You’re not misremembering: my first post about my True Winter makeup collection did include eyeshadows and eyeliners. However, I realized after publishing that post that I’d forgotten to include a few products, and then I bought two more TW-appropriate eyeshadows and decided I might as well do a whole new writeup. So my previous post is now limited to cheeks and lips, and I’ve moved my discussion of eye makeup to this post!

There’s no getting around it: True Winter eye makeup will feel very restrictive to anyone who loves experimenting with colors and techniques. I’ve never been much of an eyeshadow person (unless you count my questionable dalliance with Modern Renaissance in 2017), but even I was alarmed to find out from my friend Lena that the canonical True Winter eye consists of a veil of sheer white, pink, or taupe shimmer and/or a swipe of gray or black eyeliner. True Winter can also wear sharp graphic eyeliner in bold colors (e.g. cobalt or violet), or just mascara and a bare lid. Perhaps the quintessential TW look is the one below: black cat-eye liner and cool-toned red lipstick.

As I’ve written before, seasonal color analysis has one basic purpose: to make the face appear as balanced and harmonious as possible. If that’s your own purpose in wearing makeup, the Sci\Art system (don’t ask me the purpose of that backslash) will help you tremendously—but you may very well have different goals. I think there’s some danger in subordinating your personal preferences to any system that promises All the Answers, whether that system is seasonal analysis or Kibbe or MBTI or the orthodoxies of a political party. Knowing the colors that flatter your features is empowering, but there’s equal value in wearing the colors, shapes, and textures that make you happy, flattery be damned.

Then again, happiness and flattery often overlap for me (hence the plethora of True Winter lipsticks already in my collection). And when they do, I reach for one of the products below. I can’t promise that all of these eyeshadows and eyeliners are ideal for True Winters, but I think all of them deliver the overall vibe that we’re looking for. Some of the shadows, such as Urban Decay Space Cowboy, look quite warm in the pan and even in an arm swatch, but pull cooler on my lids because the shimmer overtakes the base color. (This rarely happens with lipstick or blush!)

First, the eyeliners. I don’t currently own any fun-colored liners that fit into the True Winter palette, but Glossier Play Critical Mass (which dried out on me after a few years) would have been perfect. If you know of any good dupes, please comment below! Instead, I have three fairly boring picks: Urban Decay 24/7 Eye Pencil in Mushroom, NYX Slide On Pencil in Gun Metal (a recent rediscovery from deep in my archives), and Glossier No. 1 Pencil in Ink. Mushroom has a frosty finish, Gun Metal has little flecks of glitter, and Ink is matte. The UD and NYX formulas are both great, but Ink is dry and unsmudgeable and its point breaks off maybe half the times I try to use it. Glossier really needs to reformulate its eye pencils instead of releasing blah-looking eyeshadow sticks “inspired by late ’80s and early 2010s music culture” (so, like…Pet Shop Boys and Arcade Fire?).

L-R: Mushroom, Gun Metal, Ink:

Now for the powder shadows, L-R: MAC Shadeshifter Duochrome Shadow in Right Before Your Eyes! (lavender with mint-green glitter), Urban Decay Moondust Shadow in Space Cowboy (beige with silver glitter), Topshop Chameleon Glow Eyeshadow in Holograph (white with strong blue shift), MAC Powder Eyeshadow in Vex (light gray-beige with slight pink and khaki shifts), and NARS Hardwired Eyeshadow in Earthshine (shell pink with subtle blue shimmer). I suspect that the only true TW shade here is Topshop Holograph, but the others are close enough, IMO.

Swatches, same order, in direct and indirect afternoon sunlight. I promise that Space Cowboy looks less peachy on my lids (though I really should have bought Cosmic instead, damn it).

Finally, the liquid shadows: e.l.f. Liquid Glitter Eyeshadow in Disco Queen (silver holographic glitter in a clear base) and about-face Fractal Glitter Eye Paint in Refract (slightly dirty silver) and Tin Pan Alley (very light gold with a greenish shift). If you zoom in on the second photo, you’ll see that my tube of Disco Queen is labeled “not for use in immediate dye [sic] area,” though I can’t find that warning anywhere on e.l.f.’s website. I bought Disco Queen a couple of years ago, so it may be that the product is now technically eye-safe (dye-safe?), or simply that e.l.f. is engaged in some shady shit (wouldn’t be the first time).

Swatches, L-R: Tin Pan Alley, Refract, and Disco Queen. I love the formula of these about-face glitter shadows, by the way: they’re easy to apply with a finger, work both as toppers and on their own, last all day, and produce almost no fallout. I’ve been wearing them often this holiday season.

Here I am wearing Refract with MAC Ruby Woo on a very cold day last week:

And that’s it! I’m hoping to write at least one more post this year, probably a review of the two MAC products I bought during the Black Friday sale (Vex eyeshadow and the new matte lipstick in Everybody’s Heroine), and my roundup of my top dozen new products of 2024 will come soon thereafter. Enjoy the holidays!