The Grand Hotel Cafe is another holiday offering from Too Faced that offers three mini eye/face palettes and a mini mascara housed in a cardboard hotel box.
And I won't be buying.
This setup--three mini palettes within a cardboard box--is something I've seen Too Faced do in previous holiday seasons. And I really don't get it. I've heard people mention that it would be a great grift to divide among three different people, but then so much of the cost is going to the packaging and presentation of the items, so it doesn't seem the intent is to break them up.
It makes more sense to me from a practical standpoint to put all the shadows and cheek products together into one palette, like their other holiday offerings. The shadow selections of each palette feel as though they have been designed to work together, but it seems unreasonable to think the cheek products included with each palette would be the best option to accompany that eye look for every skin tone. So I imagine people would need to pull at least two if not all three of these palettes out to create a look, which seems like an unnecessary hassle.
Overall, I honestly feel that this is again another gimmick from Too Faced. And the biggest draw here seems to be the packaging and its resemblance to Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Grand Budapest Hotel
To add to the gimmick, all three of these mini palettes are scented.
Now, this is something that is starting to annoy me. With the release of the Chocolate Bar palettes, it was a nice addition, like whipped cream on a sundae, to have the shadows chocolate-scented. It felt like a little special something, like when a department store would put a spritz of perfume on the tissue paper as they packaged your products.
But, it's not a lasting addition. My Chocolate Bon Bons palette, which I purchased less than three months ago, has already lost most of its chocolate scent. My original Chocolate Bar was much more heavily scented than the Bon Bons, so I would imagine there has been some change in the formulation of scenting the makeup.
Now that the chocolate scent has dissipated, the lingering scent isn't very pleasant. It smells like badly perfumed makeup. (And yes, I purchased my Bon Bons palette directly from Sephora, so I don't have a counterfeit product.) The same happened with my Peanut Butter and Jelly palette. The palette originally had a hazelnut chocolate scent, but now has a faint and unpleasant scent.
Several people reported that the smell of the Sweet Peach palette was nauseating, and I haven't heard great things about the scents in the Grand Hotel Cafe either. The mini palettes are scented with peppermint mocha, gingerbread cookie, and eggnog latte, and I've specifically heard from several people that the eggnog palette smells like play dough.
More than anything, again, I feel as though more thought and effort was put into the packaging than the product itself. And sure, the packaging is cute, but how many people are going to keep it on display? How many people are going to want Christmas trees displayed throughout the year?
As far as the product itself, I find the mini palettes to be rather boring.
There aren't any shades in this collection that I don't already have, and on the whole, the palettes seem to lean pretty cool-toned. As I've mentioned before, Too Faced is known for having lackluster holiday and limited edition products with quality that doesn't match up to the permanent line. The preliminary reviews I've seen of this product are no different. The eyeshadows lack pigmentation and blendabilty, and the face products are patchy.
The Grand Hotel Cafe costs $49, but Too Faced boasts that this is a $292 value. I'm not exactly sure how they arrived at that number. The Grand Hotel Cafe has 18 eyeshadows, and the Chocolate Bon Bons palette has 16. Bon Bons costs $49 as well, so I wonder why two additional eyeshadows, two blushes, one bronzer, and one mini mascara equals $243 to Too Faced.
Frankly, the Grand Hotel Cafe is not a $292 value. It's not even a $49 value. This is a marketing tactic that brands employ to make it seem as though there is this one-time great deal to get these products for super cheap. ("Because if you don't buy now, this would cost you $292, so you better buy now!") But in reality, they are not worth that high price tag, and with the poor quality, they are not even worth the "discounted" cost.
The only appeal that I see in this collection is the presentation and packaging. And as I've said before, that can get a little hazy. If brands know that people will shell out money for mediocre products and cute packaging, what incentive is there to make the product great? If their margins will still be the same as long as there is a cute gimmick, why bother making an innovative and excellent product?
I really feel the target audience for something like the Grand Hotel Cafe is as a holiday gift for someone new to makeup. The presentation is fun for a gift, and there are enough products for someone to play with and potentially develop and understanding of what they like and what works for them. Even still, I think money would be better spent buying a permanent item with better quality.
As much as I loved the Grand Budapest Hotel and would love to have a mini version of it on my vanity, $49 is too much to spend on cardboard packing, the impracticality of three mini palettes, and mediocre quality. And I won't be buying.
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