REVIEW: VIOLETTE_FR
I’ve been a fan of makeup artist Violette Serrat for a while now — I stumbled on her makeup tutorials for Violet Grey around 2016 and have followed her career with interest ever since. I’ve enjoyed her collaborations with Estée Lauder (Poppy Sauvage in spring 2018; La Dangereuse in fall 2018 and Oh Naturelle in spring 2019), so I was very excited about the launch of her eponymous brand VIOLETTE_FR in spring 2021.
It’s been about a year since VIOLETTE_FR’s first release of products and judging from Violette’s Instagram it seems like they’ll be releasing more soon, so I thought now would be a good time to share a more in-depth review. I’ve tried everything except for the Yeux Paint in Tout Doux and the Bisou Balm in Guimauve, but have plenty of swatches and thoughts about everything else!
Skin Care / Hair / Perfume
Boum-Boum Milk
Overall, I think many of the products are good — and some excellent enough that I’m optimistic about the brand’s future. I was most surprised by how much I like Boum-Boum Milk! I was very skeptical of this as its marketed as a ‘three-in-one’ and also Violette’s whole brand seems to be more centered around makeup not skincare, but it genuinely is a really nice moisturizer. I’ve been struggling with rosacea and increasingly sensitive skin, and Boum-Boum Milk is very soothing and hydrating. I am not the biggest fan of the name, but I’ve gone through three bottles and plan to continue using it as long as Violette sells it! Also, it’s travel-friendly (exactly 100ml) which is super convenient — I’d recommend finding another plastic cap for the spritzer though (I used one from an old Glossier face spray) because the larger cap isn’t that secure.
Frange Puff Dry Shampoo
The dry shampoo is also perfect for traveling, and I like that you can purchase refills and keep your original applicator. The brush-style is very nice for bangs, but if you are on the oilier side like me, you have to work quite a bit on the scalp / part area to get enough on to really notice a difference. It also doesn’t smell very strongly (which I like!) — obviously through 2021 I haven’t been traveling that much, but when travel becomes more possible, I can easily see this as something I’d take with me. It’s compact and effective! The only thing I wonder about is the brush — should it be washed periodically like a makeup brush? So far it hasn’t become grody or anything, but it feels a little unhygienic to just keep sopping up scalp oils and leaving it as is, but I’m worried washing it with soap will gum up the powder dispensing mechanism somehow. Anyway, minor critique!
Avec Amour Perfume
The perfume is fine. It smells a bit like a fancy hotel bathroom to me, but I think it’s one of those scents that reacts with your personal body chemistry so YMMV! It’s a very pretty bottle, and I like the oil format. I would be excited if they released more scents, like a sophisticated rose or something like a santal that’s not too Santal 33-y.
Makeup
From top to bottom: Baume Shine; Yeux Paint mattes in Tendre Corail, Caramel Chaud and Ciel de Nuit; Yeux Paint twinklings in Rose d’Aurore, Cuivre de l’Aube, Bleu de Minuit and Scarabeé d’Or; Petal Bouche Matte in Amour Fou
Yeux Paint Liquid Eyeshadow + Liner
Alright — here’s where it gets interesting. Overall, I’d give the twinkling Yeux Paints a 7/10 and the matte Yeux Paints a 4/10. I respect the fact they are super super pigmented (even tho that can make them — especially the mattes — difficult to work with) and I like most of the colors (and really love two!). However, I think the applicator needs a redesign — it’s a bit too thick and comes out with too much product that’s difficult to scrape off, making it difficult to use right out of the tube (especially for someone like me who has limited lid space!). I can’t easily use it as a liner, because any line I draw with the applicator is too thick! Unfortunately in my experience, difficulties introduced by the applicator are compounded by the formula. I just wish it was a little more blendable and easier to manipulate — for example, if I try to use a cotton swab to clean up a too-thick line, it kind of just smears everywhere and looks messy, and then it dries really fast so it’s a race against the clock to try to blend out the color into a nice shape. I’ve tried using brushes, but again — the formula just dries too fast and is kind of sticky, so you’re struggling with a sort of stiff, tacky texture that’s hard to work with. I find that I run into these issues more with the mattes than the twinkling ones — the twinkling ones seem to have a slightly more slick formula that’s easier to move around.
Color-wise, I find Caramel Chaud and Tendre Corail to be a bit too warm / yellow-ish to be super flattering for my undertones. I like caramel and coral as eyeshadow shades, but these ones just seem off! Even Rose d’Aurore and Cuivre de l’Aube (which in general I more or less like) are on the warmer side — so fair warning on these colors if you aren’t a fan of warm-undertones in eye makeup.
There are some winners: I am obsessed with Scarabée d’Or!!!! This out of all of the Yeux Paints is the easiest formula to work with, and is such a cool unique color! A greenish glittery gold. I get compliments every time I wear it, and I really don’t think I have anything else like it in my collection. It’s a statement color that is also weirdly understated and very wearable!
I also really like Ciel de Nuit, I just wish it was easier to work with. Rose d’Aurore and Cuivre de l’Aube are flattering in that they bring out the green in my eyes nicely, but at certain moments they can also look a little bit muddy / reddish because they are both so coppery. Bleu de Minuit is fine, it’s not my favorite color ever but it’s not unflattering. I struggle with this one and Ciel de Nuit because as dark colors I want to draw a thin line so that I have some space between the line and my eyelid fold, but it’s just so hard to do that with the applicator and formula! I’m going to try mixing them with some Duraline and using a smaller brush à la Jamie French — I’ll write an update if that proves successful.
