Once upon a time, I owned absolutely zero taupe eyeshadows. I was convinced in my naivete, that because I looked horrid in any clothing and lip colors with any brown tones, that that same principle applied to my eyes as well. However, after hearing again and again on the makeup boards how so many people loved taupe eyeshadows, and seeing that Sephora was clearing out their entire stock of Napoleon Perdis, I hemmed and hawed and eventually went home with a color disc in #40, Irid. Taupe for the bargain price of $6.
To my surprise of course, I actually liked it, and thus, my obsession with taupes got its start. Of course now, it's one of the less impressive taupes in my stash, but it was my first, and so, I kick off this series with this lone shadow. Despite the makeup board's general dislike for this brand, I found this shadow to be quite nice. It's soft, smooth, and decently pigmented. It blends quite nicely, and I rather like it, even if I have never felt any real urge to buy more shadows from this brand (I feel like it's a bit overpriced at it's regular retail price.)
Irid. Taupe is, despite it's misleading name, not actually iridescent at all (or particularly taupe for that matter) While it does technically fall into the category of taupe, it has definite pink tones to it on my skin (currently something like nc25). At my current skin tone, it is only a fraction darker than my skin when applied to my lids. I will mostly use it to blend other colors now, but when I'm paler, I like to use it as a quick wash of color when I'm lazy or pressed for time.
Since it is the first of the taupes, I'm drawing a slight blank on shades to compare it to (I want to compare it to RBR Gracious Arasari, but it's currently floating around somewhere in my room). As I swatch more taupes, I may revisit old ones for comparison. Feel free to ask if you want any compared to shades you may find similar.
