flame

• Bitter – matte burnt orange, this is one of the better mattes in the set
• Flame – my absolute favourite shade in the collection, it’s a beautifully rich metallic coral orange with gold and orange shimmers that makes it look duochrome
• Low – glittery brown that’s one of the worst performing shades in the palette, there is just so much powder and glitter fallout
• Crowbar – metallic olive with big silver glitter specks that is another terrible shade in the palette
• Delete – matte brown that’s pigmented and smooth

Unlike the Vice 3 palette, I was very impressed with 90% of the shades in Vice 4, especially in terms of the pigmentation and texture. In addition, unlike the Vice 3 palette where I was confused about all the colour combinations in the set (which looked randomly placed), Vice 4 is nicely organized in colour families by row, so you can use each row like a separate look, or mix it up if you’re more creative. Another reason why I love this palette is because it stands out in the sea of neutral colours this season.

The swatches