Petal Bouche in Amour Fou — beautiful color… difficult to apply!
Petal Bouche Matte Lipstick
Similarly to most of the Yeux Paints, this comes so close to being something I’d really like, but the formula and applicator just really don’t work for me. The applicator is too big and has too much product on it right out of the tube that’s hard to scrape off in a uniform way, and the formula itself is both too liquid-y and dries too fast! Also similar to the Yeux Paints, Petal Bouche is really pigmented which I respect I guess, but it also makes it difficult to blend and clean up if you make a mistake. I like the color, but it’s so hard to apply this in a way that just looks normal and nice that I really don’t wear it often. When I consider wearing this, I feel like it’s a huge commitment with a high chance of failure — if I get the lines right, the color is patchy. If I get a nice thin layer of color, I’m uneven and have weird smudges from trying to fix it that won’t go away even with makeup remover. I know I’m not the best at makeup, but usually I’m ok with liquid lipstick! There’s just enough difficulty in using it that makes it not worth the trouble. I understand not wanting to change the formula (maybe there’s something about it where you have to have that kind of consistency to create that ‘petal finish’) but I hope they consider some adjustments to the applicator. I really like the color and the idea of what this product should be (rose petal lips?!?! Who doesn’t want that?!) so I’m really disappointed it didn’t work for me. Also! The color you see in a lot of the promotional images isn’t really accurate IMO — in the tube and swatched it seems a bit more rose red, but dried down I find it to be more of a deep purple red / burgundy. Still nice, but deeper than I expected based on the pictures / how it looks in the tube.
Bisou Balm
Cute and easy to use — nothing super groundbreaking nor disappointing. I find Bêtise to be a bit on the drier side, so I like to layer it on top of a clear lip balm, whereas Calisson is a little more emollient. I wasn’t super excited when these came out, so I only purchased Bêtise and then decided to try Calisson a lot later when it came back in a re-stock. Still on the fence with Guimauve — I like sheer peachy lip colors and the Bisou Balm formula enough that I think I’ll purchase it when it comes back, but if I’m too slow and it sells out again I won’t be devastated.
Baume Shine (inner eye corners and cupid’s bow)
Baume Shine Universal Highlighter
LOVE!!!! This stuff is great, easily my favorite makeup product of VIOLETTE_FR’s first collection, and I think one of my all-time favorite highlighters ever. It’s just a really nice everyday highlighter — subtle enough that it doesn’t look obvious you’re wearing highlighter, but doing enough to catch the light and give you a nice luminous glow. It doesn’t really show up that much in photographs, but looks really lovely in person. My only complaint is that after a few uses, it starts to look a bit rough in the tube. I’ve been using mine regularly since March of 2021, and it’s developed a weird bumpy texture and these little gritty pieces are starting to surface and break off. Maybe it’s just gotten old? Whatever it is, I still love and am very impressed by this product! I just wish the other makeup offerings were as simple, effective and easy to use.
Final Thoughts
Boum-Boum Milk and Baume Shine are, for me, VIOLETTE_FR’s best products and clear standouts of things I’d strongly recommend other people to try. I’ll also give honorable mentions to the Scarabée d’Or Yeux Paint and dry shampoo. Everything else however is a bit up in the air — if you’re a fan of Violette and some of these products speak to you, I don’t think you’d regret buying them, but I also don’t think they meet my standards of true awesomeness I expect from Violette. Like — I see Boum-Boum Milk and Baume Shine and think — “wow! These are amazing!” and I just want to feel that for everything else but … don’t, unfortunately. There’s a strange thing about this brand — I feel like it has these conflicting energies to it. For example, Boum-Boum Milk, Baume Shine, Frange Puff and the Bisou Balms all feel like they are going for a simple, clean, well-executed, high-quality and effortless vibe, whereas Petal Bouche and the Yeux Paints are very high maintenance. I guess that’s not really a bad thing — vacillating between the two is truly how a lot of people (including myself!) practice makeup! — but I think it’s just that they’ve mastered the simple effortless products more thoroughly than the high maintenance glam ones, so when you look at everything as a whole it feels a bit uneven.
In fairness, I also want to acknowledge the possibility I’m mistaking personal ineptitude for empirical failure for some of these more challenging high-glam products — but… on the other hand, I do think I’ve tried enough products to experience the difference between teeing up with optimal conditions for a more technically challenging look vs. having to fight both yourself and what you’re working with. So, take that as you will! In the very least, I hope this was helpful if you’re deciding whether any of these products are for you. All in all, there’s enough here in these first releases that I can genuinely say I’m a fan of the brand and that I’m truly excited for any future launches. It’ll be interesting to see how they progress and what directions they take — I just hope they include revisiting some of these applicators 😁
One last shout-out — I usually get annoyed with brand newsletters, but I recommend signing up for the VIOLETTE_FR one! There’s the expected talking up of in-house products, but also a lot of sincere reflection and helpful advice. It feels genuine and heart-felt and has more than once made me actually reflect or consider things in a different or more deep way. I actually look forward to getting it every week — that’s saying a lot for a corporate email!
