Leave your dainty compacts at home- Beauty Bay’s latest palette launch is colossal in both size and scope. Like your own personal makeup studio, good luck squashing these in your handbag- I could barely fit all three of the 42-pan eyeshadow palettes on my desk, and opening them all at once essentially created my own personal hall of mirrors in the office. Handy if you crave a bit of privacy, but also mega for doing your makeup. Here’s the lowdown on the larger than life Colour Theory  launch.

Rather dramatically named Evolve ,  Origin  and Identity , all come in at £25 each and allow for a myriad of makeup looks. Origin is the most close to ‘basic’ neutrals, mainlining on creams, bronzes, browns and earthy jewel tones, Evolve steps the shade play up a notch with bolder metallics and rich hued mattes, while Identity brings more flashy chromes to the table, alongside peppy primary colours. Not only do you 42 shadows to dabble in, but each pan is enormous- value for money wise Colour Theory is a cracker.

Not only on account of the silky shadow texture, but also because there’s a flexible ‘paint by numbers’ system that guides you as to which shadows to use where, so that killer looks become simple logic. An acrostic style shadow formation guides you as to which shadows to use for base, a transition shade, the crease of the eye, at the lashline, for a pop of colour in the centre of the lid and as a highlight at the corner of the eye, or wherever else you fancy a bit of sparkle. You can disregard it completely of course, but sticking to the shadow ‘map’ means that everything will harmonise nicely, and it should speed up your getting ready time.

If you follow the vertical shadow matching guide to the letter, you can create seven expertly curated eyeshadow ‘artworks’ per palette, but in reality you’ll probably do what we all do and wear a few right down to the bottom without dipping a toe/ blender brush into some of the more ‘out there’ shades. Which is fine, but if you ever did want to try sheeny red eye, Colour Theory will give you the blueprint to pull it off in the most wearable way possible.

In addition to being kind to the animals, the Beauty Bay lot are highly considerate of customers too- if you’re not 100 per cent impressed by your Colour Theory buy, the team will offer you a full refund. Unless things go seriously awry, however, you shouldn’t need one- the long-lasting, crease resistant and ethically sound shadows tick the beauty boxes in our book, and save them going stale, they will last for donkey’s. More launches like this please, although perhaps downsize for the ‘on the go’, jetsetting makeup crowd. One Colour Theory palette probably constitutes your entire hand baggage allowance.

Buy online  from 12pm on Thursday 13 September

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