Le Métier de Beauté Nouvelle Vague Kaleidoscope Eye Kit for Fall 2012 - Live and in Person

Le Métier de Beauté Nouvelle Vague Kaleidoscope Eye Kit ($95) arrived yesterday, courtesy of Le Métier de Beauté, and I gasped when I saw it live and in person. It had been cloudy, but I saw an opportunity - a short one after I returned home from work - when Mr. Sunshine (we are close friends) broke through the clouds. I zoomed outside to get photos so that I could show you Nouvelle Vague today. My photos were taken after 5:00 pm, so I promise there'll be more to come as soon as I can get home from work before the clouds roll in for the typical August late-afternoon showers.

Last night, I wrote up this feature, then logged in this morning to find the first half of it gone. Since Blogger has never lost my posts before, I assume I did something ditzy that erased the first half of the "masterpiece" I had written to pay tribute to this gorgeous palette. I hope you'll enjoy the recreated early-morning version.

To recap the press release from last week, Nouvelle Vague was often called the "French New Wave" because the films of Nouvelle Vague brought to life revolutionary style and iconic imagery. The Nouvelle Vague "era" set the stage for Le Métier de Beauté's fall collection with this season’s most noteworthy shades, brought to life with the Nouvelle Vague Kaleidoscope Eye Kit.

An interweave of livelihood, opulence, and pop, each hue in Le Métier de Beauté’s Nouvelle Vague Kaleidoscope Eye Kit reflects the spark present throughout the French cinema New Wave. When combined, the colors provoke an elegant and daring look for a jaw-dropping eye. The shades from top to bottom are Nouvelle, a sheer mink negative (I had no idea what "negative" meant here, but the moment I touched the rose gold, I sighed); Gamine, a satin pink celluloid; Icon, a silkly, matte, Parisian mauve; and Fin, a smoldering black carbon.

All four pigments intertwine to create a prism for the ultimate color contrast with the wearer's eye shape and color. Using the Le Métier de Beauté signature eye shadow application technique, "Couches de Couleur" (the layering of color), each shade is selected to evoke one element in a crescendo, warm, cool, hot, and cold.The combination is famed for increasing the femininity of the eyes, while adding a dash of mystery. Kaleidoscope devotees know that well.

I swatched quickly before the sun set. I used a sponge-tipped applicator and applied all four shades heavily, except for Fin, the black shade. It's so dark, I applied it in one pass.

I nearly died when I swatched Nouvelle at the top of the palette. Rose gold is one of my favorite eye shadow shades, and Nouvelle qualifies among the best of the best. Le Métier de Beauté's eyeshadow textures and finish are superb. Really, just look at it and tell me that it's not worth the price of the whole Kaleidoscope! The shimmering pink Gamine below is a fabulous shade - for the eyes or the cheeks. I'd wear it as a blush in a heartbeat. It will do double duty on my face.

The matte Gamine is a mauve-rose-lavender hybrid that, given my coloring, I can't wear alone on my eyelids. It will bring out the red unless I play with it and blend it with another one of the shades. I need to do that, and I'll publish Part 2 soon, showing you layered shades as well as various "looks."

Fin is among the blackest black eye shadows I own. It can be applied with a lighter hand, for a seriously smoky eye, but I will probably use it as a liner. There's little room in my early-to-bed life for the midnight vixen look. While the 60's scene was a rejection of standard and formulaic film-making, inadvertently creating the impetus for the social dissatisfaction with the establishment, I was still a naive Virginia high school and college girl, wondering why there was such a social revolution surrounding me.

This Kaleidoscope is distinctive - and I love it. I'm already thinking about the colors I want to blend and imagining the resulting elegance. Maybe I'll even get Michael Reinhardt at Neiman Marcus Mazza Gallerie to show me how I can wear a smoky eye with Fin. I hope to see him this week. Or, where is Dustin Lujan? He's traveling now, I hear. He hasn't been in the DC area for a long time. Or Mikey Castillo, whose inspiration created this spectacular Kaleidoscope?

The Nouvelle Vague Collection will be available in September - amazingly soon. You might want to place a pre-order at your favorite Le Métier de Beauté counter. Like all Le Métier de Beauté limited editions, it will sell out. You'll regret not acting faster if you miss it, and you'll join the legions of women, like those who called Sabrina in Westchester last week, looking for it.

I promise I'll show you some various blends - as soon as I can. I can't wait to experiment. It will be on my arm, of course. You know I don't consider myself a makeup model.

A messege to my friends at Le Métier de Beauté: I'm going to need a vat of Nouvelle. Would you please release it as a single True Colour Eye Shadow? I can predict this one will be worn straight down to the bottom of its swing-out pan.

Photos by Best Things in Beauty