Fashion

The 'Flashdance' Palette Is Movie-Inspired Mattes

by Amy Sciarretto

While '90s nostalgia remains a thing in 2016, an indie makeup brand wants to invoke your inner '80s kid. Sola Look's Flashdance Eyeshadow Palette features four, extra-large pans of matte eyeshadow shades. Even better, the Flashdance makeup palette features the iconic image of Jennifer Beals as welder-by-day, dancer-by-night Alex in her off-the-shoulder sweatshirt and red heels on the cover. You will want to display this on your vanity or wherever you keep your makeup.

The makeup aisles, both digital and brick and mortar, are increasingly crowded with new palettes — be it blogger collabos or blockbusters, like the newest addition to the Urban Decay NAKED series in the form of the NAKED Ultimate Basics all-matte shadow palette. Still, Sola Look's Flashdance palette separates itself from its volume of peers because of the packaging and the unexpected source of inspo, as well as the quality of these mattes.

Also, rather than giving you 15 small shadows to play with, the palette offer four big ones. You get an intense, focused concentration of good things, rather than too much of many good things.

Sola Look's Flashdance Eyeshadow palette is out on Tuesday, Sept. 27 at midnight ET and will be available via the Sola Look site. How much does the Flashdance palette cost?

It will set you back by $32.

That shakes out to about $8 a shadow, since the palette hosts four bigger-than-usual pans. The shadows were inspired by the film's industrial, Pittsburgh setting. I love that the brand opted to use the film's steel mills where Alex worked as a source of inspo for the hues, as opposed to something more obviously beautiful, like Beals herself.

Since the shadow pans are so huge, you get a lot of product. My response was not, "Wait, only four shadows?" Think of it this way — you'll be working with a limited amount of colors, which means you won't be overwhelmed by too many shade options. You also won't be left with two or three shades you never use.

Essentially, the palette allows you to create a signature look you can repeat often, since you are trafficking in four colors. It can be your "go to" when you want an easy but beautiful eye look. Plus, the packaging is adorbs.

Alex is a soft, peachy, beigey nude, named after the film's heroine. Jeanie is a brickish red that is christened after Alex's figure skater BFF. Maniac, which takes its moniker from one of the film's most memorable songs and dance sequences, is purple x gray and is by far my favorite in the palette. Then there is Passion, which nods to the lyrics of the Irene Cara-sung theme song and is a deep brown.

I used the palette this morning, sweeping Alex as a wash up to the brow bone. Then I added Maniac in the crease.

I did a purple x gray smoke eye look, with a cat-eye flick, courtesy of Kylie Cosmetics Kyliner in Black. Tomorrow, I plan to mix Jeanie and Passion for a reddish x bronze smoky eye.

Move over, '90s. Sola Look is bringing the '80s back in a gorge way, thanks to these movie-inspired mattes.

Images: Sola Look/Instagram (1); Amy Sciarretto (2); Courtesy of Sola Look (2)