Jane Iredale PureGloss swatches and review – all 18 freaking shades!

At a recent blogger event, I won all 18 shades of Jane Iredale’s new formula PureGloss lip gloss. At first I was scared – I’m a long-lasting lip colour girl who checks her lips once every 3 hours, maybe. Lip gloss is notoriously short-lived, and I could see myself slowly eating through tubes of the stuff with my terrible nervous habit of chewing my lip. Not to mention that this was infinity times more tubes of lip gloss than I’ve used up in my entire life.

But then I realised I could wear lip gloss OVER other lip colours (quick on the uptake, I know) and I stopped being a gloss skeptic and set about playing with layering combos. The best thing about lip gloss, I’ve found, turned out to actually be how quickly it wore off – this meant I could wear three different lip glosses in the one day without tugging at the colour with a tissue and getting weird patchy lips, hurray!

Here are swatches of the 18 shades. Although my idea of lip gloss was sticky clear with sparkles, a surprising number of these were actually quite pigmented, to the point where I’d say they were more like sheer lipsticks. The descriptions from the company aren’t super descriptive, and I couldn’t find any pattern between how light the glosses were in the tube and how sheer they were on the skin.

Beach Plum – shimmering pink brown. This is a brown-tinged warm pink with fine gold shimmer. It’s quite pigmented for a lip gloss, and could pass as a sheer lipstick.

Bellini – sheer pale peach. This has no shimmer and is a glossy pale peach. It’s not very pigmented, and I think it would act like a clear gloss, unless it’s applied thickly.

Black Cherry – sheer deep plum. The darkest shade in the range, it’s maroon with fine silver shimmer and medium multicolour iridescent shimmer.

Candied Rose – frosted berry rose. Bright berry with fine gold/iridescent shimmer. Pigmented enough to give a berry tint to the lips.

Cosmo – shimmering true berry. Cool-toned mauve-pink with fine mauve/iridescent shimmer. Strongly pigmented.

Crabapple – sheer brick red. A nice red with no shimmer, but not pigmented enough to wear by itself – it ends up a bit patchy.

Iced Mocha – frosted bronze pink. A frosty pink-brown colour, with fine matching shimmer.

Nectar – shimmering honey rose. Sheer brownish pink base with chunky orange, purple and pink iridescent shimmer.

Pink Candy – frosted bubblegum pink. This is more of a light pink-tinged mauve with matching fine mauvish iridescent shimmer.

Pink Smoothie – sheer pale pink. Sheer coral pink base with big iridescent shimmer particles.

Raspberry – sheer rosy brown. Pink-brown, with no shimmer. It’s a pretty my-lips-but-better shade on me.

Red Currant – shimmering red rose. Much sheerer than it appears in the tube, contains big iridescent shimmer particles, like a reddish version of Pink Smoothie.

Sangria – shimmering wood rose. A moderately pigmented brownish-pink base with lots of bright gold shimmer and chunky purple shimmer scattered throughout.

Snow Berry – frosted silvery pink. Chunky iridescent pink/purple shimmer in a clear base. The particles appear to be the same as in Pink Smoothie and Red Currant.

Soft Peach – frosted pink beige. A light frosty bronze pink packed with dense fine shimmer particles, goes on quite opaque but blends out to a far more natural shimmery finish.

Spice – sheer chocolate rum. This is slightly pinkish brown, with sparse chunky purple and orange shimmer.

Sugar Plum – shimmering hot pink. Moderately pigmented bright pink, with subtle fine silvery shimmer.

Tangerine – sheer coral. Similar to Bellini, it’s only mildly tinted and doesn’t really show up as pigmented on the lips.

Lip swatches – Beach Plum by itself:

Crabapple over a layer of Revlon Just Bitten Kissable in Romantic:

There are quite a few similar colours in the range, so I thought I’d do some in-tube comparisons.

Raspberry is quite a bit redder than Spice, and although it’s not clear here, Spice has sparse shimmer particles.

Out of the brownish-pinks, Beach Plum is the pinkest. While Nectar and Sangria are very similar in the tube, Nectar is far sheerer, though both contain similar shimmer particles. 

Bellini and Tangerine are very different in the tube, but both go on very sheer.

The pinks are all quite different – the most similar are Candied Rose and Cosmo. Candied Rose has a more gold tone to the shimmer, whereas Cosmo’s shimmer has a blue tint.

Jane Iredale’s new PureGloss packaging contains a doe foot applicator in clear squeezable tube. Longevity-wise, these are good for lip glosses, but still don’t stand a chance against food or glasses. However, after they wore off, they left my lips plump and soft, and seemed to sink through lippie and into the lips (they contain moringa butter, avocado and sunflower oil for moisturising). I particularly liked using these over matte lipsticks that I found too drying to wear – the glosses, especially the shimmery particles, also helps disguise any peeling skin on the lips.

The glosses smell sweet and fruity, without verging at all on artificial, which makes them feel a lot more sophisticated than the lip glosses from my high school days. I’m really surprised by how much I like these, and how often I reach for them! Out of the range, my picks would be Beach Plum, Crabapple, Raspberry, Candied Rose and Black Cherry.

For Jane Iredale stockists (both in store and online), see here.

This product was a lucky door prize at a PR event, which did not affect my opinion. For more information, see Disclosure Policy.