It seems like everything MERIT launches gets majorly hyped upon release and piled with much love and praise. Since MERIT's launch two years ago, I've either been gifted or have purchased every single MERIT product, aside from the brow product because there's no need for brow product when you don't have brows to use it on (thanks, alopecia). The majority of their products are solid — their mascara is the best I've ever used — but some have been either middling or disappointing.
Their Solo Shadows fall somewhere between middling and disappointing for me. Let's talk about why.
A Healthy Dose of Skepticism
I was already narrowing my eyes a bit at MERIT when I was reading the claims in their Instagram posts leading up to the launch of Solo Shadow. The claim that this cream-to-powder product didn't need a primer was my first cause for suspicion. Add onto that the claims that the product absolutely doesn't budge, doesn't crease — ever.
As a marketer myself, I tend to be wary of bombastic data that could make us look like we're fudging numbers. Even if you have the data to back up your statements, you have to be skeptical of too-good-to-be-true numbers that'll have your end-users (in this case, the consumer) asking how accurate the numbers really are. And, frankly, should have you asking the same thing. I'm not saying MERIT is lying, because 1.) I don't believe they are, and 2.) I'm not looking for a legal problem with a company with a lot more power and financial resources than me. What I am saying is that, while their data shows that 100% of their 31 product testers said Solo Shadow wore for eight hours or more and didn't crease or settle into fine lines in that same time span, there's one major question to ask that isn't noted here: What were the skin types of those testers?
Why is that important? Because if you have skin as oily as mine is — and I'm certainly not an anomaly — you're painfully familiar with how difficult it is to get eyeshadow to stay put, no matter how much primer you use. Oily skin is the bane of makeup's existence, and oily eyelids are no exception. My skepticism was only increased when MERIT posted a video of a woman with swatches on her arm, rubbing them to show they weren't transferring, and someone in the comments said she could only get her swatches off with an oil-based cleanser.
This of course didn't surprise me; welcome to my life, where all the oil I produce, despite my best efforts, blasts through makeup. Primers and powders and mattifiers only delay the inevitable. Concerned, I commented that I'd love to know how the shadows performed on oily skin, given how difficult it is for those of us with this skin type to get shadow to last on our lids. MERIT never replied to that comment.
Early access time arrived and, the sucker that I am, I ordered every color ($24 each) plus the new brush, Brush No. 2 ($20). (Every color was calling me.) I was going to put these to the test and give MERIT a fair chance, and see just how well they really performed.
My Three-Day Wear Test
I received all of the shadows on a Friday and tried one a day from Saturday through Monday, using a different color and application type (brush, finger) each day. The swatches are pictured above, from top to bottom: Social, Viper, Brun, Midcentury, Nelson, Studio, Midnight, Vachetta.
My initial thoughts upon opening and swatching:
The pots are difficult to open, even after the first opening. The lids are shallow, making them difficult to hold onto while twisting.
The formula is definitely cream to powder, and is layerable for creating washes of color to more pigmented looks. (For most colors, at least; more on that in a bit.)
Swatches required two to three swipes of color to be impactful; oddly, Social was the only one that swatched a bit crumbly.
The swatches were difficult to get off with a makeup wipe and required a lot of rubbing, but they did eventually come off without an oil-based cleanser.
A number of the colors look extremely similar to one another, especially Midcentury and Vachetta. While they're all gorgeous and very wearable, It would've been nice to have a little more variety in this lineup.
Saturday: Viper
The first color I tried was Viper, a deep, rich green. I applied with the fat end of the brush all over the eyelid, then used the sharp end to apply shadow to the lower lash line for some drama. Per MERIT, I didn't use a primer because they've repeatedly told people on Instagram that a primer isn't necessary and that it should be applied to clean lids.
