Cast A Spell With The Disney Designer Villains Collection Makeup Offerings
Admit it: even if you hung up your Mickey Mouse ears and stopped singing “Part Of Your World” in the shower, your eyes still twinkle when you lay eyes on some adorable Disney wares, especially if they reference the animated films you marveled over as a child. And while many of us dressed as Cinderella, Aurora, Snow White, Ariel, and Belle as baby-faced trick-or-treaters, we also secretly swooned over the extravagance of these tales’ villainous characters, all the while shuddering at their sight. In my case, my favorite Disney story of all time was (and still is) Sleeping Beauty — in large part because I found Maleficent at once terrifying and glamorous, her black-and-purple robe, horned headdress, and orb-adorned staff as bone-chilling as her ability to shape shift into a fire-breathing dragon. As an adult, I now look at Maleficent’s costume in awe, and yet the little girl in me still shudders ever so slightly at the vision of this eerily beautiful but sinister creature. These sentiments, that strange combination of awe and fear, of fascination and trepidation, are what Disney successfully captures with its Designer Villains collection, which consists of six collectible dolls celebrating the studio’s most prominent and iconic villains — Cruella De Vil, the Evil Queen, Maleficent, Ursula, the Queen of Hearts, and Mother Gothel — along with T-shirts, totes, note cards, journals and cosmetics bearing illustrations of these evil-doing divas.
Only 13,000 pieces of each doll were produced so, if you’re a Disney fanatic, definitely check out these intricate figurines at DisneyStore.com (they retail for $79.50 each). Now, if you’re a Disney lover and a beauty junkie, then allow me to direct your attention to the makeup offerings in the Designer Villains collection, all of which are available exclusively at the Disney Store. The collection includes three simple cosmetic options: the Disney Designer Villains Nail Polish Set ($29.50 at DisneyStore.com), which includes six shades ranging from a metallic teal to a sinister oxblood hue; the Disney Designer Villains Eye Shadow Palette ($29.50 at select Disney Store locations and DisneyStore.com), which includes six shimmering hues dubbed after the villainous vamps; and the Disney Designer Villains Lip Gloss Set ($24.50 at DisneyStore.com), which includes three shimmering shades.
I had the opportunity to try out both the Disney Designer Villains Eye Shadow Palette and the Disney Designer Villains Lip Gloss Set, and I was enthralled by both. The Designer Villains Lip Gloss Set comes in a black box with gothic lettering and hints of blood red, plus each of the tubes features a black outline of the villain after which it was named. The three shades in the set are: Evil Queen, a rich mulberry hue with an all-over sheen that recalls the vampy hue favored by the vanity-stricken ruler; Queen of Hearts, a clean yellow gold with faint coral undertones that alludes to the character’s crown; and Cruella De Vil, a deep red so rich that it could very well belong on the Queen of Hearts’ dress and which, of course, references the dalmatian foe’s signature lip color.
Below, you’ll find swatches of the three lip gloss hues in the Designer Villains Lip Gloss Set:
Next, let’s move on to the Designer Villains Eyeshadow Palette, which is my absolute favorite offering in this small capsule collection. The packaging alone makes the eyeshadow palette a worthy investment. The sleek black case features illustrations of all six villains both along the top surface of the lid and beneath it so that, when you flip the case open, you’re greeted with depictions of these characters that resemble film reel strips.
Again, here, the shades featured all allude to a specific villain: Ursula is a lavender-tinged silver shade that seems to pay homage to the color of the octopus character’s tresses; Queen of Hearts is again a gold shade but, this time, it has a dirty, slightly tarnished feel to it; Mother Gothel is a copper hue with reddish undertones and a lustrous sheen; Maleficent; a forest green shade that could reference the green flames that appear whenever the sorceress teleports herself to a different location, as she does when she first casts an evil spell on Princess Aurora; Evil Queen, a lush, reddish plum purple that seems to take its tonality from the queen’s robe; and Cruella De Vil, a sooty, near-matte black sprinkled with golden glitter, the contrast in colors and textures likely a play on the character’s two-toned har.
The shades all have a sheen to them — whether it’s the emerald green micro pearls infused into the hunter green Maleficent shade or the sparse golden glitter used to give the Cruela de Vil black a bit more oomph — so they’re perfect for a smoky metallic eye. They’re all rather richly pigmented and easy to blend and buff, so the quality is rather good. And, in terms of each shade’s tonality, I was definitely stricken by the similarity many of these shades bore to previously released Tarte Cosmetics colors (I’m speaking specifically about the eye shadows in the Tarte Femme Fatale palette, which was released in 2009), but it’s worth noting that the two brands did not collaborate on this project and that any resemblances are merely coincidental.
Check out the eye shadows in the palette:
Next, check out a sample look created with two of the eye shadow shades. To create the look, I started by lining both my upper and lower lash lines with the black eye pencil and connecting the two lines at the outer corners of the eyes. Next, I smudged the liner and gently traced the perimeter of the eye with the green Maleficent shadow. Once I had rimmed the eyes in the green shade, I applied the color all along the lower lids, extending it to the crease line. To add a bit of dimension and that added smokiness, I then applied the black Cruella De Vil shade along the outer corners and buffed it ever so softly into the crease area. I made sure to blend the hues together nicely along the crease so as to create a very mysterious, smoky effect. I finished the look with two coats of MAC’s Studio Fix Lash mascara.
