Eleven and a half years have passed since I bought my first purple blush, Tony Moly Cristal Blusher in Milky Violet, at a Korean beauty store in Manhattan. From the vantage point of 2026, late 2014 might seem like a long-lost paradise, but was it really? Sure, I’d never heard the phrases “President Trump,” “novel coronavirus,” “looksmaxxing subreddit,” or “AI slop,” but I also couldn’t find a decent purple blush to save my life. Having recently gotten into k-pop and thereby k-beauty, I was determined to find a lavender shade that would pop on my cheeks in an uncannily watercolor-y way, à la this look by Hyea Won Kang in Vogue Korea, February 2014 (source):

I understood that this exact effect might not be possible without professional lighting and editing, but I thought I could at least approximate it. And yet! Milky Violet was much too sheer, more of a finishing powder than a real blush. Over the years, I tried other purple and lavender blushes, but the purple ones turned magenta and the lavender ones baby pink on my cool-toned skin.

What I needed, I eventually realized, was a purple that leaned blue, not pink. But Violet Beauregarde blushes weren’t exactly thick on the ground, and not until September 2025—more than a decade after my visit to the Tony Moly store—did I come across a suitable shade at Sephora. I’d completely missed the launch of Fenty’s Cheeks Suede Powder Blush in 2024, and had therefore been unaware of Drama Cla$$, the shade third from the right:

Fenty had released a purple cream blush called Drama Cla$$ several years earlier, but I’d passed on it, assuming it was yet another magenta impostor. I saw immediately that this version of Drama Cla$$ was different. Here it is on the right, swatched next to Wattabrat, a sparkly pink from the same line:

I told myself I didn’t need it—I had other purple blushes, the color was better suited to spring, etc.—and resisted for a whole month and a half. Then I received a Sephora gift card for my birthday in November and it was all over for me.

The Cheeks Suede powder blushes, like the Cheeks Out cream blushes, are $28 each (everything at Sephora and Ulta costs between $26 and $32 these days, I notice). Arguably, the powders are a better value: they’re 33% larger than the creams (4g instead of 3g), and powder blushes generally have more lasting power on the skin than cream blushes do, so they get depleted less quickly. Then again, the creams have a nice mirror and the powders have no mirror at all, and is any reader of a beauty blog actually in danger of using up a purple blush and having to buy another?

The compacts’ shapes force me to draw on my hazy memories of tenth-grade geometry: the Cheeks Out compacts are octagons, while the Cheeks Suede compacts are rhombuses that are challenging to store alongside other blushes and, frankly, a little unsettling to my sense of aesthetics. A rhomboid blush is like a triangular umbrella or a trapezoidal coffee mug—it doesn’t feel quite right.

Like their cream counterparts, the Cheeks Suede blushes click shut securely with a little latch. Viewed from the side, however, the rhomboid compact has a shape that I won’t even attempt to describe (look, I wasn’t honors geometry material) but that seems like it could cause the blush to open in transit, because the side walls are at acute angles to the top and bottom walls. Fuck, I’m out of my depth here. Just look at the photo.

When I swatched Drama Cla$$ at home, it was somewhat darker than it had looked in my very first swatch: the tester blush must have faded after days, maybe even months, of being left open. (Can bright Sephora lighting fade colors? I wasn’t honors physics material, either.) So, not quite the lavender I’d expected, but not the deep royal purple of the original (cream) Drama Cla$$, either. Instead, I’d call it a wisteria or iris purple—perfect for May!

In this slightly out-of-focus shot in direct sunlight, you can see the individual particles of silvery blue glitter that pull the base color even cooler. (In the second photo in my post, the pan of Drama Cla$$ looks almost blue, since Sephora’s lightbulbs are making the shimmer pop so dramatically.)

Swatched outside, on an overcast day:

To show you just how unusual this paragon of purple is, I’ve swatched it alongside the blushes that were my purplest before Drama Cla$$ came into my life. From left to right, we have Glossier Cloud Paint in Wisp (liquid), About-Face Cheek Freak Blush Balm in Score (cream), Drama Cla$$, and ColourPop Night Bloom (powder).

Outside, indirect light:

Outside, direct sunlight (look at that blue sparkle!):

Inside, artificial light:

“Suede” is an appropriate descriptor for this formula. It has a smooth texture, but it’s a true powder formula, not a squishy cream-to-powder chimera like Glossier Cloud Paint Plush Blush (I swatched those at Sephora and found them absolute sensory hell). However, it’s softer than old-school powders like the OG NARS, Sleek, and Urban Decay blushes, and the individual grains of powder are a bit larger, which you can see on this brush:

Drama Cla$$ barely fades on my cheeks throughout the day, though I’m not sure if that’s an attribute of the formula or of the purple dye. Either way, the blush is very pigmented; even with my instinctively light hand, I find it easy to apply too much and stumble into Purple People Eater territory. I usually apply one or two layers with my usual blush brush, then blend it out with a clean brush to tone down the color and diffuse the edges. The fine glitter is visible on my cheeks in direct light, but in most situations it just reads as a soft sheen. (Wattabrat, the other shimmer blush in the line, has larger glitter particles.) No matter how vigorously I blend it, though, Drama Cla$$ is not a subtle shade. It becomes the focal point of any look in which I use it, whether I like it or not—hence the name, I guess! It really is the flamboyant theater kid of my blush collection.

Here I am wearing it last fall with Revlon Iced Amethyst lipstick, another 2025 favorite. Iced Amethyst is a more muted purple than Drama Cla$$, but they don’t look bad together:

And just the other day, with Glossier Lidstar in Lily and Revlon Glass Shine Lip Balm in Luminous Lilac (a recent purchase that I’ve been wearing constantly):

Fenty claims that the Cheeks Suede blushes are “sweat-resistant” and “humidity-resistant”; I haven’t worn Drama Cla$$ in those conditions yet, but my imminent move to DC will give me many such opportunities, I’m sure, and I’ll update this post if necessary! For now, I’m enjoying my last month in Philly, including the proliferation of purple everywhere I look: azaleas, irises, lilacs, pansies, phlox, wisteria. Who says Drama Cla$$ isn’t a natural color?