Lorac Combined All of Its Best Eye Palettes Into One for Its 25 Anniversary

My mom took me to our local Ulta Beauty for the first time when I was in middle school. I had little interest or knowledge of makeup at the time, but she told me she'd buy me one item if I saw something we both liked enough. An open Lorac Pro Palette quickly snuck into my peripheral view, and I instantly knew that was the thing I wanted. I walked out of that store with my first-ever eye shadow palette, which I ended up using nearly every day for the next two years (and continued buying refills of it well through adulthood).

To celebrate the brand's 25th anniversary and that palette, which sparked mine and plenty of other people's love of makeup, Lorac is launching an epic fall collection. There's a lot for me to go over, so settle in. First thing's first: it features two new 18-shade Pro Palettes called Soleil and Noir, one containing brighter, warm hues and the other containing deeper, cool ones. Additionally, Lorac has created two six-shade Miniature Pro Palettes, both of which feature a bite-sized selection of gold, copper, and brown shades in matte and metallic finishes. There's also a Pro Liquid Liner in black and brown hues, but without a doubt, the main star of this collection is the Pro Palette Artist Edition: Meraki.

To a Lorac nerd like me, the Meraki palette is a dream come true because it contains Lorac's best pre-existing eye shadow shades all in once place. To help curate the palette's shade selection, the brand called upon its right-hand makeup artist, Kelsey Deenihan. That choice could not have been more perfect, as it turns out, because the Pro Palette was also one of her first palettes ever. 

Together, Deenihan tells Allure, she and Lorac's product development team rifled through prior iterations of the Pro Palette and other limited-edition Lorac palettes to determine the most popular shades and put them all together.

And look, I know you're thinking, "More neutral eye shadow palettes? Really?" But take it from both Deenihan and me: This formula just hits different. "When you have an eye shadow, what you obviously want is the strongest payout; you don't want to have to dig into it to be able to get the color that it looks like it's supposed to be," Deenihan explains. "So I always look for something that's not too hard-pressed in the pan, and I find that Lorac does a really good job of that."

In other words, these shadows are soft enough to have serious pigment and blend-ability, but not so soft that they crumble and leave fallout all over your face. And having a formula that perfectly rides that fine line creates a much easier makeup experience — there's a reason I used the Pro Palette to learn all of my eye shadow techniques, after all.

Above anything else, Lorac's fall anniversary collection highlights my absolute favorite thing about the brand, which is its unwavering consistency. 25 years later, this line still harkens back to Lorac founder and makeup artist Carol Shaw's goal for the original Pro Palette.

 "I had a vision for what I wanted to create: artistry palettes that I could tote around in my makeup kit, which housed all of my favorite eye shadow shades that I’d been using on my celebrity clients for years," she recalls to Allure. "I wanted each palette to contain both mattes and shimmers to create any look you desired; I knew I wanted the formula to be highly-pigmented, long-lasting, super-smooth, buttery, and able to be used wet or dry for eyeliners."

And every single palette that Lorac has released over the past decades has been exactly that — including the palettes in this new collection.

Lorac's 25th-anniversary fall collection is available for $15 to $45 on September 22 at lorac.com.

All products featured on Allure are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

More on eye makeup:

• Eye-Shadow Tips Makeup Artists Want You to Know
• The 29 Best Eye Shadow Palettes of All Time
• 11 Ways to Make Your Eyes Look Bigger

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