Thursday 22 September 2011

HD Brows vs. Chanel Perfect Brows

As seen in my previous post I recently received the HD Brows kit in my September Glossybox. A few weeks before I’d splashed out on the Le Sourcil De Chanel Perfect Brows kit so I wanted to do a post comparing the two.


Both have very sleek exterior packaging. The shiny black is a classic look for most of the Chanel beauty products  with the trademark “Double C” logo and the HD Brows palette is closely following with the shiny black plastic and their brand logo. The font for the HD reminds me of Urban Decay slightly.
Another thing both these products have in common is a range of shades within them. The Chanel kit has 3 shades of brown ranging from medium to dark, but the HD Brows palette has 4 shades, one suitable for blondes (also doubles as a highlighter for under the brow) and the other 3 being a medium brown, a reddish brown and a dark brown/black. All of these can be worn as eyeshadows and eyeliners as well.


Each kit came with totally different tools. The Chanel palette came with a brow brush (if you look closely you can see it here, like a very tiny black toothbrush!), a set of small, round-ended tweezers and the applicator which is a small, slanted brush. The first thing I noticed about the Chanel brush is that it’s very hard. The bristles on the brush are very short and densely packed which at times means that it scrapes the product from the container, spilling excess powder and leaving a groove in the powder. It is fairly good for the actual application to the eyebrow, as long as you keep topping up the powder on the brush, but not something I would recommend to people who need a lot of precision. It’s difficult to retain a pointed finish to the eyebrow and tends to look just like a thick line with no definite end.

The HD Brows palette came with two applicators, an eyeshadow applicator and another double-ended brush (not pictured, click here to take you to the post). One end is a very thin, very soft slanted brush and one is a short, dense nib, possibly made of foam but I’m not sure. I much prefer the slanted brush in this kit to the Chanel one. It’s much softer and much easier to apply the powder to the brow with precision, avoiding a thick line. The eyeshadow applicator isn’t my favourite but that’s just because I prefer bristled brushes to these small, round applicators. They remind me of being 13 and having no idea what to do with eyeshadow!

Looking at the powder in each of these products I’d have to say that the HD Brows comes up ahead here. The colours are highly pigmented and stick well to the brush. The Chanel powders require a good scraping to gather any of the product on the brush which is a shame as there it results in so much wasted powder and aren’t as pigmented.


You can see in the swatches that the Chanel powder at the top is thick and quite smudged whereas the bottom HD Brows swatches are much more defined. It should be noted here that the Chanel swatch had to be applied about 3 times to even get a colour sample to show but the HD Brows used a single swipe and gave a defined and clear line.


Overall the HD Brows palette is definitely my favourite. The palette doubles up as an eyeshadow/liner as well as a brow filler and the colours are much longer lasting, less messy and easier to apply. I feel like I’m blaspheming saying this but the Chanel kit doesn’t even come close to the HD Brows. The only things it has that the HD kit doesn’t is a set of tweezers to get those pesky short hairs and it’s mirror is slightly magnified to get a better view of what you’re doing. If HD Brows ever came out with a kit that had those two features it would be absolutely perfect.

HD Brows retails at £19.95 and Le Sourcil De Chanel Perfect Brows is £41.00

Which would you choose?


xo xo 

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