What I'm Not Buying: Laura Mercier Fall in Love Illuminator Collection Holiday 2016

For the holiday shopping season, Laura Mercier has released a palette with four smaller-sized pans of their Face Illuminator Powders. 

And I won't be buying. 

The powders, honestly, look gorgeous. There's something about the density of the powders, how they're not flat and flush with the pan, and the texture that reminds me of crinkled satin sheets. They're so beautiful and make me want to own them without a second thought. 

But. And this is something that has taken me a while to fully comprehend and admit to myself. 

A highlighter is a highlighter.  

I know that might come across as blasphemy to the majority of the beauty community, but as someone who has owned many highlighters, I feel confident in saying that there is so little discernible difference of the look of different highlighters on the skin that it really doesn't pay to own more than one or two. 

I have owned highlighters from Becca, Dior, theBalm, Lorac, Laura Mercier, and Anastasia Beverly Hills. And I have used shimmery eyeshadows as highlighters just to see if there's a difference. And ultimately, there really isn't much. 

I've found this to be true (at least on my warm olive skin tone) with different shades of highlighters as well. Typically, unless the color is too dark for my skin, the effect of every highlighter is exactly the same. It's beautiful, glowy, and gives a nice sheen or shine to the skin. But I don't specifically notice the color. 

Right now, there are eleven pans of highlighter in my collection. However, eight of them are part of two Anastasia Beverly Hills Glow Kits (Gleam and Sun Dipped). That means I only own three individual highlighters. They are:

• Becca Moonstone
• Becca Opal 
• Laura Mercier Matte Radiance Baked Powder in Highlight 01

I have decluttered the rest of my highlighters, not because I didn't like them or thought the product was inferior, but because I just don't need that much of the same thing. 

All of the highlighters in my collection are different enough for me to justify keeping. The Glow Kits have shades that closely (if not exactly) match Becca Moonstone and Opal, but I enjoy having the individual pans of highlighter for when I travel or just want to grab something quickly. 

When I swatch the highlighters in my collection with my finger onto the back of my hand, I see a difference in color between all of them. However, when sheered onto my cheekbones, they all look really, really similar. 

The Laura Mercier Fall in Love Illuminator Collection is $58 for 0.44 ounces of product. That feels very expensive to me. Laura Mercier claims that this is a $65 value (which isn't much of a value anyway). However, the full-sized Face Illuminating Powders are $44 for 0.35 ounces of product. So I have a hard time figuring that 0.09 ounces of product is worth $21. I imagine that number was calculated based on the palette offering four shades instead of one, but since Laura Mercier does not sell deluxe sample-sized pans of this highlighter, it's hard to see how they calculated the palette's value. 

Frankly, I just don't think this palette is a good deal. If you don't have many (or any) highlighters and wanted to try several different shades, or if you were intrigued by the color selection in this palette, I instead recommend the Anastasia Beverly Hills Glow Kit in Sun Dipped. 

If you were to swap the upper left and lower right pans, the shade selection would be nearly identical, and I would imagine completely identical once sheered out on the skin. 

Sun Dipped offers 1.04 ounces of product for $40, so it is a significantly better value than the Laura Mercier Illuminator Collection. And Anastasia Beverly Hills offers some of the most beautiful highlighters I have ever worked with. I wouldn't be surprised if these performed better than the Laura Mercier palette. 

The only pro the Laura Mercier palette has over the Anastasia Beverely Hills Glow Kit is the packaging and the way the powders look in the pan. Sure, I like my makeup to be as pretty as possible, but not for $18 more for less than half the product. 

I have enough beautiful highlighters in my collection that I don't need the Laura Mercier Fall in Love Illuminator Collection, and I won't be buying.