Review: L'Oreal HiP Darkwave Eyeshadow Duo (MAC dupe alert!)

[UPDATE: The lovely Joeybunny just informed me that MAC Fiction has been discontinued--I'm so out of touch with MAC it's not even funny--so if you miss it and want a good, solid dupe, read on!]

If you saw this post, you know I went a little bananas when I first saw the limited edition L'Oreal HiP Midnight Muse collection. Two duos immediately jumped out at me, and when I went back to pick them up (after finding some forgotten coupons!) the duo with the taupe shade, Enchantress, was sold out (not a surprise). But I was able to get the one with that pretty olive green shimmer, Darkwave, which I'd like to show you today.

First of all, I want to thank a nice reader who goes by the name levmealona for leaving a comment yesterday to let me know that she thinks the taupe shade in Enchantress looks exactly like the taupe in the core collection duo Sassy. I own Sassy (which I reviewed here and compared to MAC Satin Taupe back before I had a real camera), and I pulled it out today to compare it to the blurry photo of Enchantress that I showed you here, and well, I think I might agree with her. So unless you would like a matte black (Enchantress comes with a matte black while Sassy comes with a deep teal shimmer) then you may be better off just sticking with Sassy. Or at least you don't have to be too sad if you see this new display and Enchantress is already sold out.

So let's take a look at Darkwave:

L'Oreal HiP Studio Secrets Eyeshadow Duo in Darkwave 330

(retail: around $7.99)

As you can see, this duo comes with a medium charcoal gray matte and a deep olive green shimmer. I'm a bit of an olive green shimmer freak (I own way too many for my own good) and I was really hoping that this one might be a little different from the rest. Looking at the shadow while still in the packaging, I detected that it might have an interesting edge to it, because it appeared to have a touch of pewter, as opposed to being just a straight-up olive green.

The shadows themselves don't stray from the nice texture of most HiP duos. The shimmer shadow is smooth and applies wonderfully (and of course is highly pigmented). The matte shadow is a step above most drugstore mattes, in my opinion. Not super pigmented, yet not as chalky and difficult to work with as a lot of drugstore mattes (but nowhere near as buttery and perfect as Wet n Wild's mattes).

The more I played around with the olive green shimmer in this duo, the more I had a sneaking suspicion that I might already own this shade, from another brand. So I pulled out the big guns, folks! I went to my "active eyeshadows" crate (as opposed to my "expired eyeshadows" crate, which I keep solely for reference purposes) and I dumped it out onto my bed and started sifting. And lo and behold, I found a dupe!

(be sure to enlarge and then magnify this collage to get a better look)

Ding ding ding! We have a MAC dupe! I believe that the olive green in the Darkwave duo is a nice dupe of MAC Fiction. But I DO need to tell you that, in person, Fiction has that underlying pewter tendency that I was actually hoping to find in Darkwave. It was impossible to photograph but, in real life, Fiction is an olive green with a charcoal/pewter base (even though the gold shimmer comes out and dominates my photos). The green in Darkwave is more of a true olive green shimmer and lacks that underlying pewter tone. But honestly, for a drugstore dupe, they're incredibly similar and only people like us (eyeshadow and makeup fanatics) might be able to tell them apart. And even then, we'd need to look very closely.

Isn't it funny that sometimes the color you're looking for is already right under your nose? I went into this looking for an interesting olive green with pewter undertones, only to discover that I already OWN an interesting olive green with pewter undertones. But hey, at least I found a MAC dupe to share with you, right?

Do you own any of the HiP items from the Midnight Muse collection? How do you like them so far? I'd love to hear from you!