Because of all of the drama happening with the lab, the collaborative BECCA and Jaclyn Hill Champagne Collection Eye Palette isn’t really worth reviewing at this point. However, I did want to talk about the palette a bit and the subsequent frenzied drama that has surrounded it in the last 48 hours.

To keep the story relatively short, the gist of the problem is that all of BECCA‘s products are made in the USA, whereas this eyeshadow palette was made in China. Via various social networks (Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter), both BECCA and Jaclyn Hill have addressed the issue as best they can. It seems that BECCA (in order to meet the timeline and demand for this launch) outsourced their product to another lab because they were assured that the quality would be identical. It turned out not to be, and YouTuber Rita B mentioned it in a video almost a week ago now after getting her hands on the palette. She was already well versed in BECCA‘s eyeshadow formula and noticed a discrepancy right away.

The ingredient deck turned out to be absolutely identical to powders by the brand Catrice. Catrice is a lovely brand, but their products go for a far cheaper price point, and therefore do not contain the usual ingredients that BECCA puts in their shadows. I’m not an ingredient junkie – I haven’t a clue what most of these items do, or do not do in my products, but I am aware that talc and occasionally some mica can be used as filler products and the palettes made in China had far more talc in them.

I watched all of the promo videos for this palette as I’m a fan of Jaclyn Hill, and she repeatedly said she was very hands on with this collection, but identified that the only shade she worked on in this palette was Champagne Toast (second shadow from the left). She’s said many times that the formula is not hers, but the colour and finish were. Some people reported having incredibly patchy eyeshadow palettes, while others said they were buttery and soft. Determining whether there were good or bad batches is near impossible to find out, as I feel everyone has a very different gauge of how shadows work on their own skin.

As a result of this backlash (and some of it was pretty intense and vicious), BECCA and Jaclyn Hill decided to pull the eyeshadow palette from the collection. The palette is no longer available on Sephora online and will not be sold in stores when the collection launches there mid-June. Sephora is accepting any and all returns with a full refund for this eyeshadow palette.

As I hadn’t tried the palette before the drama happened (about 48 hours ago now), I can’t say for sure what my initial reaction would have been to these shadows. I put them on my eyes for the first time this morning, and sure, they’re a little bit powdery  (on the level of LORAC powders), but had someone not told me about this different lab in China producing these shadows… I honestly doubt I would’ve noticed the difference. I love eyeshadow, that’s for damn sure (just check out my palette collection video!), but unless an eyeshadow is truly, TRULY terrible, it’s really hard for me to discern minute changes in formulas.

On me, I noticed zero fading throughout the day.

Sadly, the internet always prefers the drama llama route and people absolutely blew up about this online. I understand though – if you’re paying BECCA prices (which are certainly not cheap) but you’re getting Catrice-level ingredients (read: cheaper), then it’s offensive to the customer. But there’s a heck of a lot of us out there that bought this because we like both Jaclyn Hill and BECCA and simply wanted to support their endeavours. I doubt many of us would’ve noticed the quality difference had it not been brought to our attention.

So anyway, what did I do with this palette? Well, I noticed right off the bat that the colours were similar to my BECCA Ombre Rouge palette, so I swatched them side by side:

And low and behold – three of the shadows in the Champagne Collection Eye Palette are near enough to the Ombre Rouge one that I just decided to return it. While the palette I received seemed to work just fine for me, I didn’t feel it was unique enough to warrant keeping it at the near $50 CAD price point. (I am keeping the face palette and will review it shortly.)

On a personal level, I don’t feel cheated or duped and I will continue to buy products by BECCA. I feel like BECCA made a bad decision to outsource their eyeshadow to another lab and are suffering because of that mistake. I do feel like the eyeshadow palette was an afterthought for this collection and it’s entirely possible that they came up with the idea and then panicked to produce it quickly for the deadline. It’s a shame that it ended up this way, but hey, they pulled the plug on it due to quality and they’re easily providing refunds via Sephora. At this point in time, there’s not a heck of a lot more they can do except learn from it and move on. I suggest we all do the same as well.