Urban Decay’s Naked palette was said to be the best selling shadow palette of all time. Not exactly sure how that’s all calculated up to reveal such an honor, but I know that seemingly every Makeup Artist, beauty blogger, and 20 year old out there ponied up $50 for 12 brown shades that I happily passed on purchasing. Too much glitter, too many ho-hum browns, and not enough eye-catching standouts to turn my jaded head. Naked 2, well, that’s another story.
Let’s first compare the two.
Original Naked Palette $50 A bunch of browns with a blue-grey thrown in.
My Naked Palette 2 $50. Still neutral (hello, Naked..) but with some cool tones splashed in there.
A closer look at the first few shades and the Crease Brush side of the dual ended brush.
And the other shades with the Shadow Brush end shown
It’s housed in a sleek, mirrored tin for extra protection for super clumsy girls like me.
Let’s be clear; it’s still a palette filled with neutral colors, some you may already have versions of sitting around. I like Naked 2 better than the original because it only has two shades (Chopper and YDK) that have bits of glitter whereas Naked has several making it less wearable for those of us who aren’t 13. Foxy, Booty Call, and a few others are pretty standard finds and nothing special outside of Urban’s highly pigmented formula. I love the mauvey twist from the mate Tease, cool gray shimmer of Pistol, sexy silver Verve, gorgeous plumy liner/ smokey eye maker Busted, and the deep Blackout – the blackest shadow you’ll find. All in all, there are enough choices and combinations to make Naked 2 a total hit and a better overall palette than the original. Price-wise if you were to buy each shade separately it would be around $200 (not including the cost for the brush and tiny lip gloss that you could probably do without.)
When seeing if a palette is something you need, it’s best to look at each shade individually (in person is best) and even take a pic if you need to compare it at home with what you already have so you aren’t buying the same colors over and over. It’s one of the few palettes where every color is a winner, and their shadows are among the best – great pigment and easy to blend so they look better on the skin than chalky shadows like M.A.C. which is exactly why I nabbed it to use in my kit.