I see the launch of the Kat Von D Shade + Light Eye Contour Quads as a colourful extension to her Shade + Light Eye Palette. You know… kind of like colourful addons that you can use to help flesh out the neutral look of the original palette.

Except… I was drawn to the shade range that is probably MOST like the original eyeshadow palette!

The brand new Kat Von D Shade + Light Eye Contour Quads come in four different colours that speak to different tonal shades. There’s Rust (matte brownish reds – which is the one featured in this post), Sage (matte greens), Plum (matte purples) and Smoke (matte cool grays). They’re also ALL matte shades.

So the Rust quad is… well… it’s pretty freaking gorgeous. As the name suggests, it features very warm and rusty shades. The largest pan is a bit more peach, the two middle shades are varying tones of orangey-red (be still my heart) and the final shade is a perfect brow bone highlight colour for me.

Swatched out on my skin you can see that they are really saturated with pigment. They do verge on slightly powdery (as does the original palette), but I’ll take that over a hardpacked shadow any day. I don’t tend to struggle with powdery shadows because I feel like you’ve got even more pigment to blend with.

I know a lot of people are going to compare the Rust quad to the warm toned section of the original KVD palette, so I thought I’d swatch both out for you to compare yourselves. They are definitely *similar*, but not quite the same. I prefer the tones in the Rust quad personally, but if you’re looking for more colour dimension to add to your collection, the other quads (Plum, Sage) may suit you better. You cannot go wrong with the formula though – so pick whichever quad suits your fancy!

Here’s how it played out on my face. I’m wearing only the Rust quad on my eyelids, and, since I know I’ll be asked, on my lips is Maybelline’s Vibrant Mandarin and on my cheeks is Hard Candy’s Skinny Dipping.

The Contour shade (the orange) was easily the most pigmented, so I’d say start small when you apply it to your lids and then keep building it up. I ended up whacking a whole ton on when I first applied it and the colour just kept blossoming over my lid as I was blending. (Not a bad thing, just worth mentioning!)

Final Thoughts

The Kat Von D Shade + Light Eye Contour Quad in Rust is a thing of beauty. The texture of the eyeshadows is soft and powdery (which I’ll leave up to you to decide if that’s a texture you enjoy – for me, that’s a thumbs up!) which make them very easy to blend. The colours are gorgeous and work incredibly well together – you can wear this quad without needing to pull in any other shadows for a cohesive eye look. I do find the packaging is a bit bulky, but it does fit with the KVD aesthetic so I understand the reasoning for it. I also love that she stuck to matte shadows with this launch. Overall product definitely gets two thumbs up from me!

The Kat Von D Shade +Light Eye Contour Quads can be purchased on sephora.ca for $34 CAD or on sephora.com for $26 USD.

The product featured in this post was sent to me for review.