Urban Decay Distortion Palette Review and Swatches

I can barely keep up with all the new releases from the big makeup brands recently! For the holidays, Urban Decay has launched the Heavy Metals eyeshadow palette, Heavy Metal Glitter Eyeliner, and now the new UD Distortion Palette. I’ve seen sneak peeks of other palettes in the works, so I’m sure even more are coming our way soon. But let’s talk about the new Distortion Palette, shall we? It’s available exclusively at Sephora and Urban Decay stores. As of the date of writing, it’s only available to Sephora VIB Rouge customers, but soon it will be available to all.

The Distortion palette has a gorgeous holographic lid that looks like shattered glass. There are fifteen shades in the palette – ten solid colors (nine are brand new) and five holographic “transformer hues” that are meant to be layered on top of the other colors to make new shades. If you look at the way the palette is laid out – the top transformer shades are meant to be layered on top of the two shades below it (vertical lines) or diagonally (see the lines on the palette?). Of course, you can use the colors any way you like, but the holographic shades come in gold shift, green shift, blue shift, lavender shift, and pink shift, and the colors near them have similar tones.

Here are a couple of shots of the holographic shades. For some reason, my camera wants to darken my skin tone in the first one, and it’s hard to capture these bad boys depending on the angle and the light. They’re much prettier in person!

The colors (from left to right starting at the top): Bleach (gold shift), Shifty (green shift), Space (blue shift), Mind Game (lavender shift), Blur (pink shift), First Offense (metallic burnt orange), Hot Box (deep green satin w/green micro-sparkle), 5.0 (metallic medium blue), Rogue (muted medium purple shimmer), Trash Talk (muted medium pink shimmer w/purple shift), Territorial (deep metallic bronze), Blackout (blackest black matte), Old Smoke (smoky metallic medium gray), Shag (metallic silver w/iridescent micro-sparkle), Velvet (metallic burgundy w/gold micro-sparkle).

I found Hot Box, Territorial and Blackout to be a bit patchy but very pigmented. I thought 5.0, Rogue and Old Smoke could be a little bit more pigmented. All the rest are exactly what I would expect – smooth, highly pigmented and easy to blend. Layering the holographic shades on top is fun – not something I had really tried before. I will be getting a lot of use out of this palette. I love that it has neutrals and fun colors – so there’s really something for everyone here. You can go corporate workplace mode, sexy smoky eye, or extreme unicorn – whichever you choose!

Urban Decay’s founder, Wende, was inspired by her early days of mixing up colors in her Laguna Beach bungalow in 1996. This palette is an artist’s dream – so many shade combos! I know this one will be big this season, so get yours before they run out!