Tom Ford Shade and Illuminate Review

The Shade and Illuminate palette by Tom Ford contains a gorgeous highlighter and contouring cream. The textures are soft and luminous and perfect for creating that Tom Ford sculpted look, or just to subtly enhance your bone structure. Intensity One is the lighter of the two available and it contains a warm brown cream and a glimmering white highlighter. The texture is soft and blends out perfectly, retaining its intensity even as it dissolves into the skin.


The contour is quite warm, I was worried once I swatched it that it would have the same orangy tone on my super pink fair skin that most "contour" products have, but it blends into the skin so well that it doesn't appear that way on my face. But you can see the warmth in the swatch on my super, super pale inner arm (seriously, I couldn't give you a foundation match for it because there isn't one in most lines; my Bobbi Brown foundation stick in Porcelain is orange against it).


The highlighter is more glimmer than color payoff; paired with the contour it's enough to softly highlight the cheeks, but I think most people would be disappointed by it without the additional contour.


The packaging is, of course, stunning and luxe, hefty in the hand, but not overly bulky. It's the ideal for high end packaging, if you ask me.


The brush (not included) is the like a larger, but proportionally shorter MAC 239 eyeshadow brush. It's soft and dense, but an unusual shape for a contouring brush.


I hope to do a look with this in the next few days, so I'll post a full face picture. In the meantime, however, enjoy these photos.