MERIT warns that you have less than a minute to blend these shadows out, which I agree with. Once they set, they're set pretty well and harder to blend, but while malleable they blend pretty easily, for the most part. (If you've ever used VIOLETTE_FR'S Yeux Paint, it's a similar experience minus the difference in formula and nowhere near as pigmented as those liquid shadows.) But Viper was somewhat patchy as I continued to layer it on and didn't blend as nicely once I tried to get it to be more pigmented and opaque. I eventually got it to layer, but it wasn't the easiest.
I put it on around noon and by dinner time five hours later it was already creasing. By the time I went karaoking after dinner, it was a hot mess and looked awful. I blended out what was left with my ring finger but didn't have any faith it would stay and it didn't. It was a warm day but not especially hot; this was just the eyeshadow not being able to withstand the oils of my skin. Not a good start.
Sunday: Midcentury
New day, same story. Decided to give the shade Midcentury a shot, but this time I applied it with my ring finger. Blended it out across the entire eyelid and did a second layer for a soft, natural wash of color with a little more pigment, but didn't do anything on the lower lash line.
And in about the same amount of time as Saturday, all of the eyeshadow had gathered across the center of my eyelid. Bear in mind that the claim is that, per MERIT's study, 100% of women claimed this shadow didn't budge after eight hours of wear, whereas mine wasn't even lasting five hours.
Monday: Social
By the third day, I didn't have much faith that things were going to go any differently, but I closed out my wear test with Social, a pretty mauve shade that leans lavender.
Again, I applied with my ring finger, but found that this shade, while layerable in the sense that it wasn't patchy and blended easily with each layer, was also difficult to build up to much beyond a wash of color. By the time I'd done three to four layers of this on each lid, the buildup on my ring finger was much darker than the final look on my lids.
And, you guessed it, it lasted about as long as the other shades. However, Social lasted the longest of the three and I'm not sure why. I was as oily as ever, didn't use primer like I didn't the previous two days, and just went about my normal routine, but for some reason Social lasted about an hour longer than Viper or Midcentury before creasing badly across my lids.
Final Thoughts
MERIT's Solo Shadow is a great product — if you don't have really oily skin. Otherwise, you should be highly skeptical of its claims to be budge-proof and crease-proof and that it doesn't require a primer to be such a miracle product. The cream-to-powder formula is really nice and looks beautiful on the lids upon initial application. But some colors, like Viper, were patchy and hard to blend evenly even with the brush, and didn't really want to build up beyond a wash of color.
This is a recurring theme among MERIT'S products; see certain shades of Flush Balm, like Terracotta. It's also hard for the brand to hide it. When they share videos of different women using Flush Balm and buffing it out, it almost disappears on many of them, which has been my experience with some of the colors. And they often get called out for it in the comments.
The marketing for this product has been a little odd, too. MERIT has taken every opportunity to trounce the multicolor palette and position Solo Shadow as a return to the simplicity of the one-shadow days of the 90s. They're speaking my language there. But at the same time, I can't count how many comments were from women saying they were buying every single color, which MERIT of course cheered on. It's strange mixed messaging: buy only what you need, but we'd also love if you bought all eight colors in the lineup, which in itself is basically a palette.
The lids on these jars are unnecessarily difficult to open and hard to get a good grip on. They stack nicely though, so if you have these on your vanity or dresser ready to use, they won't take up as much space (and are nice to look at). But at $24 a pot, my expectations of transparency and honesty regarding this product's performance are high and Solo Shadow simply did not live up to those expectations. If you have really oily skin but still want to give these a shot (don't just take my word for it because it could work better for you than it did for me), I'd recommend only buying one or two at a time to experiment with.
I have two eyeshadow palettes (Anastasia Nouveau and e.l.f.'s Nude Mood) and a handful of single eyeshadows (a couple different shades of VIOLETTE_FR's Yeux Paint and one powder shadow I picked up at Walgreen's a few years ago). I wear them all sparingly because of how quickly they fade from my lids, but hoped I could believe MERIT's claims that these shadows were truly budge-and-crease-proof on everyone despite my doubts. But, as is usually the case, it was too good to be true.
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